Watchup, the personalized news aggregator and streaming service, launched this week on Xbox 360. Users can now access the app and stream news from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Sky News and CNET, and others without a cable subscription. The app is already available in both the iOS and Google Play store. With the Xbox, users can navigate through the app and the latest news using Kinect. CEO and co-founder Adriano Farano said in a statement:
Watchup on Xbox 360 is a dream come true for cord-cutters and digital savvy users who want to watch trusted news channels via the Internet. Our mission is to bring the power of global news to people on all the most popular platforms, whether it’s smartphones, tablets, streaming media devices or gaming consoles.
It’s a good time for video services to hop on the gaming console wagon. The 2014 Adobe Digital index benchmark report, OTT boxes and gaming consoles are growing in market share and people actually finish videos on them:
Online video completion rates on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) lag behind completion rates on desktops, gaming consoles, and OTT devices. A video that reaches 25% completion on a desktop was three times more likely to reach 75% completion compared to a mobile device. Only 16.6% of videos viewed on a mobile device reach 75% completion.
That’s quite a statistic, but it could also be because of Internet and cellular connection speeds, too. Either way, the news aggregator is making good on its mission to be everywhere you are, all the time. You can see how Watchup looks on Xbox 360 below.