Disney+ has taken up residence in my living room and shouldn’t be leaving any time soon. Here are the main reasons for its success with me, and perhaps for its success at all.
Source: Disney+
I am one of those people who for several years have been jumping frantically from one sVoD platform to another. I spend a month or two in the company of Soprano on OCS, then I watch everything I can on Apple TV+, I continue on Mrs Maisel on Prime Video, before catching up with the Marvels that I missed when they were in theaters thanks to Disney+.
In the middle of the battlefield for my attention time, there was so far only one champion from whom I never thought I would ever unsubscribe. Netflix, of course, which has gradually managed to become a must for me, despite its recent price increase. But for the past few weeks I have noticed that a second champion is settling down definitively on my television. And you guessed it (especially since you know how to read a title), he has two big round ears.
why it works
Recently, I learned that I was not the only one to have fallen in love with Disney+. Two years after its launch, the platform already has 118.1 million subscribers. That’s almost five Game Passes and it’s 0.5 Netflix all the same.
So certainly, you can tell me that its success is only due to its catalog which does not even need to be presented. Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and all your childhood cartoons are neatly together in one place.
While it is certainly true that it played, I dare to believe that the people behind Disney + had the intelligence not to rest solely on it. And I think that its success, at least on my person, is in four points that I am going to present to you.
1. Its value for money
So, let’s start with the most trivial of arguments, but Disney+ is quite simply one of the cheapest SVoD platforms for what it offers.
Faced with the Netflix juggernaut, there is no comparison. The unique offer at 8.99 euros per month allows you to share your account with four people and gives you access to content in UHD and HDR, where the equivalent Netflix subscription (four people + 4K) today costs 17, 99 euros.
Disney+ offers two offers, one monthly and one annualized.
Three competitors are more expensive, namely OCS which costs 11.99 euros, but does offer UHD, and Salto with its four-user offer which requires 12.99 euros, while skipping UHD, or even Canal + Series and its 25.99 euros per month.
There remains Prime Video, which is a bit out of category given that we generally subscribe to it via Amazon Prime. We can also mention Apple TV +, probably the only platform to be able to compete on the price field. Indeed, Apple sVoD costs 4.99 euros per month for UHD content. On the other hand, Apple TV+ only offers original content, where Disney+ is beginning to diversify its offer.
2. Imax Enhanced, the little extra
Of course, love isn’t just about the wallet, and I’ve swoon over Disney+ for other less pecuniary reasons. The real moment “wow” was when I realized I could re-watch a lot of the Marvel catalog in Imax Enhanced.
To put it simply, with this technology, the black bars at the top and bottom of the image disappear in certain scenes and the image extends over almost all of my 16:9 television.
Captain America Civil War, like many Marvels, has an IMAX Enhanced version.
At first I thought it was just a little gimmick. But after seeing the scene again Inception in Doctor Strange in 1.90:1 or after watching the first episode of season 2 of The MandalorianI felt that I was wavering.
Then I got into a frenzy that pushed me to explore as much Imax Enhanced content as my free time would allow. I now have only one hurry: that Mad Max Fury Road be added to the Disney+ catalog to be able to savor it in this exciting format, or that other platforms start using Imax Enhanced.
3. The toy store interface
We are coming to the slightly more subjective part of my love for Disney+. At the same time, isn’t all this a matter of feelings?
The Disney+ interface has a little extra soul. It feels like walking into a toy store. At the top, a banner invites you to enter the platform by browsing by universe. When you pass your mouse or your cursor over a universe, you have a little animation that recalls the codes of this one.
It’s a little extra, but for me it makes a big difference in my experience. Already because I tell myself that with a catalog like that of Disney +, the firm with the big ears could have been content to dump everything without thinking too much about it. There, we have a real enhancement of the universes.
Moreover, if I compare Disney+ to my experience on other platforms, I have less of the feeling of being tossed about from one algorithm to another, since I often come with an idea, a universe in mind. And I believe that this interface contributes a lot to that.
4. The Joker Star
The last point that ended up installing Disney+ definitively in my living room was the arrival of Star in February 2021.
Star brings the diversity that Disney+ needed.
It used to be that once I got my little round of Marvel, Pixar and other original content, I didn’t really have much reason to stay subscribed to the service. Now, Star regularly supplies Disney+ with films and series from other spheres, completing the platform’s transformation into a secondary Netflix. We come for Mickey and Iron Man, and we end up watching the Revenant Where DopeSick.
It’s kind of the final point of glue that allows the sculpture to stand up. We don’t necessarily notice it, but without it, everything falls apart.
Love didn’t make me blind
Of course not everything is perfect and there is still a long road for Disney+ to become the new Netflix. Some small flaws will have to be corrected, such as localization. There is still a lack of access to many languages in the subtitles, or even in the audio channels. A little more diversity in the catalog wouldn’t hurt either, with more world cinema, and not just American or French content.
I see another point that still fishes a little. Admittedly, Disney+ is one of the cheapest platforms that offers UHD/HDR, but the size of the catalog is still too small.
Last element that would benefit from being added (but here I am surely delirious): with Imax Enhanced, Disney+ has introduced the concept of film versions. You can choose to see a film in Imax or in classic version. I would very much like this concept to apply to other works, such as the first Star Wars, for example, which have been modified numerous times. Have the choice to watch Star Wars IV with or without computer generated images could be a nice feature to add.
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