Netflix’s Qwikster fix
September 19, 2011
DVD rental and streaming business Netflix is rebranding its DVD by mail service and adding the option of game rentals to its existing services.
Netflix Co-Founder and CEO Reed Hastings announced the changes in a blog post which aimed to appease customers who had been left with a bitter taste in their mouth after the company revealed it would separate its DVD and streaming plans and change its pricing.
Reed Hastings explained, “We realised that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to ‘Qwikster.’”
“One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games,” he added. “Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done.”
The majority of Netflix members were not pleased by the further separation of the two services and filled the blog’s comment section with posts complaining about the split.