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‘HBO Now’ Xbox One, 360 App Will Give Console Owners More Options To See ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 6 Premiere

By Patrick Frye
Published on: 06:09 PST, Apr 21, 2016

The HBO Now Xbox One app has quietly arrived, alongside its Xbox 360 equivalent. This is good news for those of us who don’t have the native application on our TVs and want to see the Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere on Sunday. Of course, the series based on George R.R. Martin isn’t the only one the app is arriving just in time for.

The second season of Silicon Valley and the fifth season of Veep are also coming on Sunday. Silicon Valley is about six men who create a start-up business in said area of California, a comedy from Mike Judge. You might know his humor from the show Beavis & Butthead, or the popular comedy Office Space. Veep is a political satire series starring Seinfeld veteran Julia-Louis Dreyfus, who plays the Vice President of the United States.

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With HBO Now on Xbox One and 360, it’s possibly the equivalent of when Microsoft finally took the ability to watch YouTube from behind the Xbox LIVE Gold paywall. This meant we no longer had to pay Microsoft a monthly fee to watch walkthroughs of popular games and decide if we wanted to buy them. Yes, there is also the option of renting games from various services like Redbox, but watching a walkthrough on YouTube was much cheaper, provided you had a decent data plan and speed.

PlayStation 4 owners will still need to either get a TV box or use a native application on their HDTV if they want to catch Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, or Veep when their next seasons hit this Sunday. The service was already available on smartphones and tablets prior to this, and unlike YouTube, the HBO Now app on Xbox One will still cost you beyond a possible free trial.

The standard price for an HBO subscription is $14.99 a month. Admittedly, unless you’re a big fan of the shows mentioned above, or Beyoncé’s upcoming special, it’s a hefty price when Netflix already offers mostly the same thing and has been on most consoles for a while now.

This could be a response to Sony’s yet-unannounced PlayStation 4K console, which would allow the display of Netflix and possibly 4K Blu-Ray in full 4K resolution natively. Of course if you don’t already have a 4K TV, Sony’s plans might seem like something to pass up. Perhaps in the meantime, Sony could add HBO Now like Xbox One and 360 now has, and give the Game of Thrones sixth season an added audience?

Outside the United States, this addition hasn’t hit yet, as the application is native to the nation. This of course means that Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams can’t use the HBO Now Xbox One app in her birthplace, adding a certain irony. Much like her character at this point, on consoles, she can’t see the show.

Of course, Williams actually said something similar during a recent prank HBO hosted at a local hobby shop, not quite undercover as an employee named Lorraine giving out Game of Thrones merchandise.

Its sister app, HBO Go, has already been on the consoles for a while now, having hit the Xbox One in November of 2014, and PlayStation 4 in March of 2015. However, the older app required a TV box and a prior subscription.

Are you planning to use HBO Now on Xbox One and 360 to see Game of Thrones and other season premieres this Sunday?

[Image via Barone Firenze/Shutterstock.com]

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