We're Going to Need Bigger Boats🌊
🎥Seventeen is the number of WarnerBros. movies coming straight to streaming next year and 👩💼the future of enterprise software might be more consumer-focused
Let’s start with a quick take on the decision to debut all Warner-made cinema products in the US on its streaming outlet at the same time they release in theaters…
Here’s the gist of the affair, in short: WarnerMedia will publish all their new movie on HBO Max service at the same time they hit theaters and they will be available there for 31 days, after which the products will be only available for viewing in cinemas until the traditional 90-day window has passed. After the three months since the original release have expired, consumers will be able to rent the titles on Amazon, iTunes, etc.
Easy enough to understand, right? 🙄
As we’re starting to close in on the one-year anniversary of the pandemic making the cinema space rockier with each new installment of stay-at-home conditions, movie makers needed to pivot to a more realistic plan that won’t force them to delay their already-paid-for products indefinitely.
While this is meant to be a ‘unique one-year plan’, if things go well and cinema chains prove to be a lot less relevant than they think they are, this won’t be a one-year plan. Traditionally, the main attributes of the cinema experience were the better-quality viewing experience along with the social aspect of it, but with home cinema technology becoming better, cheaper, and more ubiquitous, COVID’s negation of the second aspect is helping to open consumers’ eyes to this fact right now. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess on what the triumphant solution for distribution will be for these products in a post-pandemic reality, but a hybrid cinema+streaming combo is the more likely.
With most cinema chains in countries heavily affected by lockdowns being on the brink of bankruptcy, there’s no reason why movie studios like WarnerBros. and streaming giants like Netflix or Amazon couldn’t pick them up for pennies on the dollar and extend their at-home viewing experience to a cinematic one, this time on their terms. Amazon Prime including X amount of cinema tickets per month in an Amazon-owned theater would be a hard thing to say no to.
Finally, in the wake of this development, I couldn’t help but remember a point I made in the past about the less-than-legal practices of movie downloading getting more popular as more streaming competitors enter the market and make the proposal for the consumer impossible to figure out and the cumulative price prohibitive for the many. With titles now streaming as early as they do and the internet serving as the propagation method for any digital product, I expect services like PopcornTime to surge in popularity over the next year.
The deal of the week of the past seven days was, without a doubt, Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack in exchange for almost $27Bn. Most people in tech expected this move after Slack couldn’t find a way to become profitable even in the new pandemic reality he attacked by competitors like Microsoft’s Teams solution —who they ironically welcomed to the space in an ad that hasn’t aged well at all.
The solution of selling appears to have been a smart one, as Slack stock went up to a record high of $42 in the days before the deal was announced, and it also served as a small middle finger to Microsoft as they compete with Salesforce in the could market. After checking my notes, I’ll change that to ‘very small’, as Microsoft is worth 8x more than Salesforce right now.
Unfortunately, this is the sad story of many companies in the enterprise space, where innovation and clever design only get you to a certain point, and if you can’t figure out a way to go beyond that point when you reach it, enterprise giants will scoop up your idea and leave you in the dust. Teams is in no way a better consumer experience when compared to Slack’s solution, but when you bundle it with Office 365 at no extra cost, removing any risk and downside for potential clients to try it out, it becomes a no-brainer. Credit to Microsoft who spent time and money building the +100M client base for O365 and now they’re reaping the benefits.
Now with Salesforce behind them, Slack can deploy their product to all Salesforce clients and leverage the breadth of Salesforce’s distribution network in the enterprise space in order to sign up new clients. And from what the official comms read, that’s exactly the plan here. With Microsoft’s advantage reduced by a considerable amount, we can go back to the best quality of the product winning in the long term, and a long play this is…
I wonder, though, if this is the beginning of a transition when it comes to enterprise software, one where user experience is becoming more valuable even in this space, one that’s not so different from Apple’s revolution of the personal computer. After all, employees of big companies are people too, they’d like a better user experience if given the option by the IT department, an IT department that’s facing an ever-increasing push towards consumer-friendly products considering how ubiquitous devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops have become in recent years.
First off, with the news slowing down over the holidays, I’m taking some time off from writing the letter until at some point in January. Have a good holiday break!!🎅🎅
In celebration of the Slack sale, Microsoft wanted to see if they can sell $27.7Bn worth of ugly Christmas sweaters in a month so they can then donate it to Girls Who Code; they haven’t failed yet🤶
Fortnite’s latest season pass added more Disney-owned characters in the form of The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. The deal to license the characters appears to have gone good for both companies, with Fortnite registering a boost in the number of players while Marvel characters flood the Top 15 most owned skins over the past season🦸🏽🦸
CrowdPlay is finally available for Stadia, allowing fans of game streamers to join them in an ongoing gameplay session. We’re finally starting to see these cloud gaming-specific features for these platforms that are both entertaining and serve the current-day desires of gamers, but also leverage the innate nature of the platform that allows them to differentiate themselves from traditional gaming🎮🎮
In this week’s ‘news about gaming IP making it to cinema’, Oscar Isaac is slated to play Solid Snake in the future adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s ‘Metal Gear Solid’ franchise into a movie. Solid casting, if I do say so myself…🎥🕹️
It turns out that buying all the coca from Colombian farmers would cost significantly less than what the country spends on the —very unsuccessful—war on drugs right now. So they’re gonna try and do that. I wonder if this will also boost Colombia’s tourism industry immediately after ratification is done with✈️🌴
The remixes between mediums are continuing with Fortnite meeting TikTok dances…
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