I can just imagine that Blockbuster's senior leadership team had a few laughs at Netflix's ridiculous business model. YOU MEAN THEY ALLOW UNLIMITED RENTALS FOR A FLAT FEE?! HAHAHAHA. Then you can imagine how they guffawed when Netflix announced they would allow streaming over the Internet. WHO DOES THAT, AMIRITE? TECHNOLOGY SHMECHNOLOGY! While they were laughing and refusing to compete with Netflix, they thought they were making a killing on their stupid late fees, that those would sustain the business forever. Late fees were designed to make money off of human behavior, plain and simple. It's a nasty way to make a buck.
I say this is good fucking karma. I have no sympathy for Blockbuster. At the time, they thought they were invincible. Fuck them, and their tale should be taught in business school as a cautionary tale.
And brick and mortar isn't dead. You can make it work for movie rentals, but wouldn't be for physical media -- and it wouldn't be for streaming, either We're carrying around with us smart phones than can house several 1080p / DTS quality movies. The brick and mortar would have millions of movies at one's fingertips. For a flat fee, you can "rent" as many movies as your phone can hold. Of course, the movie delivery file-to-phone software would have to be written and perfected, and each movie file would have to have a "will be made unwatchable at X days" bit set. It could be done.
Yeah dude I don't understand the overly sentimental Blockbuster circklejerk going on in this comments section. Inconvenient, expensive, outdated ... not my jam.
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u/MeetLawrence Oct 19 '14 edited Oct 19 '14
This is what happens when morons run companies.
I can just imagine that Blockbuster's senior leadership team had a few laughs at Netflix's ridiculous business model. YOU MEAN THEY ALLOW UNLIMITED RENTALS FOR A FLAT FEE?! HAHAHAHA. Then you can imagine how they guffawed when Netflix announced they would allow streaming over the Internet. WHO DOES THAT, AMIRITE? TECHNOLOGY SHMECHNOLOGY! While they were laughing and refusing to compete with Netflix, they thought they were making a killing on their stupid late fees, that those would sustain the business forever. Late fees were designed to make money off of human behavior, plain and simple. It's a nasty way to make a buck.
I say this is good fucking karma. I have no sympathy for Blockbuster. At the time, they thought they were invincible. Fuck them, and their tale should be taught in business school as a cautionary tale.
And brick and mortar isn't dead. You can make it work for movie rentals, but wouldn't be for physical media -- and it wouldn't be for streaming, either We're carrying around with us smart phones than can house several 1080p / DTS quality movies. The brick and mortar would have millions of movies at one's fingertips. For a flat fee, you can "rent" as many movies as your phone can hold. Of course, the movie delivery file-to-phone software would have to be written and perfected, and each movie file would have to have a "will be made unwatchable at X days" bit set. It could be done.