23 Nov 2006 1827H

Video stores shutting doors, XBox Live offers downloadable content

It’s happening on an accelerated scale. At least five Blockbusters up north in the last few years. Is Netflix, the internet to blame? Did Internet kill the Video Star? It was a contributor, along with Best Buy and the other big boxes. I certainly don’t use disc-based media as much as I did five years ago. Now the NY Times documents the loss of video stores in the Big Apple. . . . Good-bye video stores! The long moments spent with friends looking for movies, not finding things in stock, trying to figure out what we’d watch, that peculiar chemical smell in the air. . . “We’ll always have Paris.”

In a classic case of not being part of the solution, but being part of the problem, XBox Live, the online service that connects XBoxes everywhere, will charge $6 for HD movie rentals by broadband download, $4 for standard definition. After hitting play, you have 24 hours to watch the media. TV episodes are a few dollars cheaper. Oh, and you have to buy Microsoft Points. Why not use real dollars? Doesn’t this seem a lot like using tokens in an old 80s style video arcade? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Little makes sense with the XBox 360 experience I’ve had.

Update: A victim of their own success, BBC News, among others, report bad user experiences up and down the XBox Live video download chain.

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2 responses to "Video stores shutting doors, XBox Live offers downloadable content"

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23 Nov 2006 2221H

tim writes:

When I lived in the dorms at Cal, there was a Blockbuster right across the street. Great location right? Down on the Southside of campus when the undergrads live.
That was 6 years ago. There used to be a Tower records there too that rented and had great kung fu movie selection.

I had dinner in Berkeley last week. The Blockbuster is gone, and so is the Tower. Rasputin’s and Amoeba are still holding on.

24 Nov 2006 0828H

me writes:

Yep. Tower Records was such a big deal when I was an undergrad but now it seems like it’s lost its way. Amoeba, however, you would think would be Amazon’d by now and yet it’s still doing pretty well, by external appearances. Understanding why and how some stores can react and strategize with the times as opposed to others will be a key set of insights for the next wave of disruptive changes.

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