"You'll still be able to access your content"
Yeah, until they release a new version of the launcher, or underlying framework, which prevents the old app to run, locking people out of the content they paid for.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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If purchasing isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
If you think about it: Microsoft owns XBox, that has been one of the three major consoles for decades now. They own Windows, the world's most popular operating system. They own Edge, one of the major browsers. And they still failed to create a movie and TV store and shut down their music streaming service. Which is totally insane - that shit was bundled with fucking windows and Xbox and they still made it suck so hard that it failed
Microsoft isn't popular by choice. They can't force people into shitty ecosystems if they have no reason to choose it to begin with. Microsoft was the only choice for decades, and will go down as the golden example of business monopoly.
Apple, amazon, google, all have their claws deeper in people because they make products people choose to use. They actually like the products, so the companies can slowly enshittify them and keep their users.
They actually like the products, so the companies can slowly enshittify them and keep their users.
They're just a few years behind Microsoft. At one time, people chose Microsoft just like people chose Google.
What was the other choice back then? I dont recall microsoft ever needing to compete for end users. Even now they barely have to put in an effort and are the most popular OS.
Linux, MacOS, BeOs, NeXTOS, OS/2, FreeBSD, Solaris.
There were more choices than today.
Those were pre-installed on end user devices and were popular in workplaces? If you have any material to share I could read about that time period that would be helpful as well.
MacOS, NextOS, BeOS, OS/2 and Solaris were all pre installed on end user devices. All except MacOS also were or became available as end user installs if you didn't want to buy it pre installed.
They weren't popular in workplaces ( except MacOS) because they all sucked in important ways compared to Windows.
There were also many alternative Office suites. MS didn't even invent the idea- they copied Borland's $99 software cost in order to compete. But again the alternatives, even if they started better, eventually fell behind Microsoft. MS was extraordinarily customer focused in those days.
Windows Powertoy apps used to come with the emails of the person who wrote it in the readme.txt. I once emailed the Microsoft developer about a feature that I thought should work but didn't ( copying across network vs local copy). I got a working beta version 3 days after emailing the developer at Microsoft.
Interesting, thank you for sharing. I'll have to read more about how things changed over time.
Don’t forget that they didn’t succeed on mobile phones either. Despite it was very fine OS and devices were good too.
Good except for the critical features they didn't add. Like when the iPhone didn't have copy-paste, but on a Microsoft phone, way later.
I think it’s more that consumers didn’t know what the fuck it was.
Which is totally a failure of Microsoft. People have their Xbox connected to their TV. They have an account and they have their payment information maintained there. And Microsoft can't make the simple proposal of "Hey, this device you have connected to your TV and where you are playing games on, you can also use it to watch movies and series"
PS3 was a 1080p capable device connected to our (new in 2007) 1080p living room TV, the only 1080p device for almost a year. It played BluRay discs - they had the opportunity to cooperate with Netflix and other content providers like the Smart TVs that followed, but they didn't. When they rug-pulled the "otherOS" feature that I was using to stream live (still) photos from WebCams in the Caribbean, that earned a NetTop PC a place in the living room, and from there PC based content sourcing became the norm in our house. To this day, we have no "Smart" TVs. Our BluRay players are not internet connected (and they play 99% DVDs, less than 1% BluRay content...)
Consumer behavior gets ingrained, hard to change when they're happy where they are.
Their phones too
If you don't own the storage, you don't own the content. You're just renting it.
Usually I agree with this sentiment but that gets dicey as if you store your work on a cloud service, they don't own the work, the company/person who made it does. They are just parking the vehicle they own in a rented garage. In this scenario you're saying you are renting a license to access it I suppose. Which would mean we are renting our driver's licenses per se, which is true I guess.
*Where the fuck did my brain go with that metaphor
That's slightly different. You aren't paying them to store that specific content, you are paying to rent space in their service. They guarantee that space to be available for whatever SLA they have and for as long as the service exists. If they shut down the service, you are still SOL on that content if you don't have it backed up locally.
Contrast that to "buying a digital movie". You are paying to access that content, at that time, and as long as it's made available on whatever service you paid for it. The latter part is the kicker. My argument is that if I can't download it in a usable format independent of the platform "selling" it, I didn't buy it. I rented it. Buying digital movies is just renting them for a longer time frame, unless they let you download it.
I always argue with the less tech savvy people in my life that it's like buying a car vs. leasing a car. If you buy it, it's yours, period. If you lease it, it's not truly yours. You have to give it back when the lease is up, or buy out the lease. You don't truly own it until after that. The media companies just don't offer the "buy out the ease, later", part. While Microsoft retired the whole service, these companies also have this issue when they let media agreements expire with content producers. You buy a movie, but then they decide not to renew their agreement with Paramount? You just lost access to that movie.
They did this with "plays for sure" DRM protected music files too, way, way back. Never bought content of any kind from them after that and then killing Windows LIVE.
Just assume everything from them has a "destroy after" date set in the near future.
Ahoy.
First time I hear about this store...
I may have seen it, but it "felt wrong" from the start - never considered it anything of interest.
Me too lol
I never heard of it... News to me.
Wait.. they had a movies and TV store?
It was terribly overpriced. No idea who used it.
if you can still sign in, then i recommend linking your account to moviesanywhere for the time being so you can at least access any movies purchased there in other apps.
I never knew either of these things existed for Xbox or windows. Who is stupid enough to buy streaming movies or tv shows? Oh xbox and windows users. Makes sense.
Microsoft had a movies and TV store?
They did. It was so awful with hardly any updates. I bought some things on it but usually when it was on major discount and connected to Movies Anywhere so I could watch it elsewhere.
I don't know why they had the same movie for sale... one with bonus features, one without... for the same price. Every other platform includes the bonus features automatically. Why separate them? Is there someone out there thinking, hmm... I like this movie, but I don't want the bonus features.
It was doomed to fail.
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Remember when Microsoft was telling shareholders that the Xbox multimedia ecosystem was going to dominate living rooms everywhere, then people stopped hanging out in their living rooms?
Imagine having a living room
You guys have rooms?
MS ruined living rooms.
I remember when they killed their Games For Windows store and the games I'd bought on there just went poof. Never trust Microsoft to keep a digital storefront around, they'll delete it all at the drop of a hat.
Like with Bitcoin, not your keys not your coin. If you don't hold it you don't own it.
Never trust Microsoft
I can see Microsoft just being the Azure company at this rate. Then they’ll have to charge what it costs to run and a lot of companies will wish they had stayed cloud agnostic.
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Oh well. They should have brought back the Zune. And my Nokia windows phone in bright yellow.
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