He estimates that over eight million Xbox Live Gold members connect to the Internet in their living rooms and are "a click of the mouse away from becoming Netflix subscribers."That's pretty impressive stuff. Even if those new members only signed up for the cheapest package at $8.99 a month, that's still $1.8 million in new revenue per month. I know that my boyfriend and I are LOVING the Xbox/Netflix integration. My only complaint is that the selection of quality movies and shows is still somewhat limited. I'm hoping that Netflix looks at these numbers and realizes that if they want to retain those new customers, they're going to have to work harder to get a larger on-demand library. I mean, I understand that brand new DVD releases may not be available, but why not go after classic flicks that people love, like Ferris Bueller, or whatever? Also, they need to work on allowing users to browse the full library via the Xbox (currently, users must go online on their computer to add movies to their Watch Instantly queue).He estimates that 800,000 of these Xbox Live households were already Netflix customers when the streaming service debuted and as many as 200,000 of these customers joined Netflix in the last half of the quarter. This has obviously been a great boon for the video rentals company, and Pachter doesn't expect the trend to slow down any time soon.
Update (1/30 10:00am): Following up on this, there's a good article in the LA Times with further detail about how the online streaming feature of Netflix has been driving pretty nice growth and profit for the company.
In other news, Amazon is having a pretty good sale (up to 54% off) on Indie and International DVDs, as well as Oscar winning DVDs. There's lot of great stuff there, so go check it out. For those of you too lazy to browse through all those pages, might I recommend you check out the following titles?
- City of God - an incredible movie, with gorgeous visuals and an affecting cast.
- The Seven Samurai Criterion Collection - classic flick, and the Criterion label means you're going to get some quality extras in this set.
- Pan's Labyrinth - beautiful and haunting
- Y Tu Mama Tambien - SEXY.
- Fargo - Hell yeah.
- Gosford Park - definitely a movie you'll want to watch more than once (if only because there's so many characters, it's hard to keep track of all the subplots.
- Antibodies - here's a little story about this DVD: my boyfriend and I saw this sitting on the shelf in Blockbuster, and we were like, "Hmm... I have never even HEARD of this movie, but that is a fucked up and creepy looking cover". We decided to rent it on impulse. We were surprised to find a shockingly well-made German serial killer flick, sort of in the vein of Silence of the Lambs. The subject matter is a little disturbing, but this is a really tense and interesting movie. Highly recommended, for those of you looking for something new.
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