Henry Yamamoto

I'll date myself by saying this, but remember the A-Team? And remember when Hannibal always said, "I love it when a plan comes together" even it wasn't the original plan?

Well get this. According to a story on gamedaily.com, an analyst is predicting that Netflix will gain 1 million new subscribers in 2009 thanks to the Xbox 360. The main reason being that Xbox 360 can now stream a select library of titles instantly instead of having to wait for DVDs to get exchanged via postal mail.

I've tried the service and it works great. I wish there were HD offerings, but it's included in my regular Netflix monthly subscription so I can't complain.

Now I wonder if Netflix was just that smart and they knew this would build their online business to this degree? The gain on the Microsoft side won't be as big because the 1 million new Netflix sbuscribers will mostly come from the rolls of the exiting Xbox Live Gold members.

It seems like an obvious business decision by Netflix and doesn't seem that brilliant, but they did it and pulled it off. How often do we in the business talk about ideas and then talk some more until someone else "stole" the idea. I could've done that. But I didn't.