What’s the Deal Steve?
November 18, 2008
You can do it Steve... I know you can.
I love Pixar. I have my entire life, as their movies are way beyond any other animated studio’s films. I was a fan of Pixar long before I was a fan of Apple, so when I found out that Steve Jobs had started Pixar, I was impressed to say the least. The fact that he has such great influence over Pixar and Disney obviously should help him when he goes to negotiate things like iTunes movie rentals. Apparently that’s not the case.
I was looking through all the Pixar movies on iTunes, and unsurprisingly, they’re all there. Here’s where things start to get weird though… all of the movies are priced at 15 dollars, even though they’re mostly library titles, and none of them are available to rent. Pretty hypocritical of him if you ask me, as he managed to convince all the studios to sacrifice a little profit to make this work, and yet he’s not willing to do it himself. Of all the studios he had to convince to offer movie rentals and library titles for cheaper, you’d think Pixar would far and away be the easiest. In fact, you know that it is the easiest, which is why I’m almost positive that this has to do entirely with how much money they make off of sales rather than rentals.
Set an example Mr. Jobs: allow us to rent Pixar titles.
1) Jobs didn’t start Pixar, he bought it. Maybe he’s responsible for their great success (which happened after he bought it.)
2) Did the studios really sacrifice anything at all? The price of rentals seems way too high to me. I think Steve’s position has been that people prefer to own this stuff (hence no subscriptions on the iPod), and his actions seem consistent with that.
People do prefer to own stuff, but even when you “buy” a movie from iTunes you don’t own it. What you purchase is the right to watch the movie on “approved” hardware and the right to keep a local copy so you don’t have to re-download it every time you want to watch it.
High prices for Pixar films are indicative of two things other than greed: high quality and a relatively high number of times each movie is likely to be watched. Disney can make the second argument because kids will watch the same thing over and over again, even if it’s not particularly good. Even if you only ascribe a value of $2 for each time you watch a movie, a Pixar film is probably worth its $15 purchase price.
Most movies, however, aren’t worth watching more than twice so unless you attach an unreasonably high value to seeing one, most should be priced around $5.
Steve is not the CEO of Disney. He is on the board, and is Disney’s largest single shareholder… but if you group all the shareholders with the last name “Disney” together his holding looks small indeed and his level of influence is put into perspective.
In 1997 when Bill Gates approved an investment of 150 million dollars of non-voting stock in Apple the headlines read “Microsoft Buys Apple!!” when this proved to be untrue, the myth faded to “Microsoft Saved Apple”.
Meanwhile, the unprecidented sales of iMacs were dismissed as a ad, OS X as old, clunky technology and the iPod as “lame”. It was ‘04 or ‘05 before the press admitted that actual customers of Apple products were just “satisfied customers” and not just mindless members of a cult of personality (ie “In Love with Steve”).
The same thing is happening now @ Disney. Steve Jobs didn’t take over (as the press loves to claim) and might not think pressuring one company he holds power in to alter prices to help one small division of the other company he holds power in is [ethical/smart/good PR/financially advantageous/good karma/worth his time/whatever].
The neither the AppleTV nor the Mac depend on iTunes video sales/rentals for their appeal or success. The store is “icing on the cake”.
AppleTV is a slow starter, but loved by all who own it, as evidenced @ http://replacetelevision.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/how-to-fix-the-appletv-hint-its-not-dvr-functionality/ and http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/apple-tv-why/ it’s userbase will grow as people discover what it’s utility REALLY is.
Dismissed as a FAD.
Here’s my dream model…
1. 14 day rental. No catch besides that… watch it as much as you want within that time period.
2. All rentals 1.99 for HD (Blu-Ray Quality).
3. As many titles as Netflix has.
4. Purchasing: 4.99 for Library, 9.99 for New Releases (in HD).
5. TV Shows free, with very short ads (like Hulu).
Yes, the keyword in this is “dream”, but hopefully the studios (Steve first) will wake up and see that the quantity of sales would make up for the low prices.
pixar has been around your whole life?
@ Tedious
I have an Apple TV. I love it. But it could be so much better.
When I’ve pitched the product to people, I don’t get the same response as I do for most Apple products. I can’t give them a good reason that they “need” it. The response I always get is “You can rent movies? Like my DVR? Why would I pay 220 dollars for something my TV can already do?”
The key is for Apple to replace all elements of the TV, including TiVo, DVD player, and what they have now. If they did this, they would destroy the market.
It’s funny to read your comments about “the prices are too high”. You have no idea how lucky you americas are. I’m a Dane, and I’ve been living in Denmark my whole life, and movies thru iTunes ins’t available here yet. If I wanted to buy a Pixar DVD (say Finding Nemo) or any other DVD, it would cost at least 20§ in a regular store. The average cost for new DVD releases is about 30 USD in Denmark, and this is not in HD. If I go down to Blockbuster to rent a DVD it costs 10 bucks for new releases.
To put it in perspective, here’s what some other products cost in Denmark:
Alu standard macbook 2.0: 1577 USD.
Big Mac Menu with large coke: 12 USD.
iPhone: 600 USD + 6 months x 100 USD.
iPod Nano (new ones): 200 USD (for the smallest one).
You are SO lucky.
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