I wanna read red hood and the outlaws but for some reason the whole series is not out yet on the app I do not understand what is taking so long for these comet series to get out on the app completely
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They’re probably waiting on purpose to make people come back later
Because they still make money in digital and paper sales. Its the same reason you find the full run of Savage Hawkman up here, but not the full New 52 Batman run. If they’re still making money why would they put it all up here for $8 a month?
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Let’s ask Marvel.
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I, personally, would like to see the Silver Age / Bronze Age DC War comics (Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, Star Spangled War Stories). Very difficult to find.
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To be fair Marvel doesn’t put it up for 8 bucks a month they put it up for around 15, the price of a trade (and a lot of people probably only buy 1 trade a month anyway so debatably it would not be as big of a loss ) they also don’t offer movies, series, original content, and a message board on it. I get people being disappointed (they do allow you to view the library before subscribing but won’t claim I went that far, although I did know we only had 3000 books, so didn’t expect everything.) but this never claimed to be DC’s version of Marvel Unlimited.
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Unless mu pricing has changed since my last renewal it’s actually the following.
9…99 monthly
69.99 annual
99.99 unlimited plus
The extras in unlimited plus are actually worth about 100 on the open market. Just wanted to clear up numbers I saw in other posts. I get the benefits of the streaming here but if dc wants to add the customers who only want the comics then they may want to enhance things.
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The treatment of comics in this service caused me to cancel after one month. I can appreciate their concern about cannibalizing trade sales but if they want my monthly incremental revenue as a subscriber they will have to come a lot stronger with full runs that stay up for good in the app.
It just feels like the comics are an afterthought when they should be treated as the centerpiece of what DC is and represents.
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Nonsense, Truth_of_Pisces. Sure, they make money on the recent stuff. But most of the comments I’ve seen on here is people asking for the archived stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Most of that never sees the light of day in any form. So the argument you’re making doesn’t carry a lot of weight.
Plus, I wonder if Amazon makes money on Kindle Unlimited? I mean, they make money by selling individual Kindle books as well as physical copies of books. Why ruin a good thing with a subscription service for digital books? The reason is that it expands their readership because some people won’t buy physical books or individual Kindle books. It’s all about marketing and providing services to as many lines of customers as possible. Those that buy the comics won’t stop. Heck, I used to collect comics and having the physical comic was a very important part of that.
So your argument isn’t terribly convincing, I’m afraid.
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What would I recommend? Offer two services:
- Comics only
- Digital content (movies + cartoons, etc.)
This is like Netflix that has a DVD and a streaming service. If you want both, you can subscribe to both. If not, you just pick the one you like. It works well for them. It would work well for DC.
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I’d pay $100-$125 a year easily for the digital content plus comics that don’t rotate out. As others have said, it’s just a different audience. Some people who won’t buy physical comics would easily subscribe to a full on comics service (especially people who have been growing up on MU) It’s not a “lost sale” because they were never going to buy the physical version. They don’t get it in the manner they want, so they just do without.
Disney doesn’t like to lose money and doesn’t hesitate to offload a losing horse (just look at Disney Infinity and Disney Interactive) If MU was killing the Marvel trades and physical sales, it would have been dropped long ago. It certainly wouldn’t be as well curated as it is.
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@Heartshadow, here’s a simpler answer: server space. The server’s are not large enough to hold around 80 years of comic books up here, in addition to the movies and tv shows, at least not yet. If they attempted to stream all that content to potentially millions of subscribers at once, the whole thing would crash. To keep it running they have to remove and replace things for now. Maybe when the service grows it can expand and include larger amounts of content, but for now, it will operate on a rotation system. I will remind everyone again, this a THREE MONTH OLD SERVICE. Netflix didn’t start streaming until 2007 and took several more years to become the powerhouse it is today, before that, you had to request a DVD via mail. You can’t expect immediate results.
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Server space is cheap. It’s been 3 months and there’s no indication that the service is being scaled up. This is purely a business decision. Fortunately the mods have indicated that it’s being reconsidered.
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Truth_of_Pisces, you think they’re not doing this because of server space? Seriously? Would it maybe help if I told you I’ve been an IT admin for global corporations since the late 90s and have been dealing with “server space” most of that time in one form or another? Your “server space” comment is absolute nonsense. Not only is compression technology quite impressive at this point, but there are many examples of companies holding more data than DC comics could produce. And then we have the various cloud offerings where capacity is enormous. Plus, storage is one of the cheapest things available when it comes to computer technology.
Bottom line…It’s simply not realistic for you to make the argument you did. I am not trying to be mean, but you might want to make sure what you’re saying is accurate before speaking up in the future.
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Okay then how about this: this is the way app is right now, and this is the way it’s going to operate for the foreseeable future, and no amount of complaints or threats to cancel is going to change that overnight, plain and simple. You can either accept that, or leave and come back later. I’m not gonna argue with people that think they know better about how to run an app, instead of being grateful this thing even exists in the first place.
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I would say its partially to make sure that trade and physical sales don’t go backside up … also, this is related to a different product but may help with understanding:
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@Tobias
That is a very good video. It is generalized, with the ultimate emphasis on the economics of gaming.
It is complex. 12 of the 20 minutes involves definitions of business terms. It is a better introduction to marketing and distribution than I got in business undergraduate.
These are the known facts as I see them.
Some people will always want the physical copy of a comic, for various reasons.
Physical Back Single Issues are the concern of the Local Comic Store only. DC gets no reimbursement for these sales, only from the original order, which are usually nonreturnable and must be done months in advance.
Graphic Novel Trades are that Back Issue Segment that does make money for DC. It can either be physical or digital.
Physical or digital selling of current single issue comics is the main source of income in comics.
Older single issues are available in digital form usually sell at a reduced price, often 1.99 or .99, even though the original physical copy would cost fans way more than that. DC doesn’t care because it doesn’t affect their sales of current comics. Also the conversion of most older comics has already been done and is not a current cost, except if DC is renting the Library. Even so, storage is very cheap, as said in other replies to this thread…
DC management did not want to cut into Graphic Novel revenue. By making some of the popular Graphic Novel material available here for only a short period of time, they thought that sales might even increase, as members would want a permanent copy.
DC management thought that by making the material available for a week or two, it would encourage renewing of monthly membership. Permanent collection of this material might do the opposite, as some members might join only for a month each quarter and binge, like when Titans show completes.
DC management did not realize or consider that members of the community have other things in their life than reading comic books in a very short period of time, like family or jobs.
We were not informed in the first weeks, that material was available for a short period of time. That is handled much better now by the Mods.
Given the push to read comics before they are deleted, forces us to read those comics or else, causing frustration whether we complete the set of issues or not.
A better way is to use DC Daily and Home Page articles to encourage us to read the permanent parts of the Library. Home Page, New, Watchtower and DC Daily should all tell us in advance what DC Daily will be reviewing, like recent Robin or Batgirl Year Ones.
Member fear that nothing is permanent, discouraging them from reading those few sections of the Library with many issues. What if the issues unread are suddenly deleted?
New members will find holes in the Library. Many issues of The New Teen Titans have been deleted. Fans want to read all prior issues. Reading issue 36 when only issues 1 through 12 is frustrating.
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Obviously, having absolutely everything up permanently would be great - but beyond that, it is really frustrating to have storylines that are split across multiple titles not at least have all the cross-referenced issues up. The 1998 Birds of Prey collection is a good example - issue 19 features Robin, and issue 20 is Part 2 of “The Hunt for Oracle”, which is dandy, except that Part 1 of “The Hunt for Oracle” is in…Nightwing #45, which isn’t available. That is definitely problematic.
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“Just be grateful it exists” is a pretty low bar. Constructive criticism and feedback are how things improve (something the mods have been asking fans for) Telling someone to just be happy or otherwise the kid with the ball will quit and go home doesn’t benefit anyone.
I get that everybody here has a different idea of what would make this service great and you can’t please everyone but I think we can all agree that at the end of the day, we want DC Universe to succeed and be here for years to come.
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Hey DCU fam! We’ve talked about it and we know the comics library has to and will get bigger, and as a fan I want to see more titles and issues on here as someone who uses comixology. It’s a work in progress, but they are listening and thanks so much for being a part of this!
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