Big Change for Streaming Could Be Close

Many of our more familiar and most widely used services have been finding a shift to online in recent years as the accessibility and utility have become so highly valued – a great example through this past year has been within the gaming industry as online casinos like these have found a huge surge of success in the mobile space whilst brick and mortar locations remained closed despite the ongoing changes to initiatives such as Gamstop aimed at reducing player options for participation.

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The next big change could be to the growing number of popular streaming services following a recent announcement that in 2021, all major releases that were set for cinema release will also be released directly to the HBO Max streaming service. This includes titles such as Dune and The Matrix 4 and is amongst the first big shifts towards streaming as a whole.

These releases won’t be the first to do so however as Disney had made a change earlier in the year – the theatrical release of Hamilton was instead changed to a full release on the Disney+ streaming platform and had a very successful run remaining as one of the most streamed pieces of content across all sites for a number of weeks showing the viability in the platform. Similarly, the live action remake on Mulan had also been released directly to the platform but with a slightly different approach as a price tag was assigned which allowed users to essentially buy the content for unlimited streaming which had also been relatively successful given the circumstances.

Disney had also released a statement suggesting they will be placing a heavy focus on the streaming platform moving forward, if Warner Bros have laid out a plan to release all major motion pictures directly to streaming throughout the 2021 year it can be expected that Disney may do the same, and if the approach proves to be successful then there will be little reason to prevent other services from doing the same on a more permanent basis – with the cinema industry having struggled for a number of years and the ongoing pandemic causing further issues, next year could see many unable to remain open as visitor numbers begin to drop and many rely on streaming services online to fill the gap.

That’s not to say all is looking positive in online streaming, however, as there has been a recent movement to cancel many services that aren’t as often used as others – alongside price hikes and decisions to adjust what is in the streaming library, any platform that may not offer everything a user wants could struggle to pull in the numbers and with a growing number of platforms out there, it’s becoming costly to remain subscribed to them all. Whilst the bigger services will get away with a little more, niche services will find difficulty holding on to subscriptions even with big movie releases promised and in the pipeline, and the opposite of the desired effect may occur.