What the future holds

[Mightyinvader]

So with the release of Windows 10 and Apple announcing a variety of new subscription based services such as their streaming service which will directly put them toe to toe with Spotify, I think that by this point most of us understand what is coming. Subscription services are nothing new. We have had subscription services for hundreds of year but in different forms. From getting a newspaper delivered to your door, to getting a box with a bunch of awesome stuff from lootcrate delivered to your door to even food being delivered to your door in the form of a company such as naturebox. Blizzard saw and has continued to see massive success with subscription a subsription based service for wow, and games seemingly have allot more DLC and are allot more micro transaction dependent than before. 

 

Take for example star citizen, a game which having not even released a test version of the full game has raised over 69 million dollars through the sale of "founder's pack ships". Many of which were sold last year and have not even been added into the test version of the game when that test did go live. Now I cannot believe CRSI had the balls to call that last test version 1.0 because it was missing an entire section of the game, yes FPS module I'm looking at you; however, that is an entire other rant and discussion. Back in the day when you bought a game you got the entire game and there was nothing else to it. Of course people would eventually end up selling clothing items and collectibles for the game but the game itself had everything in it.

 

The Sims franchise saw massive success with their many expansion packs on Sims 2 and have never looked back. With the phone version of the game being almost impossible to play without paying. That was of course until EA shut down the developpers. http://gamerant.com/sims-city-developer-maxis-shut-down/

 

Tv subscriptions have a variety of so called 'packages' which allow you to pick and chose what you want to watch of course for a price. However even the cable companies are losing massive amounts of subscriptions to services such as Netfilx and to a certain degree youtube and vessel. There is no need to have a cable subscription in many peoples minds because you can catch almost any sports game, news broadcast or movie online for free or a very small cost.

 

The world of torrenting completely changed the required mindset that was required for cable companies to live.

 

As we all know the human race loves convenience, that is why so many of us choose to eat fast food instead of cooking a meal at home because frankly it is so much cheaper and often allot faster in our minds.

 

Dvd rental stores disappeared almost overnight  it would seem when people realized services like Netflix and torrenting existed. Both of which can be done with ease by people who are most definitely not tech savvy.

 

Innovation seems to be happening at a increasingly faster rate. Take for example music,

 

Originally the only way to listen to music was by either A) playing it or b )going to see it played at a theater for example. The phonograph created ironically enough by Thomas Edison revolutionized the way music was listened to and experienced. This took over 1900 years to be made. And then 80 years later in the 1950's vinyl became popular and once again changed the way people listened to music. That is nearly 24 times faster than it took to create the phonograph. 10 years later we had the cassette, once again a new way to listen to music. Many people still stuck to their vinyl for the impeccable quality and unique sound that it brought however once again things changed. In 1981, 19 years after the first Cassette ABBA released The visitors on CD. We saw records and cassettes being replaced by CD's. But people soon found ways to torrent and buy blank cd's which they would use to download albums onto for free. 

 

Now services such as spotify, songza and the for mentioned apple streaming service which is soon to come exist.  Songza and spotify are both free; however, have the option of a paid subscription. But why pay? Well for starters Songza limits the amount of songs you can skip and does have ads.

Spotify offers higher quality audio on the paid subscription and allows features such as offline listening, unlimited songs and uninterrupted listening. None of which are mandatory in order for you to listen to music on their platform; however, once again we see that it is more convenient. Yes this brings me back to my point about convienience. Radio stations have also seen a drop in popularity because why listen to a free service that doesn't always play the songs I want instead of paying 6 bucks and having no advertising and any song I want. Companies know how you the consumer are wired.

 

Huge mobile games such as clash of clans find way to control the user without them noticing it.

Game theory did a frankly amazing video on this and I suggest you go watch it to figure out what I am talking about

 

Blizzard recently came under fire for their new Heroes that they are putting into hearthstone. Honestly though I am not as worked up about this as many other people are.

What they basically did is they made a skin for the warrior class. It replaces Garrosh with Magni. They are charging 10$ for this and what you get is little different animation when you use your hero power, obviously a different looking hero and a card back, which to be fair isn't much for 10 dollars. But my point of vue is, they aren't forcing you to buy it so who cares? If you don't think its worth your money than don't buy it. I'll leave it at that, you can go read thousands of much more angry and intriguing points of vue than the one I just gave on the subject if you type Magni into your search bar.

 

Taking a look at CS GO and league of legends, games which have seen record breaking success and are dominating the PC gaming community.

Now League is completely free and is actually playable without ever needing to pay a dime. But why does it make so much money? Well Although you can grind out IP to save up and buy a new champion, that takes a bloody long time and it is much easier to just drop 10$ and buy him with RP. Now every time you do that, you think "Eh what the hell, it's only 10$ right? who cares?" Suddenly a year later you realize you have spent 500$ on some new champions and a fancy loading screen picture and maybe some different character sounds.

 

Now although CS GO is not free it certainly does not make all it's money off the initial sale of the game. It has many skins which you can buy to make your gun look cooler or your knife look better than that wall hacking noob beside you AMIRITE? 

 

This business model is a very popular one in all the modern games and comes from the business model of cable companies and such.

 

But why was that tangent necessary? Well as I mentioned, Netflix has had huge success offering a convenient service across multiple platforms for a dirt cheap cost.

 

Did you ever watch infomercials? Did you ever notice how none of them price a product at 120$? No they price it at 6 LOW payments of 19.99. 

In your mind you are like " Gee what a cheap cost to get rid of my backhair with the nono!" 

 

That is because for most of us lower prices are much more appealing. 

 

Phone contracts often have allot of small print, and that is on purpose and also due to legal reasons, but I digress. 

With catchy titles such as "Your first month is free with unlimited talk text and data provided you sign a three year contract! We will even throw in a iphone 6!"

 

This is very appealing until you realize that in three years your iphone 6 will be outdated.

 

Companies like koodo although not strictly having contracts really do. When you get a plan from koodo let's say their 25$ one, you are given a phone of your choice, some of which are free others cost money. But why should they cost money? Well the way Koodo works is, each month a percentage of the money you pay towards your tab gets put towards your phone. So in 3 years that "free" phone will have been paid off. Which is why you have to pay extra if you want to get a iphone 6 on a 25$ tab, because in three years it won't be paid off. This is essentially a contract with a funky name and a animated Mexican wrestler. If you want to cancel your tab, you have to pay off the rest of your phone, this is the same way contracts work.

 

Windows for years was a Operating system that had everything except office. You generally had to buy office in a seperate package.  But with services like One drive, a cloud base storage system that is rapidly changing. Take for example I cloud, back in the day you had your Mac or apple computer and your Ipod. If you wanted to add things to your ipod you would do that in most cases through your computer or laptop. But now they offer cloud storage. It's CONVENIENT and you pay a certain amount based on how much memory you want. Well why not just stick to the old system? Well with cloud storage you can access it from any device, meaning you don't have to physically be on your computer with a cable attached to your ipod in order to transfer files, as long as you are on wifi you can do that all wirelessly. Services such as plex has taken this to the next level. I cloud only works on devices with a apple OS, however plex is cloud storage that can allow you to transfer files between for example a windows computer and a apple computer and access files from either or. Once again this is very convenient.

 

These are some of the reasons why windows ten is free. Because although the OS is free, many of the features which we are used to will quickly become paid services and subscription based. Now I personally have yet to try windows ten because I am waiting a few months to see how it fairs. It makes sense from a business stand point to not charge for windows ten. Draw as many people in and then many of us will start to see some limitations of using it completely free. This also shuts down the pirated side of things because you can't exactly download a program that will give you access to one drive for free. In order for that to work you have to use said program with your OWN account which opens you up to many security risks. Before you could just pirate windows seven with very little consequences and all the stops. Now there is no point because it is free. I am sure people will find ways to once again take the back road and avoid the police stop but for now that is the best way forward. Everyone wants control of the consumers, those you aren't smart enough will get quickly edged out. It is like natural selection of the corporate world, with hundreds of invasive species trying to wipe out the native population and take over while the native population is forced to fight back to keep what they have.

 

Corporations spend millions of dollars studying YOU the consumer to figure out the best way forward. And for now the best way forward is Through subscription based services and micro transactions.

 

It is finding that fine line of how dependent the enjoyment of your product depends on these subscription services and micro transactions that is key to success. Companies such as EA have been guilty of missing this mark by quite a bit with many games and services being deemed unusable without paying. 

 

Now if we look at Vessel, for 3 bucks a month you get to watch as an example Linus's videos a week earlier. Most of us got the premium free for a year but this has allot of people upset. But if we are being honest, @nicklmg pointed it out earlier today that if vessel never existed you would never know a video is 7 days old. So why subscribe? Convenience. Youtube is looking for new ways to compete with vessel and I am honestly curious if they will try to pull some copyright bullshit maneuver to shut down vessel. But we will see what the future holds.

 

Thanks for reading, please share your thoughts.

[Imabigmac]

WOW... 

 

What i find interesting about smaller monthly subscription based things is the financial side of things.

 

Will they save you money or cost you more in the long run

 

And people are so terrible at budgeting their money will continued use of subscription services be detrimental peoples finances. 

[niofalpha]

... Can I get a  TL;DR?

[Mightyinvader]

... Can I get a  TL;DR?

I talk about how marketing has changed and the way in which companies get us to buy things changed, I bring up gaming, movies, cd and many other things. The article was geared towards windows 10 and the new direction technology is taking. And then I try to figure out what the future holds, this took me 2 and a half hours so I would appreciate you reading it

[Mightyinvader]

WOW... 

 

What i find interesting about smaller monthly subscription based things is the financial side of things.

 

Will they save you money or cost you more in the long run

 

And people are so terrible at budgeting their money will continued use of subscription services be detrimental peoples finances. 

I did try to touch on that when talking about lol and Infomercials but I also do find that very intriguing 

[Imabigmac]

I did try to touch on that when talking about lol and Infomercials but I also do find that very intriguing 

I find my subscription to Spotify one of interest. I used to "watch" my music But I don't now. instead I pay $12 a month for Spotify so about $144 a year which seems like a lot - BUT I get offline listening which i would otherwise have resorted to iTunes for. Now in Theory if I were to buy all the songs I listen to offline through Spotify I would have given hundreds of dollars to Apple that they haven't already pulled out of me. So have I saved money or not. I get about 112 songs for a years worth of Spotify. 

 

So it sounds like a good deal, but I only have roughly 100-120 unique Spotify tunes that I consistently listen too offline. So Im not ahead but Im not behind either. I gained some convenience but I still have to make playlists etc,

 

I would still pay for Spotify regardless of it being more cost effective or not. And of course if I pirated all my music it wouldn't be worth it but I don't it just something I don't do. 

 

Interesting note: With Fido's newish plans they have a promo for 2 years of free "premium" Spotify which i am currently on month 2 of. 

[Sam Z Man]

I am amazed by nivida's marketing skills, for the second time they have done the same thing, and it works so well.

Its a simple 2 step process.

Step one make a balls to the wall brand new single GPU card, and charge insane amounts of money for it because there is nothing like it, and make every PC lover have wet dreams about this card.

Step two take GPU and decrease its vram by half and it's performance by almost nothing then release it the next quarter for two thirds the originals cost and make everyone go flock out and buy it because it's "such a good deal" when really there old cards still work great for what they do, but with this new card they can upgrade to a better resolution for "cheap" when really before this they had absolutely no intent on upgrading.

Honestly nivida you marketing department is doing something very right. But no I will not play into your plan...(yet).

[nicklmg]

Now if we look at Vessel, for 3 bucks a month you get to watch as an example Linus's videos a week earlier. Most of us got the premium free for a year but this has allot of people upset. But if we are being honest, @nicklmg pointed it out earlier today that if vessel never existed you would never know a video is 7 days old. So why subscribe? Convenience. Youtube is looking for new ways to compete with vessel and I am honestly curious if they will try to pull some copyright bullshit maneuver to shut down vessel. But we will see what the future holds.

I'm sorry, but I did not read this entire post (just being honest, it's late and my attention span is super low right now).

Not really sure how on earth you think YouTube can "pull some copyright bullshit maneuver to shut down Vessel." YouTube does not own the copyright to our content, we do. We can post it wherever we want, and we do - YouTube, Vessel, Facebook, DailyMotion, and whatever other video platforms we feel are worth our time in the future.

I have no doubt YouTube is going to release something to compete (I think it's already unofficially announced, though I can't be arsed to find a link right now). That doesn't mean that YouTube is going to be an unchallengeable monopoly (thank goodness for that). That is not in anyone's best interests, aside from maybe YouTube's - even that is arguable though since they would face a boatload of anti-trust suits if they became a monopoly.

[Mightyinvader]

@nicklmg no I completely agree that they have no right. But what im trying to say is I wouldn't put it past them to attempt.

[nicklmg]

@nicklmg no I completely agree that they have no right. But what im trying to say is I wouldn't put it past them to attempt.

I just don't even see how the grounds for that attempt would come together, but hey you may not be wrong.

[Mightyinvader]

I just don't even see how the grounds for that attempt would come together, but hey you may not be wrong.

The more I think about it the more it seems impossible however I do think they may attempt to do wha Apple is trying to do with their music streaming. Have content creators who post exclusively to youtube.

As to how successful that will be only time can tell.

Thanks for taking your time to read some of it, I understand it's pretty long, but you know allot on the content side of things so I appreciate your time

[nicklmg]

The more I think about it the more it seems impossible however I do think they may attempt to do wha Apple is trying to do with their music streaming. Have content creators who post exclusively to youtube.

As to how successful that will be only time can tell.

Thanks for taking your time to read some of it, I understand it's pretty long, but you know allot on the content side of things so I appreciate your time

Yeah isn't Apple like... getting totally rekt for trying to do that though? Trying to force it on people, that is.

No doubt there will be some people who sign a deal that makes them exclusive to YouTube, but it's not going to be something that is forced on every creator. If it is there is going to be some serious backlash

No problem!

[Mightyinvader]

Yeah isn't Apple like... getting totally rekt for trying to do that though? Trying to force it on people, that is.

No doubt there will be some people who sign a deal that makes them exclusive to YouTube, but it's not going to be something that is forced on every creator. If it is there is going to be some serious backlash

No problem!

Linus talked about I think two or three wanshows ago and yeah allot of people are getting pissed . Which as I mention in my article, the point of this way of marketing is partially to stop pirates, exclusive stuff only encourages them