10 ms·

2020 Bundles

161 points by migueldemoura 6y ago

gordon_freeman 6y ago
I would have liked an Apple Services bundle where I can pick and choose X number of services for a bundled price where the incentive would be tied to: the more (number of) services one chooses, more discount they'd get. Instead what we got is some random collection of services packaged by Apple being called Individual vs Family vs Premium that either won't exactly have Services that I need or have extras that I won't.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  That’s just called a discount.
dzonga 6y ago
Hadn't considered how microsoft purchasing a major games studio might affect steam ? so yeah likely microsoft is the dark horse. at $15 for game pass, folks might all together forgo buying some titles on steam. me though hardly a gamer will stick to buying discounted games.
- _mkef 6y ago
  Right now I'm primarily using Game pass to play games on my Android phone, and at that it's doing a very good job. As a very surprising bonus, I saw flight simulator was included. This is downright aggressive of Microsoft. They're bundling a $60 game with a $15 a month service. Meaning even if you don't particularly like streaming games, you get your money's worth as long as every three months or so Microsoft adds another $60 game. Of course since we all forget things, eventually you'll let Game pass keep recurring while sparsely using the service. This Gym like model is what every subscription service strives for. I'm not complaining, if anything I might buy a new Xbox since I'm already entitled to tons of Gamepass games as well as Xbox live. Edit: Might also just play everything on my PC. Good job Microsoft. Took them 3 generations , but they've finally merged the PC and console. Nothing on the Series X isn't coming to pick
- paxys 6y ago
  He makes a bold assertion though that Microsoft will include new AAA titles from its various properties in Game Pass from day 1. I find that very doubtful, and so Steam's purpose will continue to be selling games for the first ~6 months of their release cycle (when the bulk of sales anyways happpen).
  - DenseComet 6y ago
    Day 1 releases is one of the main draws of Game Pass. The Game Pass marketing site [1] has an entire section labeled "Play Day One" that says "Be among the first to play the latest titles from Xbox Game Studios and ID@Xbox, available to Xbox Game Pass members the same day as their global release." [1] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass
    - owlninja 6y ago
      One down side my son discovered recently is when he went to play red dead redemption 2, which he only recently started, and it had been pulled. It was a little frustrating. Otherwise game pass has been a pretty good value.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Generally, large publishers (like Rockstar) use GamePass/PS Now as a trial more than anything else. By which I mean, this was the plan (as long as you have now bought the game).
ErrantX 6y ago
> sports, meanwhile, is well on its way to being the only reason to keep the traditional bundle. Semi-side note but I feel this will go soon too. Amazon are starting to show sports, inclusive with Prime Video, in the UK.
- gordon_freeman 6y ago
  I got Peacock Premium free with my Xfinity internet connection which has ~175 LIVE English Premier League matches streaming in USA. No need to now subscribe to NBC Sports!
  - ErrantX 6y ago
    Interesting! The lower UK leagues are streaming on a shared platform called ifollow internationally as well.
  - tanjtanjtanj 6y ago
    Unfortunately they're trying to get you to subscribe to both Peacock and NBC Sports Gold. Most of the tops 6 teams matches going forward will be shown only occasionally on Peacock.
    - gordon_freeman 6y ago
      I agree but that maybe only for this PL season. I think they are gradually moving subscribers to Peacock and assuming they would only exclusively show all live PL games on Peacock service from next season onwards.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    You didn't get it for free. Comcast owns NBC and bundled something into your internet subscription that costs them nothing incremental.
- kodablah 6y ago
  I have just become a first-time cord cutter, if you can even call it that, with YouTube TV's recent opt-in inclusion of the RedZone channel. I still got way more (admittedly obscure) sports with my cable package, but this finally reached enough parity to move on. The real reason that sports fans should remain with their traditional bundle is the UX. With cable, if I want to flip between a dozen college football games, no prob. The lack of a traditional remote and the channel-changing latency is a big problem with these new services. Also, they don't make it easy to record past the end just to be sure the game doesn't go long (granted they try to "catch up" by later learning it went long, but I hear it's often later and not when you want). There is one feature I do appreciate, time-synced stats. You don't get spoilers on recorded games you're watching with their stat info in the app, it remains in sync w/ the progress. Granted, I don't see in-game stats as a killer feature anyways.
cwxm 6y ago
How do smaller products compete with bundling from these large competitors?
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  As he Reed Hastings says in the posted quote: "There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those with great experiences." Focusing on a better experience is one way.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  Possibly focusing on a specific niche? examples in the realm of streaming: indie/arthouse: https://mubi.com/ https://mubi.com/ horror: https://shudder.com/ https://shudder.com/ anime: funimation or crunchyroll
- cageface 6y ago
  Personally I think these kinds of bundles should be blocked by anti-trust action. They make it too difficult for smaller more innovative companies to compete in a meaningful way.
gringoDan 6y ago
> Print was completely unbundled and commoditized by the Google and Facebook Super Aggregators. Interesting to see some Substack authors countering this trend by re-bundling their products. Notably: https://everything.substack.com/ https://everything.substack.com/
charliemil4 6y ago
> The problem is that Apple’s financing programs — both the one pictured above, and also the iPhone Upgrade Program — continue to be funded by 3rd-parties; Apple is making it easier to buy an iPhone, but is still focused on getting its money right away. And, as long as it sticks with this approach, its Apple One bundle feels more like a money-grab, and less like a strategic driver of the business. To me, I see this as a finance play. Since rates are near zero (and will be for some time), you can effectively leverage your revenues on both ends: servicing debt and factoring accounts receivable. Since Apple's customers are usually high income buyers, the AR ratings are already high, combined with low rates, means Apple gets 95%+ of the revenues up front. I'm not sure what period for the new subscriptions they have (whether its a quarterly or annual period), but whatever it is, it's genius.
- zubairk 6y ago
  surprisingly, the apple card has ended up being a subprime card (https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-card-reportedly-approving-subprime-users-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-card-reportedly-approv...) and they unveiled the credit steps program to approve more low credit score customers, which is definitely not the customer demo i anticipated flocking to the card
  - charliemil4 6y ago
    Wow, that's shocking. Thanks for the info. I wonder if that's a GS element in the contract, if less than X number of primes (or some metric on the campaign), then we reserve right for sub.
  - adeelk93 6y ago
    I suspect it’s due to the “daily cash” aspect of the card
lawrenceyan 6y ago
It's honestly been amazing to see the utter decimation traditional television/media has encountered over the last decade. An entire generation of kids is growing up without ever having watched TV thanks to Youtube and Twitch.
- claudiulodro 6y ago
  To be fair, there were only ever like 4 generations in the history of the world that grew up watching TV. Interesting to think about!
  - msla 6y ago
    For most things, appointment media is going back to where it was prior to the 20th Century: Live performances, including sports, where seeing it with a crowd is part of the appeal. Scheduling your day to catch a program, be it "Fibber McGee and Molly" or "Leave It To Beaver" or "Cheers" or "Friends", will seem as bizarre to someone in 2050 as it might have to someone in 1850.
    - dhosek 6y ago
      YouTube does occasional appointment media. Early in the pandemic, they did a global showing of Yellow Submarine that required watching at a specific time on a Saturday. It was my kids' introduction to the movie.
  - sharkjacobs 6y ago
    And cable television as we know it has only existed since the 90's, generously since the 1980's
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dhosek 6y ago
      Not generously. It was very much a thing in the 80s and most of the channels of the 80s are still strong although there is the ineluctable transition of all basic cables towards showing nothing but Law and Order reruns.
dgudkov 6y ago
One of the most successful examples of bundling is Microsoft's enterprise plans. For instance, the top E5 plan includes so much enterprise software for so low price that it creates the perception of free software. MS Office? Free. Power BI? Free. Etc. Tableau, which I believe is a more sophisticated data visualization application is getting squeezed out from enterprise accounts. Why? Because Power BI is "free". Bundling is a huge power.
- kjs3 6y ago
  Nothing in E5 is 'free', it's just included in a much more expensive license. What Microsoft has done successfully is convince people to just give up and write one big check because figuring out how to optimize spend for what you need is intentionally obtuse. Bundling is powerful, especially when used as a weapon. Hey! Power BI is free! But we don't need it. Too bad! Try to put together a license bundle that both doesn't include it and cost less than our E5 and we'll make you wish you hadn't. Which is especially galling because we paid for an E3 because "it was all in there", but we found out quickly we'll, yes, the product is there, but the feature of the product you need is an up-sell license. So we pay for individual up-sells, and then get hit with "hey, why not just cave and get an E5...whether you need it all or not". I'm sorry, but Microsoft's enterprise licensing is simply a nightmare. We're months into trying to make decisions about whether to go to E5, and we still get evasion from the Microsoft folks and the discussion quickly devolves to "just pay for the E5...it's easier". Don't even get me started on the "what of our huge investment in on-prem licenses are applicable to Azure/O365?". The Microsoft sales people just chuckle.
  - robotresearcher 6y ago
    They are deliberately creating an information asymmetry to exploit, where none naturally exists. I really dislike these sales strategies. I mean I really, really dislike them. How can we discourage them in the market? Is 'no sale' all we have to employ against these tactics?
    - iad 6y ago
      I don't get the feeling you can fix this through voting with your wallet. Markets don't seem to solve these kinds of issues, on the contrary, this seems to be a negative side-effect of their core nature, that all decisions come down to profit maximization. Maybe exerting our collective power for the public good through democracy? Some kind of new commerce regulation that would disallow bundling in general? I wonder, are there arguments that there would there be any downsides to doing that? Does anyone believe that bundling is a net positive in any sector?
macklemoreshair 6y ago
I emailed Tim Cook a few years ago as a shareholder and told him to get serious about gaming and content. Haha i highly highly doubt he ever saw it. These gaming franchises are really the only thing bringing people to these platforms, and the one Achilles heel of the apple ecosystem.. even if apple developed its own franchises, just doing something to elevate gaming on the platform beyond a few indie games would be a long lasting competitive advantage.
- scarface74 6y ago
  People have been saying that gaming will doom Apple since PC gaming really became a thing in the early 90s with Wolfenstein and Doom. The entire PC industry is minuscule compared to the phone industry. The PC game industry is even smaller. The best selling consoles of each generation usually don’t sell more in their entirety than Apple sell’s iPhones in two or three quarters.

2020 Bundles

161 points by migueldemoura 6y ago

I would have liked an Apple Services bundle where I can pick and choose X number of services for a bundled price where the incentive would be tied to: the more (number of) services one chooses, more discount they'd get. Instead what we got is some random collection of services packaged by Apple being called Individual vs Family vs Premium that either won't exactly have Services that I need or have extras that I won't.

1123581321 6y ago
That’s just called a discount.

dzonga 6y ago

Hadn't considered how microsoft purchasing a major games studio might affect steam ? so yeah likely microsoft is the dark horse. at $15 for game pass, folks might all together forgo buying some titles on steam. me though hardly a gamer will stick to buying discounted games.

_mkef 6y ago
Right now I'm primarily using Game pass to play games on my Android phone, and at that it's doing a very good job. As a very surprising bonus, I saw flight simulator was included. This is downright aggressive of Microsoft. They're bundling a $60 game with a $15 a month service. Meaning even if you don't particularly like streaming games, you get your money's worth as long as every three months or so Microsoft adds another $60 game. Of course since we all forget things, eventually you'll let Game pass keep recurring while sparsely using the service. This Gym like model is what every subscription service strives for. I'm not complaining, if anything I might buy a new Xbox since I'm already entitled to tons of Gamepass games as well as Xbox live. Edit: Might also just play everything on my PC. Good job Microsoft. Took them 3 generations , but they've finally merged the PC and console. Nothing on the Series X isn't coming to pick
paxys 6y ago
He makes a bold assertion though that Microsoft will include new AAA titles from its various properties in Game Pass from day 1. I find that very doubtful, and so Steam's purpose will continue to be selling games for the first ~6 months of their release cycle (when the bulk of sales anyways happpen).
- DenseComet 6y ago
  Day 1 releases is one of the main draws of Game Pass. The Game Pass marketing site [1] has an entire section labeled "Play Day One" that says "Be among the first to play the latest titles from Xbox Game Studios and ID@Xbox, available to Xbox Game Pass members the same day as their global release." [1] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass
  - owlninja 6y ago
    One down side my son discovered recently is when he went to play red dead redemption 2, which he only recently started, and it had been pulled. It was a little frustrating. Otherwise game pass has been a pretty good value.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Generally, large publishers (like Rockstar) use GamePass/PS Now as a trial more than anything else. By which I mean, this was the plan (as long as you have now bought the game).

ErrantX 6y ago

> sports, meanwhile, is well on its way to being the only reason to keep the traditional bundle. Semi-side note but I feel this will go soon too. Amazon are starting to show sports, inclusive with Prime Video, in the UK.

gordon_freeman 6y ago
I got Peacock Premium free with my Xfinity internet connection which has ~175 LIVE English Premier League matches streaming in USA. No need to now subscribe to NBC Sports!
- ErrantX 6y ago
  Interesting! The lower UK leagues are streaming on a shared platform called ifollow internationally as well.
- tanjtanjtanj 6y ago
  Unfortunately they're trying to get you to subscribe to both Peacock and NBC Sports Gold. Most of the tops 6 teams matches going forward will be shown only occasionally on Peacock.
  - gordon_freeman 6y ago
    I agree but that maybe only for this PL season. I think they are gradually moving subscribers to Peacock and assuming they would only exclusively show all live PL games on Peacock service from next season onwards.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  You didn't get it for free. Comcast owns NBC and bundled something into your internet subscription that costs them nothing incremental.
kodablah 6y ago
I have just become a first-time cord cutter, if you can even call it that, with YouTube TV's recent opt-in inclusion of the RedZone channel. I still got way more (admittedly obscure) sports with my cable package, but this finally reached enough parity to move on. The real reason that sports fans should remain with their traditional bundle is the UX. With cable, if I want to flip between a dozen college football games, no prob. The lack of a traditional remote and the channel-changing latency is a big problem with these new services. Also, they don't make it easy to record past the end just to be sure the game doesn't go long (granted they try to "catch up" by later learning it went long, but I hear it's often later and not when you want). There is one feature I do appreciate, time-synced stats. You don't get spoilers on recorded games you're watching with their stat info in the app, it remains in sync w/ the progress. Granted, I don't see in-game stats as a killer feature anyways.

cwxm 6y ago

How do smaller products compete with bundling from these large competitors?

itsoktocry 6y ago
As he Reed Hastings says in the posted quote: "There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those with great experiences." Focusing on a better experience is one way.
chrisjarvis 6y ago
Possibly focusing on a specific niche? examples in the realm of streaming: indie/arthouse: https://mubi.com/ https://mubi.com/ horror: https://shudder.com/ https://shudder.com/ anime: funimation or crunchyroll
cageface 6y ago
Personally I think these kinds of bundles should be blocked by anti-trust action. They make it too difficult for smaller more innovative companies to compete in a meaningful way.

gringoDan 6y ago

> Print was completely unbundled and commoditized by the Google and Facebook Super Aggregators. Interesting to see some Substack authors countering this trend by re-bundling their products. Notably: https://everything.substack.com/ https://everything.substack.com/

charliemil4 6y ago

> The problem is that Apple’s financing programs — both the one pictured above, and also the iPhone Upgrade Program — continue to be funded by 3rd-parties; Apple is making it easier to buy an iPhone, but is still focused on getting its money right away. And, as long as it sticks with this approach, its Apple One bundle feels more like a money-grab, and less like a strategic driver of the business. To me, I see this as a finance play. Since rates are near zero (and will be for some time), you can effectively leverage your revenues on both ends: servicing debt and factoring accounts receivable. Since Apple's customers are usually high income buyers, the AR ratings are already high, combined with low rates, means Apple gets 95%+ of the revenues up front. I'm not sure what period for the new subscriptions they have (whether its a quarterly or annual period), but whatever it is, it's genius.

zubairk 6y ago
surprisingly, the apple card has ended up being a subprime card (https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-card-reportedly-approving-subprime-users-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-card-reportedly-approv...) and they unveiled the credit steps program to approve more low credit score customers, which is definitely not the customer demo i anticipated flocking to the card
- charliemil4 6y ago
  Wow, that's shocking. Thanks for the info. I wonder if that's a GS element in the contract, if less than X number of primes (or some metric on the campaign), then we reserve right for sub.
- adeelk93 6y ago
  I suspect it’s due to the “daily cash” aspect of the card

lawrenceyan 6y ago

It's honestly been amazing to see the utter decimation traditional television/media has encountered over the last decade. An entire generation of kids is growing up without ever having watched TV thanks to Youtube and Twitch.

claudiulodro 6y ago
To be fair, there were only ever like 4 generations in the history of the world that grew up watching TV. Interesting to think about!
- msla 6y ago
  For most things, appointment media is going back to where it was prior to the 20th Century: Live performances, including sports, where seeing it with a crowd is part of the appeal. Scheduling your day to catch a program, be it "Fibber McGee and Molly" or "Leave It To Beaver" or "Cheers" or "Friends", will seem as bizarre to someone in 2050 as it might have to someone in 1850.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    YouTube does occasional appointment media. Early in the pandemic, they did a global showing of Yellow Submarine that required watching at a specific time on a Saturday. It was my kids' introduction to the movie.
- sharkjacobs 6y ago
  And cable television as we know it has only existed since the 90's, generously since the 1980's
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dhosek 6y ago
    Not generously. It was very much a thing in the 80s and most of the channels of the 80s are still strong although there is the ineluctable transition of all basic cables towards showing nothing but Law and Order reruns.

dgudkov 6y ago

One of the most successful examples of bundling is Microsoft's enterprise plans. For instance, the top E5 plan includes so much enterprise software for so low price that it creates the perception of free software. MS Office? Free. Power BI? Free. Etc. Tableau, which I believe is a more sophisticated data visualization application is getting squeezed out from enterprise accounts. Why? Because Power BI is "free". Bundling is a huge power.

kjs3 6y ago
Nothing in E5 is 'free', it's just included in a much more expensive license. What Microsoft has done successfully is convince people to just give up and write one big check because figuring out how to optimize spend for what you need is intentionally obtuse. Bundling is powerful, especially when used as a weapon. Hey! Power BI is free! But we don't need it. Too bad! Try to put together a license bundle that both doesn't include it and cost less than our E5 and we'll make you wish you hadn't. Which is especially galling because we paid for an E3 because "it was all in there", but we found out quickly we'll, yes, the product is there, but the feature of the product you need is an up-sell license. So we pay for individual up-sells, and then get hit with "hey, why not just cave and get an E5...whether you need it all or not". I'm sorry, but Microsoft's enterprise licensing is simply a nightmare. We're months into trying to make decisions about whether to go to E5, and we still get evasion from the Microsoft folks and the discussion quickly devolves to "just pay for the E5...it's easier". Don't even get me started on the "what of our huge investment in on-prem licenses are applicable to Azure/O365?". The Microsoft sales people just chuckle.
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  They are deliberately creating an information asymmetry to exploit, where none naturally exists. I really dislike these sales strategies. I mean I really, really dislike them. How can we discourage them in the market? Is 'no sale' all we have to employ against these tactics?
  - iad 6y ago
    I don't get the feeling you can fix this through voting with your wallet. Markets don't seem to solve these kinds of issues, on the contrary, this seems to be a negative side-effect of their core nature, that all decisions come down to profit maximization. Maybe exerting our collective power for the public good through democracy? Some kind of new commerce regulation that would disallow bundling in general? I wonder, are there arguments that there would there be any downsides to doing that? Does anyone believe that bundling is a net positive in any sector?

macklemoreshair 6y ago

I emailed Tim Cook a few years ago as a shareholder and told him to get serious about gaming and content. Haha i highly highly doubt he ever saw it. These gaming franchises are really the only thing bringing people to these platforms, and the one Achilles heel of the apple ecosystem.. even if apple developed its own franchises, just doing something to elevate gaming on the platform beyond a few indie games would be a long lasting competitive advantage.

scarface74 6y ago
People have been saying that gaming will doom Apple since PC gaming really became a thing in the early 90s with Wolfenstein and Doom. The entire PC industry is minuscule compared to the phone industry. The PC game industry is even smaller. The best selling consoles of each generation usually don’t sell more in their entirety than Apple sell’s iPhones in two or three quarters.