Streaming services are dropping the ball

[Creeper]

I dropped netflix a couple months ago.
Now the only one I pay for is youtube premium...since the adverts bothered me before. The wife and I watch a ton of youtube.

I might wait a few more months and get netflix again for a month and catch up anything of interest.

There is a new season of The Witcher coming soon supposedly minus Henry Cavill. Liam Hemsworth will play The Witcher this time.

 

[SlammedZero]

The bottom line is the entertainment industry does not want you to own their IP content. They want you to either lease it or at worst, buy it in a temporary medium format that will ultimately expire or become obsolete forcing people to buy it all over again on a different medium or through a different service.

Unfortunately, gaming is heading the same way. Everything’s being pushed digital, and while it’s convenient, it’s not the same as actually owning the game. The subscription prices keep going up, too. Game Pass just announced a 50% increase, and you know Sony won’t be far behind.

I dropped netflix a couple months ago.
Now the only one I pay for is youtube premium...since the adverts bothered me before. The wife and I watch a ton of youtube.

I might wait a few more months and get netflix again for a month and catch up anything of interest.

Me too. I watch A TON of YouTube. lol If I were just a bachelor, it’d probably be the only service I’d pay for. I love the mix of random content and genuinely educational videos.

 

[Sammy]

The good news is that other services are offering streaming subscriptions for free. For example, pay $100 a year for Walmart+ and get both Peacock and Paramount. You can't have them at the same time, but you can choose to switch every 3 months. I hate going to Walmart and love that I can get groceries delivered.

Get a Fred Meyer (Kroger) credit card and you get Boost for free which includes Hulu (which streams ABC shows) or Disney+ or ESPN+ (all with ads).

I'm sure all those perks won't last forever, but I'm enjoying them in the meantime.

 

[Reality]

Unfortunately, gaming is heading the same way. Everything’s being pushed digital, and while it’s convenient, it’s not the same as actually owning the game. The subscription prices keep going up, too. Game Pass just announced a 50% increase, and you know Sony won’t be far behind.

I've been watching the huge "Cancel your Xbox Gamepass Subscription" movement that's going on and apparently it has had a huge financial impact as a result.

The problem is that likely impacts game companies more than Microsoft given they make most of their money with other things like their Azure and other corporate services.

The smart play now is for Microsoft to wait until after the price changes go live, everyone gets switched by default, then re-offer the old deal as a low-attention opt-in plan to those who cancelled.

That way they get a lot of the "didn't really care about the price increase" people to keep paying what they did and they give a lot of "I'm not paying that!" crowd a psychological "win" by gaining back exactly what they had before.

If enough people will pay more for something, then right or wrong, fair or not, the small group upset people can get mad all they want but the companies were justified in raising prices.

Companies have to reach a breaking point before they let off the consistent price increases they've gotten used to implementing once or twice per year.

As long of the net is a gain, they made the right decision in their minds.

 

[morasp]

We went with the physical media route a long time ago. Usually watch two or three DVDs/Blu rays a day. Yesterday was Kung **, NCIS, and Step by Step. My collection is big enough that I can do that and not watch the same episode again for 10+ years so by that time I don't remember it. It had been 10 years since I watched the NCIS episode and I had completely forgotten it. Also, with Physical media you don't have to worry about a show being deleted from your streaming service, the picture and sound are much better, and with older shows you get the whole episode instead of a syndicated version with scenes removed for more commercials.

We also have an OTA antenna with a tivo for time shifting which picks up about 36 channels.

For Streaming we have FrndlyTV $10/mo, and also get Paramount+ and Prime video with our W+ and amazon prime subscriptions.