APRIL 13, 2009 • Netflix published an employment advertisement expressing interest in hiring personnel to facilitate video distribution across gaming platforms. When the advertisement was reported on, Netflix announced that its relationship with Xbox Live remained exclusive, for now.

Impact:  A similar sequence of events predated Netflix’s partnership with Xbox Live. So there’s every reason to believe the firm is readying support for other platforms. The larger take-away, however, is that Netflix seems intent on jumping beyond its core disc-based delivery model. There has been some analysis that Netflix’s recent decision to charge significantly more for Blu-ray rentals is intended to retard demand for high-definition discs in favor of digital media distribution where Netflix is the primary provider. This sounds to us that Netflix really wants to be the iTunes for the film industry.