The big news yesterday is that NBC finally made its streaming service, Peacock, official. It’s coming on July 15th with a handful of pricing tiers ranging from free (with limited content) to $9.99 a month for all the Parks & Rec you can inject into your eye sockets. Of course there will also be some exclusive shows at some point. We got a brief look at the app, big promises about engaging content, discussions about valuable IP, and bundled tie-ins with affiliated corporations — Comcast and Cox, in this case.
It was a streaming service launch, basically. At this point, after Apple TV+ and Disney+ and HBO Max and Quibi all piling on top of Netflix and Hulu ...we sort of know how this script goes. There are a few new shows coming, a few licensing hassles that will take some time to work out, and a lot of questions about whether people are willing to sign on to yet another subscription. Same old.
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(The standard script also includes the standard disclosures: NBC’s parent company is an investor in The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media, which also has a deal with Quibi to produce a Polygon Daily Essential, and there have been early talks about a Verge show. Media!)
Julia Alexander’s story on the launch is worth a read, because in addition to providing the details you need to know on the service, she also provides a cogent state-of-the-streaming-wars analysis.
There’s very little ground in the streaming services discourse that isn’t already well-trod — and it’s much too early for me to say whether Peacock can be successful. It will depend on how badly people want its comforting reruns and how good its new shows are. I will admit that since it’s the last in that very long line of streaming service unveilings, I don’t have much enthusiasm left for Peacock.
That sense of exhaustion isn’t just going to be Peacock’s problem, it’s going to be everybody’s problem. And while the most obvious flavor of exhaustion will be subscription fatigue, I think collectively we’re going to get our second wind, dig deep, and find newer ways to be tired as hell at how complicated watching TV has become.
We discussed this briefly on The Vergecast this week (check it out), so credit to Nilay Patel for incepting this idea: the marketing for streaming services is going to become an absolute nightmare this summer.
See, to get us to subscribe to these services they need to have shows we want to watch. Very few shows will have the magical Mandalorian mix: a good show with a virally cute alien that also happens to tie directly in to the brand of the streaming service itself. Instead, many shows will be vaguely good and you’ll only vaguely know what streaming service they’re on. So to solve that problem, there will be marketing. A lot of it.
With Peacock, I’m especially dreading the marketing because it’s launching right before the 2020 Olympics. NBC’s history of hagiographic self-promotion surrounding the Olympics has always been a trial to endure, but imagine what it’ll be like when it has a streaming service to flog.
But even though it will all be exhausting, you can get through it. In fact, some of the themes I’ve been discussing in this very newsletter can help. So here are three pieces of advice for dealing with Streaming Service Burn Out:
First, embrace the fact that there will be good shows you’ll either miss or be very late to. I called it “The Hastings Limit” last November — named after Netflix’s CEO who said that his only real competition was sleep. The Hastings Limit is the moment when you admit to yourself that there’s stuff that you would absolutely love that you’re absolutely just going to not see.
Second, realize that none of these services seem to be set up to lock you into a one-year contract. You’re free to subscribe, unsubscribe, and resubscribe as often as you like. Will all that be a hassle? Yup! Should you just leave all these subscriptions active even if you’re not watching their shows? Nope!
In a very indirect way we may owe a small debt of gratitude to T-Mobile CEO John Legere, who was instrumental in getting US consumers to reject the idea of two-year phone contracts and thereby force carriers to drop them. If that hadn’t happened, I could imagine a world where these streaming services were much more aggressive in asking for longer subscription periods.
Third, my last piece of streaming advice is a tactic I’ve brought up time and again: even though you get the benefit of only having to pay monthly with no contract, you should think of these services in terms of their yearly price. Multiply by 12 on any monthly service before you plug in your credit card information.
It’s not $9.99 a month, it’s $120 a year — same thing, different emotion. Besides, you know you’re going to forget to follow Joanna Stern’s excellent advice to do a regular audit of your subscriptions. That higher, yearly price is a better way to get your brain to contend with the actual cost.
Streaming Wars: Peacock launches
└ NBC’s Peacock streaming service will launch on July 15th with three different price tiers
└ NBC’s Peacock: the biggest show announcements from today’s streaming event
└ Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers’ late-night shows will stream early exclusively on Peacock
└ Here’s what NBC’s Peacock streaming service will look like when it launches this July
More from The Verge
└ The Craigslist of guns: inside the online “gun show that never ends”
Important and impactful story from Colin Lecher, in collaboration with The Trace.
The Verge and The Trace scraped more than 2 million Armslist listings from December 2016 through March 2019 to identify users who may be skirting the law through high-volume sales. ... We identified more than 700 phone numbers that appeared in 10 or more listings.
└ The Apple Archive is a compelling and completely unofficial trip down memory lane
I don’t care how old or young you are, you will find a gem in here. An unreleased early draft of an AirPower ad. An internal video using Batman sounds to encourage engineers to file patents. Some seminal videos of Steve Jobs talking to his employees during Apple’s darkest days. Bless Sam Henri Gold for working on this and getting it posted. If Apple goes after it I’ll be seriously bummed — and disappointed.
└ This startup wants to put a tiny display on a contact lens
Ashley Carman told me about this demo at CES and I was skeptical. Not of getting a display into a contact lens, but of all of the logistics required to power it and get data to it. Still am.
While Mojo showed off a lens that it says includes all of those components, we didn’t demo a fully working unit. The display technology seemingly worked when held close to the eye — we weren’t allowed to insert it — but it required an external battery and processor to run. The company says people would have to disinfect their contacts nightly and that it’d recharge through a proprietary induction system.
└ SpaceX will destroy one of its rockets in the pursuit of safety this weekend
Loren Grush:
To save passengers during an emergency, SpaceX designed its Crew Dragon with an escape system. Embedded within the outer hull of the capsule are eight thrusters, called SuperDraco engines. If some kind of issue arises during flight, it will trigger the thrusters to fire. The engines will then carry the Crew Dragon up and away from the dangerous rocket.
└ Microsoft wants to capture all of the carbon dioxide it’s ever emitted
Good move by Microsoft, but as with any big company, there’s always a division undercutting the larger goal. Justine Calma:
Microsoft is still doing business with fossil fuel companies. In September, it announced a major deal with oil industry giants Chevron and Schlumberger to “accelerate development of cloud-native solutions and deliver actionable data insights for the industry” using Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform Azure. In its announcement today, Microsoft said it’s launching a new “sustainability calculator” to help Azure customers track and report their carbon footprint.
Some game news
└ Cyberpunk 2077 is being delayed to September 17th
└ The Vive Pro just got $200 cheaper ahead of Half-Life: Alyx
└ Fortnite’s new Ninja skin is another step toward creating its ultimate virtual world
Nick Statt:
Fortnite’s biggest draw these days is that it’s the closest equivalent we have right now to the long sought-after Metaverse — a kind of Ready Player One-style virtual world that can house all forms of pop culture in a shared universe populated by hundreds of millions of people. When something momentous happens in the world of film or sports, like the NFL Playoffs or a new Star Wars movie coming out, Fortnite is there to help market it. That could mean selling NFL jersey skins, a virtual Kylo Ren costume, or, in the case of The Rise of Skywalker, even debuting an exclusive clip of the movie before its release.
└ Google Stadia promises more than 120 games in 2020, including 10 exclusives
Since Stadia is still very much in early adopter mode, I suspect many (or most) of its users are like me: checking it out despite owning another gaming system. As more games come online, I wonder how users will decide what games to purchase on Stadia and what games to purchase on their other platforms.
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