Microsoft suddenly kills its movies and TV store on Xbox and Windows (www.theverge.com)
from IsaamoonKHGDT_6143@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 03:21
https://lemmy.zip/post/44261587

#technology

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ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 03:34 next collapse

Microsoft had a movies and TV store?

MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 03:40 next collapse

They did. It was so awful with hardly any updates. I bought some things on it but usually when it was on major discount and connected to Movies Anywhere so I could watch it elsewhere.

I don’t know why they had the same movie for sale… one with bonus features, one without… for the same price. Every other platform includes the bonus features automatically. Why separate them? Is there someone out there thinking, hmm… I like this movie, but I don’t want the bonus features.

It was doomed to fail.

Bonesince1997@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 04:43 collapse

Movies Anywhere was the whole deal for me. With Microsoft connected, I used MA for its wishlist to indicate when things were on sale. Sometimes MS had a sale when other services did not! But that’s it.

nunesgh@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 04:42 collapse

That’s not an option for people outside the US, though. 🫠

outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Jul 12:48 collapse

Yarr

MudMan@fedia.io on 19 Jul 04:57 collapse

I own a couple that were only distributed in this region that way in an acceptable format for weird reasons related to localization. And then I moved internationally a couple of times and the Microsoft store REALLY isn't willing to understand that's a thing that can happen. It's been a bit of a mess and one of the multiple reasons to not use MS's store as a package/software manager in the first place.

ch00f@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 03:40 next collapse

Laughs in 1200 disc DVD collection

IsaamoonKHGDT_6143@lemmy.zip on 19 Jul 03:41 next collapse

Yes, you could rent or buy series and movies.

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 07:05 collapse

laughs in 20tb raid10 multimedia storage

☠️

Lumisal@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 12:33 collapse

laughs in brain memory storing everything I’ve seen

noxypaws@pawb.social on 20 Jul 18:04 collapse

but it can’t store things you haven’t seen yet! and it can’t store things you’ll never actually bother to experience, unlike my steam library…

Poayjay@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 03:43 next collapse

Remember when Microsoft was telling shareholders that the Xbox multimedia ecosystem was going to dominate living rooms everywhere, then people stopped hanging out in their living rooms?

k0e3@lemmy.ca on 19 Jul 21:16 next collapse

MS ruined living rooms.

kshade@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 00:31 next collapse

I remember it like it was yesterday. “Xbox, go home!

burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 02:23 collapse

Imagine having a living room

PraiseTheSoup@midwest.social on 20 Jul 02:36 collapse

You guys have rooms?

Reverendender@sh.itjust.works on 19 Jul 03:44 next collapse

Oh well. They should have brought back the Zune. And my Nokia windows phone in bright yellow.

MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 04:59 collapse

I liked Zune. Microsoft is the real killer of their own demise. They have great products/ideas, but they just torch them before they take root.

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 07:04 next collapse

always after the ever elusive profit margin. can’t have a product that lives forever became there’s no more profit after the market has been saturated.

they then take all the IP they have and either license the technology or sell it for a profit or loss depending on what is needed.

doesn’t matter though, because the consumer always loses.

Juvyn00b@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 19:29 next collapse

Ahem Sony ahem - referring to Minidisc which I thought was awesome but most Americans didn’t care.

pycorax@sh.itjust.works on 20 Jul 01:17 collapse

For what it’s worth, Windows Phone was sort of a successor to that. And then they went and killed it too…

DemBoSain@midwest.social on 19 Jul 03:48 next collapse

You’ll still be able to access content you own

Haha yes, that was never in doubt.

jabjoe@feddit.uk on 19 Jul 06:47 collapse

It will be if your using MS tech for it. They will pull the plug on that too. Just not yet, it’s quieter to do it separately later.

On it’s on disks you control in formats you can play with anything you like, its never yours.

NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone on 19 Jul 05:59 next collapse

I can see Microsoft just being the Azure company at this rate. Then they’ll have to charge what it costs to run and a lot of companies will wish they had stayed cloud agnostic.

MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip on 19 Jul 06:27 next collapse

So the Microsoft brand is just for show and it’s actually called Azure.

jabjoe@feddit.uk on 19 Jul 06:42 next collapse

The business is basically thirds last I looked. Windows, Office and Azure.

Not sure how their purchase of platform companies they shouldn’t have been allowed to buy plays into that. Thinking LinkedIn and GitHub.

Wooki@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 07:28 next collapse

Azure is tiny compared to the competition.

363 is much more successful comparatively. That said, its dying fast, with the utter garbage service upgrades, its enshitified hard into a rigid platform unsuitable for enterprises. So find/make a real alternative to EXO with the Outlook app: and 365 ends over night.

Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 09:07 next collapse

Azure is a very close second behind AWS and has nearly twice the market share of GCP in 3rd place.

SaltySalamander@fedia.io on 19 Jul 23:39 collapse

Nothing about O365 is "dying". There simply isn't a replacement for it.

Wooki@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 23:45 collapse

I qualified the statement, nothing was ambiguous unless you can’t read the entire sentence

Taldan@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 14:05 collapse

They already make money hand-over-fist on Azure. Cloud computing is already quite expensive

hopesdead@startrek.website on 19 Jul 06:40 next collapse

Remember when Xbox required a Live subscription to use the any streaming entertainment app?

brsrklf@jlai.lu on 19 Jul 17:52 collapse

I distinctly remember them failing a console launch spectacularly by (among other things) trying to pass it as a media center and talking about how great it is to watch TV on.

jinwk00@sh.itjust.works on 20 Jul 12:21 collapse

Don’t forget one needed to stay online with Xbox Live subscription even for basic functionality and gaming during XBOne’s E3

Not to mention games were heavily reliant on DRM so you can’t trade discs easily

Meanwhile Sony…

Treczoks@lemmy.world on 19 Jul 11:29 next collapse

You’ll still be able to access content. But for how long?

sirspate@lemmy.ca on 19 Jul 12:35 next collapse

I remember when they killed their Games For Windows store and the games I’d bought on there just went poof. Never trust Microsoft to keep a digital storefront around, they’ll delete it all at the drop of a hat.

oppy1984@lemdro.id on 19 Jul 18:18 next collapse

Like with Bitcoin, not your keys not your coin. If you don’t hold it you don’t own it.

possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 20 Jul 13:03 collapse

Never trust Microsoft

brot@feddit.org on 19 Jul 20:05 next collapse

If you think about it: Microsoft owns XBox, that has been one of the three major consoles for decades now. They own Windows, the world’s most popular operating system. They own Edge, one of the major browsers. And they still failed to create a movie and TV store and shut down their music streaming service. Which is totally insane - that shit was bundled with fucking windows and Xbox and they still made it suck so hard that it failed

muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works on 20 Jul 02:27 next collapse

I think it’s more that consumers didn’t know what the fuck it was.

brot@feddit.org on 20 Jul 09:22 collapse

Which is totally a failure of Microsoft. People have their Xbox connected to their TV. They have an account and they have their payment information maintained there. And Microsoft can’t make the simple proposal of “Hey, this device you have connected to your TV and where you are playing games on, you can also use it to watch movies and series”

MangoCats@feddit.it on 20 Jul 12:44 collapse

PS3 was a 1080p capable device connected to our (new in 2007) 1080p living room TV, the only 1080p device for almost a year. It played BluRay discs - they had the opportunity to cooperate with Netflix and other content providers like the Smart TVs that followed, but they didn’t. When they rug-pulled the “otherOS” feature that I was using to stream live (still) photos from WebCams in the Caribbean, that earned a NetTop PC a place in the living room, and from there PC based content sourcing became the norm in our house. To this day, we have no “Smart” TVs. Our BluRay players are not internet connected (and they play 99% DVDs, less than 1% BluRay content…)

Consumer behavior gets ingrained, hard to change when they’re happy where they are.

Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz on 20 Jul 06:36 next collapse

Don’t forget that they didn’t succeed on mobile phones either. Despite it was very fine OS and devices were good too.

Natanael@infosec.pub on 20 Jul 10:06 collapse

Good except for the critical features they didn’t add. Like when the iPhone didn’t have copy-paste, but on a Microsoft phone, way later.

Rekorse@sh.itjust.works on 20 Jul 12:52 next collapse

Microsoft isn’t popular by choice. They can’t force people into shitty ecosystems if they have no reason to choose it to begin with. Microsoft was the only choice for decades, and will go down as the golden example of business monopoly.

Apple, amazon, google, all have their claws deeper in people because they make products people choose to use. They actually like the products, so the companies can slowly enshittify them and keep their users.

Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world on 21 Jul 01:33 collapse

They actually like the products, so the companies can slowly enshittify them and keep their users.

They’re just a few years behind Microsoft. At one time, people chose Microsoft just like people chose Google.

Rekorse@sh.itjust.works on 21 Jul 04:04 collapse

What was the other choice back then? I dont recall microsoft ever needing to compete for end users. Even now they barely have to put in an effort and are the most popular OS.

Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world on 21 Jul 17:34 collapse

Linux, MacOS, BeOs, NeXTOS, OS/2, FreeBSD, Solaris.

There were more choices than today.

atmorous@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 18:42 collapse

Their phones too

plz1@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 03:06 next collapse

If you don’t own the storage, you don’t own the content. You’re just renting it.

LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 18:03 collapse

Usually I agree with this sentiment but that gets dicey as if you store your work on a cloud service, they don’t own the work, the company/person who made it does. They are just parking the vehicle they own in a rented garage. In this scenario you’re saying you are renting a license to access it I suppose. Which would mean we are renting our driver’s licenses per se, which is true I guess.

*Where the fuck did my brain go with that metaphor

plz1@lemmy.world on 21 Jul 05:17 collapse

That’s slightly different. You aren’t paying them to store that specific content, you are paying to rent space in their service. They guarantee that space to be available for whatever SLA they have and for as long as the service exists. If they shut down the service, you are still SOL on that content if you don’t have it backed up locally.

Contrast that to “buying a digital movie”. You are paying to access that content, at that time, and as long as it’s made available on whatever service you paid for it. The latter part is the kicker. My argument is that if I can’t download it in a usable format independent of the platform “selling” it, I didn’t buy it. I rented it. Buying digital movies is just renting them for a longer time frame, unless they let you download it.

I always argue with the less tech savvy people in my life that it’s like buying a car vs. leasing a car. If you buy it, it’s yours, period. If you lease it, it’s not truly yours. You have to give it back when the lease is up, or buy out the lease. You don’t truly own it until after that. The media companies just don’t offer the “buy out the ease, later”, part. While Microsoft retired the whole service, these companies also have this issue when they let media agreements expire with content producers. You buy a movie, but then they decide not to renew their agreement with Paramount? You just lost access to that movie.

cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone on 20 Jul 03:12 next collapse

if you can still sign in, then i recommend linking your account to moviesanywhere for the time being so you can at least access any movies purchased there in other apps.

gnarwhal@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 08:06 next collapse

Wait… they had a movies and TV store?

viking@infosec.pub on 20 Jul 09:33 next collapse

First time I hear about this store…

MangoCats@feddit.it on 20 Jul 12:37 next collapse

I may have seen it, but it “felt wrong” from the start - never considered it anything of interest.

mechoman444@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 12:44 next collapse

I never heard of it… News to me.

60d@lemmy.ca on 20 Jul 18:12 collapse

Me too lol

Zozano@aussie.zone on 20 Jul 11:34 next collapse

“You’ll still be able to access your content”

Yeah, until they release a new version of the launcher, or underlying framework, which prevents the old app to run, locking people out of the content they paid for.

zigmus64@lemmy.world on 21 Jul 01:39 collapse

If purchasing isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world on 20 Jul 11:47 next collapse

This isn’t the first time Microsoft did a rugpull on their content.

TroublesomeTalker@feddit.uk on 20 Jul 17:44 collapse

They did this with “plays for sure” DRM protected music files too, way, way back. Never bought content of any kind from them after that and then killing Windows LIVE.

Just assume everything from them has a “destroy after” date set in the near future.

outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Jul 12:49 next collapse

Ahoy.

NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip on 20 Jul 18:24 next collapse

I never knew either of these things existed for Xbox or windows. Who is stupid enough to buy streaming movies or tv shows? Oh xbox and windows users. Makes sense.

demunted@lemmy.ml on 21 Jul 01:04 collapse

It was terribly overpriced. No idea who used it.