Microsoft announced today that they would add each day's episode of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to Xbox Live Marketplace mere hours after they air. Sadly, they also announced a pricing scheme that sounds prohibitively expensive: 160 points, or $2, an episode.
For a weekly television show that averages a couple dozen episodes per year, that number isn't bad. But for daily news shows? Sure, iTunes sells individual eps of Colbert and Stewart for $2 each, but they also offer a significantly better deal: $10 for 16 sequential episodes.
Microsoft is foolish to pass this up. Get $10 up front, then keep people coming back to Xbox Live Marketplace every single day to view the new episodes. It's a win-win. $2 per episode, or $10 per week, is three times the iTunes price. Not good.
