Nintendo's just announced that the popular video streaming service will be hitting its best-selling home console and it latest handheld by the end of the year. The move puts Hulu's premium, subscriber offering on all three major home video consoles now, with the service having debuted on the PlayStation 3 last summer. While the basic Hulu service lets users stream a massive back-catalog of TV and film content to connected devices, Hulu Plus allows access to entire seasons of currently running shows.
One has to wonder if the Hulu + Nintendo partnership will continue onto the Wii U, the in-development successor to the Wii that will boasts the ability to place-shift video. With a Hulu Plus-enabled Wii U, one could conceivably stream TV show content through the Wii U base unit to the system's touchscreen controller, while someone else watches another show on the family TV. It's an interesting potential point of differentiation—streaming content to a separate, dedicated screen in the home—that could make the Wii U more attractive than other home console game systems.
[UPDATE: It's been brought to our attention that the correct phrasing for the time frame for the arrival of Hulu Plus is that it's coming soon. The headline's been changed to reflect that.]
(Top photo: Matt Peyton | AP)
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