Whoever said that competition is a healthy thing… was a wise wise person.
For a while now we’ve been celebrating the move to make movies available for online downloading. But at the same time we’ve been lamenting the fact that these studios and companies have been stupid enough to price them at $20 a shot. Well now it looks like there could be signs of hope!
Movie downloading company Guba is slashing it’s prices for a “limited time”. My guess is that it’s a trial to see how the market responds to it. The following comes to us from Tech World News:
Guba cut prices on new release movies from US$19.99 to $9.99, said it would make older movies from its catalog available for $4.99 instead of $9.99, and reduced prices on TV show episode downloads to 49 cents — compared to the previous price of $1.79. It also said it would offer movie rental downloads for 99 cents.
FINALLY! Someone who “gets it”. 49 cents for a TV episode?!?! 99 cent rental?!?! Buying older movies for $5 and new ones for $10?!?! This can’t be right… because that would actually be REASONABLE. Can it be?!?!
If Guba can get its foot in the market door here… then it could indeed spark a price war. Perhaps force iTunes to lower its prices too (which I think is what Steve Jobs wants anyway, and perhaps this will force the studios hand to allow him to do that). I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.
