Microsoft ends digital retail of movies and tv shows

[bocario]

Microsoft will no longer sell movies or TV shows on PCs or Xbox

https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainm...uff-you-bought

[Me-Hostage]

I could have told everyone this like 3 months ago. I knew when they were adding new seasons, but you weren't able to purchase them, something was up. I rarely used it. Prob. bought 2 movies for MA the entire time. No big loss for me.

[LexInHD]

Not surprising with the lack of people that use that since it pretty much died in the 2010s, but there is a lot of content sold through that digital portal that simply isn't available in HD elsewhere and it needs to be made available elsewhere.

[Me-Hostage]

Originally Posted by LexInHD

Not surprising with the lack of people that use that since it pretty much died in the 2010s, but there is a lot of content sold through that digital portal that simply isn't available in HD elsewhere and it needs to be made available elsewhere.

They sold a lot of anime that I haven't seen hardly anywhere else.

[Maddox121]

Digital ownership was always just some weird middle ground between physical and streaming. It's nice to legally own movies without having to pop in a disc, but, there's just... not enough demand.

[Deadend45]

This is it. Its all over for the format.....Panic!

[rburst]

Darn shame. I used it a few times. PayPal had a 10% cashback offer over there, so every so often I'd get full-price titles for $30 and get $3 back in a couple weeks or months.

[stonesfan129]

Comment from @mackcity74gdn89 - YouTube

I don't see how this is not tantamount to theft. They should at least let you redeem these movies on another service and give refunds for items that will not.

[Fiffy]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

I don't see how this is not tantamount to theft. They should at least let you redeem these movies on another service and give refunds for items that will not.

So far they haven't taken away anything. My guess: they'll keep the service running for a number of years until very few users are left, and then come up with a way to migrate the non-MA movies elsewhere for very little cost.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Maddox121

Digital ownership was always just some weird middle ground between physical and streaming. It's nice to legally own movies without having to pop in a disc, but, there's just... not enough demand.

The problem is you don’t own it that’s why they can take it away with a flip of a switch at anytime and you get nothing. Theirs a reason online stores went from buy to get for these licenses on apps.

[starsteam]

Darn. They started offering movies through Microsoft Rewards recently. Guess that's over now.

Considering how most of the major retailer gift cards have been pulled I wonder if the Rewards program will end soon.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Fiffy

So far they haven't taken away anything. My guess: they'll keep the service running for a number of years until very few users are left, and then come up with a way to migrate the non-MA movies elsewhere for very little cost.

Unlikely the usual operation is you stop selling but keep the servers up for a few months to a year then kill the server bricking the media for the remaining users. It lowers bad pr as the service was already dead so less people are watching people get screwed. If they wanted to migrate people they would have done it now as that’s good pr but expensive.

If the pr is to bad they say oh we made it up to them here’s a month of Xbox live or something which is what crunchyroll did.

[Fiffy]

Originally Posted by veritas

Unlikely the usual operation is you stop selling but keep the servers up for a few months to a year then kill the server bricking the media for the remaining users.

MS isn't some fly-by-night video service. They run gigantic data centers. The cost of keeping a niche service like this running in preservation mode is a rounding error for them. OTOH, the image problem of simply cutting off customers would be significant for them since they continue to sell other digital content (primarily games).

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Fiffy

MS isn't some fly-by-night video service. They run gigantic data centers. The cost of keeping a niche service like this running in preservation mode is a rounding error for them. OTOH, the image problem of simply cutting off customers would be significant for them since they continue to sell other digital content (primarily games).

I mean I hope your right but just last year Sony pulled this same playbook and just took the pr hit rather then the financial one. Arguably Sony had more to lose considering their studio portion of business but they still burned bridges over a bit of money.

The best option to migrate people over would be apple moving people to the apple ecosystem to rub shit in Microsoft face. generally burning the bridge seems more tolerable then letting people take that bridge to the competition.

[Fiffy]

Originally Posted by veritas

I mean I hope your right but just last year Sony pulled this same playbook and just took the pr hit rather then the financial one. Arguably Sony had more to lose considering their studio portion of business but they still burned bridges over a bit of money.

I haven't followed this closely, but AFAIK most content from the Playstation movie store is still accessible to users. There was a kerfuffle when they announced that they had to remove Discovery content due to expiring licenses, but AFAIK that was resolved too.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Fiffy

I haven't followed this closely, but AFAIK most content from the Playstation movie store is still accessible to users. There was a kerfuffle when they announced that they had to remove Discovery content due to expiring licenses, but AFAIK that was resolved too.

The one I was referring to was them pulling the plug on Funimation last year which didn't even have a way to download the digital copies. And they got a pretty large shit storm of bad pr for it but just kind of ignored it and gave people a token streaming free trial. But ya Sony has done it a couple of times same with Walmart and Microsoft though those were music distribution.

I was naive like you when Funimation shut down as Sony had a lot of skin in the game to not burn bridges in the vod market but clearly studios don't care about vod services anymore and will let them fail.

It just seems like a when pigs fly situation for Microsoft to spend money to migrate users to the competitions platforms or continue support for a service not making them money indefinitely. The only ones that could realistically step in are the studios but they clearly don't care.

[bhampton]

It's good whenever Microsoft ends anything.

Online movie services end instantly and anyone who enjoys using them should really know that by now.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Fiffy

MS isn't some fly-by-night video service..

Yeah ... And Vudu is Walmart and they aren't going anywhere.

Oh wait - Vudu was Walmart.

Those Microsoft movie servers can only lose money now so they owe to the share holders to ditch it soon.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Maddox121

Digital ownership was always just some weird middle ground between physical and streaming. It's nice to legally own movies without having to pop in a disc, but, there's just... not enough demand.

Plus the people who like it have no idea it's temporary.