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Netflix is now Quikster....srsly???


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From The Escapist

In a desperate attempt to rebound from falling membership and plummeting stock prices, Netflix is creating Quikster to handle DVD and videogame rentals.

Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of movie streaming and rental giant Netflix, made a post on his blog late Sunday night announcing a massive restructuring of the business. Netflix will soon be a company that deals only in the media streaming business; the rent-by-mail service long associated with Netflix will be operated by a new company entirely, going by the name of Quikster.

The post makes clear that Hastings believes that the drop in membership and customer backlash at the company's recent price hikes and plan restructuring shows that the two services are hurting each other. "I messed up," he said. "Streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently."

To make the change more attractive, Quikster will rent not only movies, but will feature an upgraded service that will allow the rental of videogames for the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. "Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done," said Hastings.

The new company will have a separate website, separate queue, and separate monthly charges, but the price remain the same as the current DVD-only service. Quikster will be headed by Andy Rendich, the current head of the DVD service at Netflix, who plans on keeping the iconic red envelope, albeit with a new logo.

Already, the change is drawing flak from users, who are citing the inability to search both services at the same time, the unnecessary complexity of using two separate services, and the inability to share ratings between Quikster and Netflix as primary concerns, on top of the still-present anger at the price hikes and loss of content.

What with the current feeling of the users, the shakey financial situation, the loss of streaming content, and now a rebranding and massive service change, I can't help but shake the feeling that Netflix's rough patch is far from over.

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I personally think this is a ridiculously stupid move, mostly for reasons already stated. If they were going to split, it should have been done at the very unpopular announcement of price hikes and diverging of the services.

Also...Quikster? Did

NapsterLogo.png And bunny2_lo.jpg

Have some kind of love child?

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I got this email!

I had to lol a bit at the whole, "I made a mistake, you guys just didn't understand..." bit. We understood just fine. Netflix was raising prices, and that made us look around at alternatives. That's how it works.

It wasn't that we were confused by them offering both DVD and streaming. We just wanted it all at the (possibly unsustainably low) same price.

It does make me laugh that, in typical fashion, Netflix's reaction to OUR reaction is to make things worse by making their entire system harder to use, and offering a desired service for even MORE money.

Good decisions rarely come out of panic.

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I keep my account at a price limit. I get as much as I can for that budget. With the announcement last week that they will be losing all Starz videos (8-10% of their catalog, but primarily newer movies and Disney) from streaming I will probably be dropping streaming.

I have always thought that a video game service like Netflix would be a good idea, but every time I have check out Gamefly I decide otherwise. I can watch a 2 hour movie once or twice a week, but most of the video games that I really enjoy take me a long time to finish. It isn't uncommon for me to spend 3-4 months on a game. And then there is DLC that I add another month or so onto the length of the game for me. Gamefly charges $16 a month for one game. The price would need to be much lower than that for me to consider doing it.

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Yeah, the cost needs to be reasonable. I work 40+ hours, like to sleep a regular schedule, has busy weekends, and enjoy TV as well, I can't play even a simple shooter through in less than a month or two (depending on the shooter). Since I am generally 1 year behind on 99% of video games (I only buy something new if I really really want it, like Skyrim) I can usually buy used for $30. I could only see the use of a $16 tag for a month or two if I was trying a bunch of old games on the cheap to later buy used for my long term enjoyment.

Streaming ... yeah, loss of Straz Play may cripple Netflix far more than the price increase and goofy split from DVDs. Meanwhile DVD service has been limping along since it takes a month or more after a DVD hits stores before it gets to be rent-able via Netflix (which is a better name than Quikster any day)

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Netflix is still eight bucks a month to stream movies where I live, so I don't really know the pain of having to pay a little bit more for effectively unlimited movies. Before you tut-tut me, though, we get no disc service at all.

Regardless of whether or not they deserve the backlach (I don't think they really do) the backlash is there and I don't think they're handling it properly. Which is a shame, because I've yet to find another streaming service that is half as good as Netflix. Buying off iTunes? If I like watching it only on devices with an Apple logo, sure. Hulu? Doesn't exist up here. With computer-related video services that use DRM, never underestimate the power of "I know that this will work on my machine." Right now Netflix fills that niche for everything I own with the exception of my tablet.

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