Why PS3, Not Xbox Was My Netflix Machine Father's Day Gift

This Father’s Day I had a dilemma on my hands. My dad had expressed an interest in seeing what this newfangled Netflix thing was all about, and I thought a good gift would be a box through which he could get the streaming service.

Naturally, as a gamer, my first thought turned to which console I could get him that would serve as a primary Netflix box. Yes, I could go with AppleTV, but if I’d never used it, teaching him would be a chore. Plugging in a laptop each time via HDMI would be too much of a hassle, and so I went with my original assertion, picking and choosing between which gaming console I’d get my dad. It was a present I never thought I’d give.

The Wii was easy to rule out immediately as it feels downright archaic at this point. It was then just between the two dueling titans, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and the decision suddenly became clear.

I agree with our own David Ewalt’s assertion that the Xbox is “winning the living room war” in many ways. Between all its apps and Kinect functionality, it really does seem like the best option for a media hub in a tech-savvy household.

That said, I also agree with Gizmodo’s statement that it’s time for Xbox Live Gold to be free. Their main point was that if all these in-console apps are charging their own rates, Netflix, Hulu, etc, it seems unreasonable that it costs an additional $50 a year just to have Xbox Live Gold to access them in the first place.

Unfortunately, Xbox Live Gold is a money printing machine for Microsoft at this point. I’m currently paying for it despite the fact I haven’t played an Xbox game online in over six months. It auto-renews year after year, and I’ll probably never shut it off for as long as I own the console.

But it was the final deciding factor when it came to purchasing my father his Netflix machine. There was no way on earth I was going to shell out $250 for a system, then tell my dad that he had to pay Microsoft $50 a year to access Netflix, which is about another $100 year itself. The easy math here indicates that Netflix for Xbox costs about 50% more than Netflix for PS3 because of the additional Gold costs, and for my non-gaming dad, there are no outlying factors to consider like an undying devotion to Halo or the need to control the system with gestures and grunts.

As seen in the picture above, my dad is now the proud owner of a PS3, and he’s happily watching streaming movies already. Microsoft may be winning the living room war, but by continuing to charge for Xbox Live Gold, they lost the battle for the TV in my parents’ house.