Technology

How Services Make Hardware More Valuable

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So I'm using my Netflix disc in my Wii and am pretty impressed with it.  Great picture, runs smooth.  Controls are a bit weird, because it's a mix of standard metaphor and Wii control.  Overall it's pretty good.

I'm also using the Wii for the first time since I got tired of No More Heroes II.  This makes me think about some of the upcoming games for the Wii, and how now the Wii has this service and others, and . . .

Then I realize that I'm viewing my Wii differently because of one release.  This is something you, the progeek, will be facing: services change the value of media devices, and there's a lot of people out there offering services.

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The Subscription Age

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You ever get a magazine subscription – and sometimes read it?  You still renew it you know . . . just in case.

Or maybe you get comics in a pull at a comic store.  You buy them, and might even read them.

Or a book club.

Or . . .

Well you get the idea.  We all have experience with subscriptions one way or another.  However in an age of eMedia, DLC games, and the iPad-ness, think about what kind of subscriptions you're going to see.

I think we're going to see a lot more subscriptions in the future.  Your business models, your publishing models, and your estimates on profitability are going to need to keep this in mind.  If you're writer, an ePublisher, a game developer, this will be a factor.

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Backlog and The End of Backlog

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So the iPad is here to deliver our media, tablets are on their way to challenge the iPad, smartphones are there when we don't have tablets . . .

There's going to be a lot of way to get our content in the future.

Of course, not all that content is going to be new content.   Past games will be recompiled or emulated.  Comics wlll be scanned, books digitized or re-digitized.  New content is going to compete with old content.

I've speculated before about this competition – simply delivering old content in many ways is faster and cheaper, and represents a huge backlog of easy-to-deploy content.  For those of us in the content/media business, a truly geeky area, that's important as it will affect what we do and what we produce.  We need to observe this competition.

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