Brad Grenz
Member
I actually think this is a horrible mistake. Streaming video is a market that is becoming more and more important, as is providing exclusive content through your video services. It sounds like XES needed some restructuring and maybe a leadership change, but to totally shut down what could've been a very promising venture is highly disappointing, in my opinion.
They had literally no plan to monetize the programming they planned. They were spending hundreds of millions on the blind hope exclusive shows would act as some kind of differentiator, but we still have no real idea how most of these shows were going to be released, if you had to buy them, if they came with gold, etc, etc, etc. Hell, I think the plan for the Halo series right now is that it comes with the Master Chief collection, as if people would not have bought it without.
The popularity of Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, and Amazon's pilot initiative show that there's an audience there for exclusive content programming. I don't know if Halo is ever going to be that killer app though. Better to spend the money on games.
Yeah, they love high quality programs they can get on good services that can be accessed from literally any internet connected device in the world. They don't want shows hidden behind a $400 hardware purchase.