The partnership between Microsoft and Netflix is genius. Existing Netflix customers are more likely to sign up for an Xbox Live Gold membership and existing Live users are more likely to get Netflix because the online feature gives them the ability to watch a variety of films beyond those they’ve had shipped to them on discs.

So far this has gone well for both companies. The Xbox 360 application that allows Netflix customers to stream films and television series has been downloaded and activated over a million times. Since its launch in November over 1.5 billion minutes of video have been viewed over Xbox Live, equivalent to 2,853 years of viewing. Since Netflix has 9.4 million subscribers that means more than ten percent of their customers are already using the application.