With Disney+’s launch date getting closer, people were treated to a preview of the streaming service at the D23 Expo Convention. A huge booth allowed the attendees to purchase bundles, watch live demos, and get more information about Disney+.
When Disney+ launches, it will have roughly 500 movies and 7,000 individual TV episodes available to subscribers. Attendees noticed a difference to Netflix in regards to how organized the streamer’s library is. “From a technical level or UI level, I haven’t really compared it to Netflix,” said Michael Paull, the president of Disney’s streaming services and former CEO of BAMTech.
Everything will be based on personalized recommendations, new releases and curated selections as a means of easy navigation. “As a principle, we wanted a simple, elegant experience,” Paull said. “We want to make this easy. We don’t want the product to get in the way of the content.”
Subscribers’ recommendations will have their own row on the site – an important feature for streaming services who want to fulfill users’ needs.
“We actually have been fortunate in that we have a pretty strong team focused on personalization and recommendations,” Paull said. “Our job is hard, but it’s not as hard, because our content strategy is about quality, not quantity. Our content’s about curation.”
Buffering and expected crashes during live launches is a nightmare for consumers and the company. However, Paull and his team at BAMTech have dealt with this before and are prepared for the worst.
“We’re thinking very much about [overload],” Paull explained. “Fortunately, we’ve had the experience with Game of Thrones, we’ve had the experience of ESPN+ with the big pay-per-view events that we’re doing with UFC exclusively on our platform. We’re getting big bursts. We’ve built capabilities to sustain that, both in terms of processing the transactions that all come in — in a very, very short period of time — as well as the streams.”
When Disney first revealed their plans for a streaming service, all eyes were set on the current leading entertainment service, Netflix, and a war was painted in the news between all streaming services.
“I don’t see this as a war,” Paull said. “I see this as nothing but a big win for the consumer.”
Disney+ launches on November 12th for $6.99 a month. Ad-supported Hulu and ESPN+ will be included in a bundle for $12.99 a month. D23 attendees had the option to sign up for Disney+ at the convention with a three-year bundle for only $140.