Steam has reaped the rewards of the first-mover advantage, but I feel like they deserves a bit of respect for it, since the problems they were solving were stil

Steam has reaped the rewards of the first-mover advantage, but I feel like they deserves a bit of respect for it, since the problems they were solving were still 'new', and solutions allowed people to actually do new things/have a better experience, instead of sitting back and extracting rent. SteamOS is something I'm going to be incredibly thankful for in the future, since I plan to transition from Windows-first to Linux-first, and can now take more of my games along with me. I don't think Netflix would have had such an easy (as in straightforward or simple) time of things. Different audiences, different histories, different use cases and existing structure, etc. I like their product, but I don't know how much wiggle room they had when dealing with 'Big Film', who would have likely been heavy and in a deep trench. Steam was 100% digital from the start, and their customers were almost guaranteed to have an internet connection on their PC, which let them make assumptions about how to move forward. Their main competition was boxed software being sold in stores. Like you say, they added value in making it more attractive for developers to put themselves on the platform, while making it more attractive for a user to be there as well. Netflix was physical-first, and (imo) didn't really disrupt anything, but just made certain 'workflows' easier(Don't bother driving to the video store, but still pick out the movies, and just put them back in the mail) to achieve. It could have been implemented with a physical catalog and some postcards, if the web weren't as developed as it was. I don't have hard evidence, but I think that part of their model relied on not selling, in order to keep licensing costs down. Since blank DVDs can be had cheap as dirt, why else would they charge a fee for unreturned discs? It's a way for them to show that people aren't actually buying something, which may mean that they don't need to pay as much back to the content owners. > Netflix should build tools ... Film studios cater to those who are creating something to be sold in some form, and don't necessarily care about the consumer at the end(imo). They're B2B, where Steam is B2B + B2C. Netflix is mostly B2C, but may still have some innovation left if they take what they're learning with Originals to build a stronger/more valuable B2B.