Stadia Issues Continue And It's The One Thing That Can't Happen If We're Going To Give Up Our Consoles

from the back-to-the-future dept

Karl Bode had a nice write up earlier this week about the ongoing issues with Stadia, Google's play to get gamers to give up their home consoles and GaaS (Game as a Service). As Karl noted, Stadia faces inherent challenges in these United States, given the laughably substandard broadband resulting from full regulatory capture at the hands of a few telecom players. In addition, Google, with all of its resources, seems fully committed to punishing early adopters with a big price tag for what is essentially a public beta alongside some reports of failed hardware deliveries. So big price tag, maybe you get what you bought in order to use the streaming service, and maybe that streaming service works with your broadband connection. Cool.

Well, it looks as though Google is going for some kind of failure trifecta here, as reports are now surfacing that there was a SNAFU with how access to the streaming site itself is being granted, with pre-payers being promised admittance in order of purchase, while in reality access to the service is being granted without any sense of order.

“Anyone else wake up disappointed,” reads a post on the Stadia subreddit, where early adopters have spent the last 24 hours sharing their hopes, dreams, and frustrations with the service’s messy launch. While some who pre-ordered Stadia’s Founders Edition received their controller, Chromecast Ultra, and membership info yesterday, others are still waiting, either for their order to ship, for emails with instructions for setting up their account, or both.

“We’re aware that some of you who pre-ordered Founder’s Edition may not have received your invite codes in the expected time-frame,” said a Stadia community manager on the subreddit yesterday. In a subsequent update that evening, the Google representative said the problem was fixed. “We’ve identified an issue where a small fraction of Stadia access codes were sent out of order,” they said. “That has been addressed.”

On its own, is this the biggest deal? Not really. New product launches are messy. Still, this is but one aspect of a larger shitty rollout of a product that Google has been hyping for some time now. Given the emphasis on Stadia, it's not hard to draw analogies to the rollout of Obamacare and that site's failures at the time. By that I specifically mean the impact such a botched rollout will have on the trust that is absolutely required by the public in order to be willing to buy into this product to begin with.

That's because, when it comes to the gaming industry, an orderly, easy access to desired games is the one thing you cannot screw up with your product. And it's the one thing that Stadia's rollout appears to have fumbled. In a world used to playing games on home consoles that generally, you know, work, having a streaming service try to pry that status quo away while demonstrating the exact dangers of relying on gaming as a service is the one thing that couldn't happen. But here we are.

People who are still waiting on codes have latched onto a July 18 comment made by Stadia’s director of product, Andrey Doronichev, saying reservation emails would be sent out in the order pre-orders were received. But some users on the subreddit who pre-ordered in September have already received their shipment confirmation and registration emails while others who pre-ordered in June haven’t. Even if it’s only a very small number of people who are affected, the mixup has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths.

“My order has still not been shipped,” Reddit user Gamesearch56, who pre-ordered Stadia on June 8, told Kotaku in an email. If I don’t receive my code till friday, because i would use stadia on a family trip with my laptop, I will cancel my preorder. So disappointed in the whole launch.”

As stated, Google obviously has a ton of resources and marketing power. Still, this the kind of launch that can be really, really difficult to overcome.

Filed Under: stadia, streaming, video games
Companies: google

Google's Stadia Game Streaming Service Arrives To A Collective 'Meh'

from the paid-beta dept

As we noted last week, there's a laundry list of potential issues plaguing Google's attempted entry into the game streaming space via Google Stadia, not least of which is the US' substandard broadband networks and arbitrary broadband caps. Stadia eliminates the physical home game console and instead moves all game processing to the cloud. And while it's clear that this is the inevitable path forward and somebody is going to eventually dominate the space, there's no solid indication yet that it's going to be Google.

Initial Stadia shipments went out this week (some anyway, many orders never shipped), and so far the press response has been a large, collective, "meh." Most reviews cite a fairly pathetic launch lineup filled with titles that were first released years ago. And while the service works in ideal conditions on good broadband lines, the $120 entry fee (plus $10 subscription cost) is being derided as largely a public paid beta:

"There’s no reason anyone should buy into Stadia right now. Google has made sure of that, partly by underdelivering at launch and partly with a pricing scheme that sees you paying three times (for hardware, for the service, for games) just to be an early adopter.

But the nice thing is that no one’s forcing you to, either. Early adopters know who they are, and they’ll hopefully be subsidizing a better experience for the rest of us while helping Google work out the kinks. The technology works reasonably well, and Google’s gadgets can all be automatically updated over the air."

This is, of course, before you get to the fact that countless Americans not only have substandard broadband, but have been saddled with bullshit broadband usage caps and overage fees. The fact that Stadia can chew up to 20 gigabytes per hour at full 4K makes for a costly experience:

"This is by design, of course. That 1TB data cap is targeted primarily at people like me, who have cut the cord and now get their entertainment through a collection of streaming services. Of course, Xfinity allows me to have “unlimited data” if I pay an additional $50 a month, which isn’t something I do because my overages tend to only be in the realm of $10-$20 a month when I happen to go over."

I remember being pitched on the idea of game streaming way back in 2001 at E3, so it's great to see the progress these efforts have made. But it remains abundantly clear that game streaming is going to be a work in progress for the better part of the next 5 years, and a continued headache in parts of the country where limited broadband competition has resulted in slow speeds and unnecessary restrictions. There are also other questions related to a shift to game streaming (like how do you preserve game history when the consumer has no ownership rights and doesn't own anything?) that will need to be hammered out in time.

Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft, which both have new high-powered game consoles launching next year (hand in hand with their own streaming alternatives) likely have nothing to worry about. We're still years away from game streaming being a consistent and popular affair, and the competition to dominate the space remains wide open, thanks in no small part to Google's fairly underwhelming Stadia launch and US telecom dysfunction.

Filed Under: stadia, streaming, video games
Companies: google

Narcos Defeats Yet Another Silly Copyright Lawsuit

from the just-the-facts dept

While Netflix's Narcos has certainly been a hit show for the streaming platform, it's still a bit surprising that there has been so much intellectual property strife surrounding the show. To date, the most notable IP dispute has been Pablo Escobar's brother's attempt to sue Netflix for one billion dollars. As Netflix was having Narcos actors pretend to threaten to shoot the public for pirating the show, Roberto Escobar was busy making no headway with his lawsuit, eventually dropping it.

But another lawsuit had been filed against Narcos as well, by a famous Colombian journalist who had a years-long affair with El Jefe. Virginia Vallejo wrote about her time with Escobar and the affair she had with him in a memoir, scenes from which were depicted in the Netflix series. She went on to claim that such depictions constituted copyright infringement. Unfortunately for her, a Miami judge ruled for Narcos producers on summary judgement, finding that the Netflix show had depicted only facts that were similar to Vallejo's accounts, while the rest of the depictions in two scenes the journalist calls out were not substantially similar to her retelling in her book.

The ruling itself is a rather, ahem, steamy read as far as these things go. The reason for that is that one of the scenes in question is a bedroom scene involving a revolver being used in new and creative ways.

Defendants argue that the only similarities are: (1) Plaintiff is blindfolded with a black blindfold; (2) Escobar uses a gun to caress her neck and chest while speaking in a menacing tone; and (3) she appears aroused. Defendants maintain that these similarities are not protectable because they are nothing more than facts; merely because Plaintiff’s Memoir was the first time that these facts were made public does not make them protectable.

Plaintiff contends that there are additional similarities, including the elegant bedroom, thatboth Plaintiff and the Velez character are bound to furniture, Plaintiff and Velez are at the mercy of Escobar, Escobar engages in aggressive banter with Plaintiff and Velez and both respond in a submissive manner, Plaintiff and Velez are not afraid of Escobar, Escobar grabs both by the hair,Escobar touches their bare skin with a gun as sexual foreplay, and Plaintiff and Velez throw their heads back sighing and moaning with pleasure. However, comparing Plaintiff's Memoir and the Narcos Revolver Scene establishes that not all of these similarities actually exist and the similarities that do exist are ideas and facts.

The second scene in question is ruled on in the same way. Essentially what's happening here is that Vallejo claims that Netflix's depiction is so similar to her account in her book that it's copyright infringement. Netflix does not argue that copying didn't occur, but claims all examples of copying were of factual information, buttressed by Vallejo's claims that the accounts in her book are all factually true. The rest of the makeup of the scenes, the staging, scenery, exact dialogue, and feel of the scene all contain substantial differences with Vallejo's book.

It's hard to see how the world could operate had the court ruled any differently. Is the expectation that an artistic work telling the story of an historical figure can't retell the factual occurrences surrounding that figure if some third party already put those facts down in a book somewhere? Were that the case, depictions of historical figures could almost certainly not exist.

Filed Under: copyright, facts, idea expression dichotomy, narcos, pablo escobar, streaming, virginia vallejo

Will Google's Stadia Game Streaming Platform Be A Dud?

from the stream-this dept

On November 19, Google is expected to finally launch the company's long awaited game streaming platform, Google Stadia. Stadia is being heralded as the vanguard of a new push to eliminate your local game console, and shift all of the computing and processing power to the cloud. The shift to game streaming is likely inevitable, the only problem is that Stadia may be a little ahead of its time. And, like so many Google projects (like Google Fiber), game developers are apparently worried that Google may waffle on its commitment to the project:

"The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear is Google is just going to cancel it. Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work.' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist.

Granted, that same developer then proceeds to point out there's plenty of projects Google hasn't waffled on:

"if you think about it like that, that's kind of silly. Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail. And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around, I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make."

Having watched Google promise massive societal transformation with Google Fiber only to have Alphabet bean counters suddenly cripple the project without admitting as much, the worries still aren't entirely unfounded. But while Google's ability to stick with ambitious projects is a worry, there are more pressing concerns facing the project's success. For one the launch lineup is fairly pathetic. There are only going to be twelve titles at launch, most of which (including three games from the Tomb Raider series) have already been out for years. As such, many view this as more of a proof of concept and a paid beta than a serious commercial launch.

But the biggest problem for Stadia, as we've mentioned previously, is America's shitty broadband connections.

Thanks to limited competition and negligent regulators, ISPs have imposed monthly usage caps as low as 150 GB on the nation's broadband lines. Stadia, according to estimates, can consume upwards of 15 gigabytes per hour at 4K resolution. Yeah, you can scale back the service to lower resolutions, but that defeats the idea of Stadia as any kind of symmetrical replacement for traditional game consoles.

ISPs, for their part, have spent years pretending that these caps are a good idea, despite the fact that even the industry has admitted they serve no real technical purpose outside of charging you more money for the same service. They're glorified price hikes only made possible by a lack of competition and regulatory capture. To try and make the limits seem generous, ISPs love to measure them based on how many emails you can send or web pages you can browse. Here's AT&T's breakdown from the company's website:

Whether Google is the company that will dominate the space or not, one thing is clear: ISPs are going to need a new schtick, and a lot of consumers are going to be surprised by the fact game streaming burns through broadband caps like popcorn shrimp.

Maybe Google succeeds in the space, maybe it doesn't. Maybe Google sticks with the project, or maybe like Google Fiber Alphabet execs get cold feet and hang up on developers mid-stride in a year from now. Either way, game streaming is likely inevitable. From Sony and Microsoft to Verizon (net neutrality and zero rating should prove interesting in the case of the latter), there are any number of companies eyeballing this space. Who's going to come out on top is far from clear, though what is clear is we're going to need better broadband for the idea to gain widespread commercial appeal.

Filed Under: broadband, stadia, streaming, video games
Companies: google

Too Many Streaming Exclusives Is Already Starting To Piss Users Off

from the too-much-of-a-good-thing dept

So we've noted a few times now that the rise of streaming video competitors is indisputably a good thing. Numerous new streaming alternatives have driven competition to an antiquated cable TV sector that has long been plagued by apathy, high rates, and comically-bad customer service. That's long overdue and a positive thing overall, as streaming customer satisfaction scores suggest.

But as the sector matures and players rush to the trough, there's a looming problem it seems oblivious to: too many services, and too many exclusives, and too high a price point could drive users back to piracy. An ironic outcome for a sector that took years to learn the lesson that the best way to compete with piracy is to offer better, cheaper, simpler services.

It's the simplicity that's starting to unwind as every company on Earth rushes to capitalize on the streaming evolution and lock down their own content exclusives, fracturing availability. A new survey of more than 6,000 users around the world found that 70 percent of streaming customers say there’s now too many streaming options, and 87 percent worry it will become too expensive to keep up with all of them.

Granted, while the "streaming is getting too expensive" line is a media hot take that shows up a few times a week now, it's often over-stated; users don't have to subscribe to all of the services at once, and unlike traditional cable can subscribe and unsubscribe at their leisure to save money. That said, there's still a problem with fracturing content availability to the point where users have to manage a dozen account logins, or hunt and peck through a dozen services to find content that's endlessly appearing and disappearing due to ever shifting and exclusive licensing arrangements:

"...the study found that 67 percent of consumers already find toggling between multiple services frustrating. 58 percent of consumers found managing numerous logins annoying. And 45 percent say it’s already too difficult to find what they’re looking for.

Those findings were recently mirrored by a Deloitte study that found 47 percent of US consumers already suffer from what the firm called “subscription fatigue,” and 56 percent were frustrated by quickly changing licensing deals that make finding their favorite film or TV shows a chore.

Again, the rise of streaming competition is an indisputably good thing. And a lot of this will certainly be mitigated as also-ran services fail and fall by the wayside. But the industry as a whole still needs to be conscious of the fact that forcing consumers to hunt and peck through too many costly services to find the exclusive content they're looking for is going to make piracy more attractive. There's some preliminary data suggesting this may already be happening, with some studies suggesting piracy rates could easily double if users face too many exclusives and too high a price point.

Granted much of this will be dismissed by industry as just mindless whining by consumers, especially by the folks who still, after decades of clear data on this front, don't want to acknowledge that you need to compete with piracy.

Filed Under: exclusives, piracy, silos, streaming, tv

Comcast's 'Free' Streaming Box Is Actually $13 After Stupid Fees

from the ill-communication dept

Back in March, Comcast heavily hyped the looming launch of a new streaming TV box that a press release proclaimed would provide "real value" to Comcast broadband customers for free. It was Comcast's attempt at trying to fend off the growing array of $7-$14 per month streaming services that have been popping up and causing Comcast customers to cut the cable TV cord. Comcast noted at the time the offering would only be made available to the company's existing broadband subscribers, and would only feature streaming services sanctioned by Comcast:

"For just five dollars a month, we can offer these customers an affordable, flexible, and differentiated platform that includes thousands of free movies and shows for online streaming, an integrated guide for accessing their favorite apps and connected home devices, and the ease of navigating and managing all of it with our voice remote."

Of course this being Comcast, the word "free" turns out to have been...generous. Unmentioned by the original announcement was the fact that to actually partake in this new streaming service, you must rent Comcast's "XFi Gateway," which will run you an additional $13 per month on top of your broadband bill. Comcast has long tried to convince its customers they must pay a rental fee for a router or modem, despite the fact that users can buy their own router and avoid that fee. Of course that's not possible if you want to experience the "real value" Comcast's new Flex streaming service purportedly provides:

"The $13-per-month rental fee for the xFi Gateway is a complete rip-off that Comcast (like other internet providers) pushes on its subscribers because people generally don’t know there’s an alternative. Instead of paying Comcast an additional $13 per month in perpetuity, you can instead buy a modem and router outright. By doing so, you’ll likely make up the upfront costs after a year, maybe two if you go for higher-end options. Once it’s paid off, you’ll be saving the $156 per year that you’re paying just to have a box sit in your house."

As such, Comcast's claim that this new service was available "at no additional cost as part of an Xfinity Internet-only subscription" would constitute false advertising. And Comcast's free streaming box is actually a $13 rented box that's not only loaded with a major hidden fee -- it doesn't include streaming services Comcast isn't keen on competing with. Most consumers would just be smart enough to buy a Roku or some other streaming device and enjoy a wide range of services, but Comcast hopes that enough of its customers don't know any better and will sign up anyway.

This would all be slightly less obnoxious if Comcast hadn't spent much of 2016 using outright propaganda to thwart an FCC quest to crack open the cable industry's monopoly over cable boxes and other hardware. Under the plan, cable providers would have needed to provide their programming to third party hardware vendors without the need for a CableCARD, making it easier to pay for Comcast services using your Roku, Apple TV, or third party cable box. But because the cable industry makes around $21 billion annually in rental fees, it engaged in some incredibly misleading tactics and claims to scuttle the effort.

Given the company just convinced the FCC to effectively neuter itself at lobbyist behest, there's no longer any meaningful rules in place governing misleading fees, something Comcast has lots of experience with. As such consumers' only real recourse is to avoid services and behaviors like this wherever possible, a major reason the company lost another 238,000 TV subscribers last quarter alone. But there's another problem: Comcast's broadband monopoly and its use of usage caps to hamstring and punish those that flee Comcast's fee-laden walled garden.

Filed Under: bogus fees, fees, flex, routers, streaming, truth in advertising, xfi gateway
Companies: comcast

TV Network Declares IPTV Tool Copyright Infringing, Even Though It's Just A Tool

from the IPTV-freely dept

To a certain segment of the population, just mentioning IPTV is enough to get them frothing at the mouth and shouting "copyright infringement" at anyone who will listen. This isn't entirely without cause, of course, as IPTV is a technology that can be used to infringe by streaming copyrighted TV shows and films. There are entire sites out there that list such infringing content, as well. But the fact remains that IPTV is a tool, not content that infringes copyright itself. As such, there are plenty of IPTV-related tools and uses out there that are perfectly legit.

Like Perfect Player, for instance. Perfect Player is an android app that allows the user to choose what IPTV playlists from 3rd party providers can be played. In other words, it's essentially a media player for IPTV streams. Upon installation, it does not come with infringing playlists to stream. What is watched on the player is entirely the choice of the end user. Despite all of this, one unnamed major pay-TV company filed a copyright complaint against the app with Google, arguing that because end users can use Perfect Player to infringe on copyright, the app itself was infringing. Google, frustratingly, complied and has delisted the app from the Play Store.

This week, however, the software – which has in excess of a million downloads from Google Play – was removed by Google because of a copyright complaint. It was filed by a major pay-TV provider, the name of which we’ve agreed not to publish while the complaint is ongoing.

It states that the software allows users to watch channels from unauthorized sources and is therefore illegal. However, there appears to be a considerable flaw in the pay-TV company’s arguments.

In common with the developers behind various torrent clients, Perfect Player’s developer doesn’t dictate how the software is used because no control can be exercised over that. Just like Windows Media Player, uTorrent, or even VLC (which has similar capabilities), it can be used for entirely legal purposes – or not, depending on the choice of the user.

In other words, it's a tool. Now, the entertainment industry has a long and storied history of pretending that tools that have perfectly legitimate uses are the world's greatest devils and somehow themselves infringe copyright. This goes back to the Betamax, and likely before that. But this particular case is one that ought to have the attention of a great many software providers out there, if not hardware providers as well. As the TorrentFreak post notes, if Perfect Player is infringing, why isn't Windows Media Player? They have the exact same capabilities. And, taken a step further, if Perfect Player is infringing because users can use it to infringe copyright, then why aren't android phones themselves infringing?

Is that line of thought extreme and ridiculous? Of course it is, but it's built off of the same ridiculous line of thinking as whoever complained about Perfect Player. TorrentFreak is rather charitable in positing that perhaps this TV company came across a version of Perfect Player that had already been loaded with pirate IPTV streams and is simply confused.

Giving the TV company the benefit of the doubt for a moment, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it acquired a ready-configured copy of Perfect Player from a third-party that already contained a URL for a ‘pirate’ service. That could give the impression it’s a dedicated pirate app.

That being said, downloading a copy from Google Play would’ve highlighted the important differences between a non-configured player and one set up for piracy. That’s impossible now, of course, because Google has taken Perfect Player down.

The latest at the time of this writing is that Perfect Player will be filing a DMCA counternotice, having retained a lawyer. One hopes that some simple facts about what this app is and how it operates out of the box will be all that Google needs to get it relisted quickly. And maybe, just maybe, one TV industry player will learn a lesson about firing off DMCA notices without actually knowing what its talking about.

Filed Under: copyright, google play, iptv, perfect player, streaming
Companies: google

Study Says Broadband Caps Are A Big Problem For Google's Game Streaming Ambitions

from the arbitrary-limits-on-innovation dept

For years broadband providers have increasingly imposed arbitrary, confusing, and punitive usage caps and overage fees to cash in on the lack of competition in US broadband. Not only have industry executives admitted these limits aren't technically necessary, they've increasingly been abused to hamstring competitors. AT&T, for example, doesn't impose the limits on its broadband customers who use its own creatively-named streaming video service (AT&T TV Now), but will impose the added charges if you use a competitor like Netflix.

For more than a decade ISPs have slowly but surely imposed such limits hoping that consumers wouldn't notice (think of the frog in the pot of boiling water metaphor with you as the frog). But as video streaming services have increasingly embraced high-bandwidth 4K streaming, consumer usage has started to collide with these arbitrary restrictions. And with new game streaming services like Google Stadia on the horizon (which eliminate the local console and stream everything from the cloud), the public is about to get a crash course in the stupidity of these unnecessary limits.

At full 4K resolution, Stadia, which launches in November, can consume upwards of 15 gigabytes per hour. When you figure that many ISPs (like AT&T's DSL services) impose caps as low as 150 GB per month before socking you with costly overage fees, you should be able to see the problem. A new study by broadband availability tracking firm Broadband Now shows that around 6 million of the US's estimated 34 million daily gamers will run afoul of their caps in the months to come. Since a sizeable chunk don't even know they have caps, that's going to create some bill shock for some:

According to data from The NPD Group, America's estimated 34 million gamers play 22 hours per week on average. Were those gamers to all shift to Stadia as their primary game platform at 4K, they’d burn through 1,386 GB of data monthly. And that’s just the bandwidth consumed by gaming; it doesn’t include music and video streaming or other activities.

The result will be an even higher broadband bill for US consumers who already pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for bandwidth. For many this will be a surprise. Of the 943 gamers surveyed by the company, only 17 percent were certain they had a broadband cap. 21 percent say they weren’t sure one way or the other whether their broadband was metered.

Again, there's no reason for these limits to exist outside of telecom industry greed. Even the telecom industry has (after years of criticism) acknowledged they don't actually help manage congestion, and serve no real technical purpose. They're a glorified price hike and the clear result of the lack of competition in broadband. In an interview with Gamespot earlier this year, Google VP Phil Harrison tried to downplay the impact caps would have on the service, insisting the broadband industry has a long history of staying ahead of consumer demand:

“ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trends and if you look at the history of data caps in those small number of markets...the trend over time, when music streaming and download became popular, especially in the early days when it was not necessarily legitimate, data caps moved up,” he said. “Then with the evolution of TV and film streaming, data caps moved up, and we expect that will continue to be the case.”

Except that's not true. AT&T's 150 GB DSL cap, imposed in 2011, hasn't been hiked once. Comcast's 300 GB cap has been hiked exactly once in the last decade (to 1 terabyte) since it was imposed. There's no competitive incentive to raise or eliminate these caps because these companies face little to no competition and (now thanks to the Ajit Pai FCC) even less regulatory oversight. And while Stadia games can be streamed at a lower resolution to conserve bandwidth, that deflates Google's quest to have Stadia be a symmetrical equivalent to game consoles like the Switch, Xbox One, or Playstation 4.

Another looming wrinkle in this saga? The death of net neutrality. AT&T already uses usage caps to penalize customers for using a video streaming competitor like Netflix or Hulu, allowing it to use its broadband monopoly to tilt the playing field in its favor. With ISPs working on their own cloud game streaming platforms--and the FCC having just abdicated its authority to police such behavior--can you perhaps see a looming issue? Google abandoned giving a damn about net neutrality circa 2010 or so, and with game streaming, that decision may just come home to roost.

In the interim, get ready for 2020 to be filled with sudden complaints about broadband usage caps, and lots of tap dancing by the telecom industry as to why these arbitrary, punitive limits exist in the first place.

Filed Under: data caps, game streaming, stadia, streaming, video games
Companies: google

Ed Norton Calls Out Steven Spielberg & Hollywood For Demonizing Netflix

from the out-with-the-dinosaurs dept

Earlier this year Steven Spielberg had a "get off my lawn" moment in demanding that films from Netflix and other streaming services be excluded from Oscar contention. The sentiment isn't uncommon among old-school Hollywood types who see traditional film as somehow so sacred that it shouldn't have to change or adapt in the face of technological evolution. It was the same sentiment recently exhibited by the Cannes film festival when they banned Netflix films because Netflix pushed back against absurd French film laws like the 36-month delay between theatrical release and streaming availability.

You should note that shortly after Spielberg's rant, he could be found hyping Apple's latest streaming ventures, which suggests a dash of... inconsistency in his arguments.

Enter actor Edward Norton, who hasn't been particularly impressed by Hollywood's vilification of Netflix. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Norton takes aim at Spielberg and others for trying to insist that streaming video is killing traditional theaters. For one, Norton suggests that theaters have been pretty successful in doing that themselves by offering substandard product:

"If I had to say the single biggest contributor to people preferring to watch things on Netflix versus going to theaters, it’s that the theaters nickel and dime on bulbs...They are delivering crappy sound and a dim picture, and no one is calling them on it. If they were delivering what they’re supposed to be delivering, people would be going, “Wow, this is amazing, I do not get this at home."

Norton then digs into Spielberg's claims that Netflix is somehow killing movie theaters, noting that Netflix has done a stellar job in distributing titles like Roma that would have had a harder time gaining traction in sequel obsessed Hollywood:

" If I disagreed with anybody, with great respect, it was [Steven] Spielberg [regarding his critical comments about Netflix posing a danger to movies]. Netflix invested more in Roma theatrically—theatrically—than any boutique label at any studio would have by a factor of five. They put a Spanish-language black-and-white film all over the world in theaters. Hundreds of theaters, not just a few; as many as Sony Pictures Classics would have done. They put more money behind it, in a theatrical context, than anybody would have. You can’t tell me there’s a whole lot of people making black-and-white Spanish-language films and putting that investment behind them. And you can’t tell me that there’s a lot of places making five-part documentaries about the Central Park Five.

An important point that gets overlooked is that there's no data to support the familiar claim that Netflix is killing traditional theaters. In fact studies indicate that heavy streaming video users tend to see more movies at the theater in general because they simply like movies. In short, streaming and brick and mortar movie chains can operate synergistically, making a lot of this whining about Netflix causing a traditional film apocalypse little more than grumbly, "get off my damn lawn" style ranting.

Filed Under: ed norton, innovation, internet, new models, steven spielberg, streaming
Companies: apple, netflix

'The Irishman' Ban Once Again Shows Hollywood's Disdain For Netflix is Stupid & Counterproductive

from the what-exactly-are-you-doing-here dept

For years Hollywood has seen Netflix as a mortal enemy because of the company's interest in disrupting the entertainment industry. Hollywood has been particularly vocal about how Netflix is "destroying" the traditional, sticky-floor, brick and mortar theater business because it wants to modernize antiquated release window rules from a bygone era. For example, Netflix content was banned from Cannes last year largely because the company wouldn't adhere to France's absurd cultural exception law that requires a 36-month delay between theatrical release and streaming availability.

Hollywood theater chains' disdain for Netflix bubbled up again this month, with the news that Netflix's latest exclusive, the new Martin Scorsese film "The Irishman," would be banned from being shown at a number of major theater chains. Apparently this was intended as some kind of "punishment" for Netflix, though the company quickly spun the narrative on its head. Like "Roma," "The Irishman" needs at least some major theater time to be considered for Oscar contention, so Netflix has decided to screen the film at the Shubert Organization’s historic Belasco Theatre on Broadway.

It's the first time a traditional film has been shown there in the theater's 112 year history, drawing more public attention to the film's release:

"The unusual arrangement – hailed by the preservation-minded Scorsese as a way to showcase his film in the type of ornate theater in which New Yorkers could once routinely view films – will be the first film screening ever in the Belasco’s 112-year history (the theater was an NBC studio for several years in the early 1950s). Netflix will provide what it describes as state-of-the-art equipment for the screenings."

The film (featuring Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro, and Al Pacino in a purported return to bygone efforts) will be shown at the theater through the month of November, before it arrives on Netflix November 27. Brick and mortar theaters apparently think they're somehow stopping Netflix from disrupting the industry, but it's hard to see how that's actually going to be successful. Netflix simply turned the snub into a new way to promote the film, and the industry loses any revenue from airing a film that many fans of older Scorsese mob films are going to want to see. It's all a sort of incompetent seppuku.

The biggest issue? The brick and mortar theater worry that Netflix will "kill theaters" has never been proven by any substantive data. Last year a study indicated that Netflix certainly isn't killing movie theaters. In fact, EY’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics group (funded by the National Association of Theater Owners) found that consumers who visited theaters nine times or more in the last 12 months consumed more streaming content than consumers who visited a movie theater only once or twice over the past year:

"The message here is that there’s not a war between streaming and theatrical,” said Phil Contrino, director of media and research at NATO. “People who love content are watching it across platforms and all platforms have place in consumers’ minds."

In other words, the claims that Netflix keeps people at home and out of theaters isn't true, yet it's the cornerstone of all of these efforts. Much in the way that pirates buy more programming on all platforms than other users, users who stream a lot still like to go to the theater because they really enjoy movies. Streaming and theaters can have a synergistic relationship where everybody benefits, yet instead we get whatever this is.

Filed Under: hollywood, martin scorsese, release dates, streaming, the irishman, theaters
Companies: belasco, nato, netflix