Customers who fired up Redbox Instant, the digital edition of the popular kiosk-based movie rental chain, were dumbstruck this weekend when they learned that the service will be shutting down.
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Effective beginning at 11:59 PST this Tuesday, October 7, Redbox Instant will be gone the way of Blockbuster. The online service was introduced less than two years ago as a way to bolster the reach of Redbox, which remains perhaps the last successful physical-media rental house left in the world. The Redbox model eschews the brick and mortar stores of yesteryear in favor of small, DIY kiosks located in heavily trafficked regions, such as supermarkets.
The service was launched as Verizon's attempt to funnel some of the consumer base from direct competitor to online giant Netflix, but never gained the audience required to make it successful.
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"The joint venture partners made this decision after careful consideration," the statement said. "The service had not been as successful as either partner hoped it would be."
Customers already pay for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, a very stacked field that a fourth pay-for competitor was perhaps always destined to fail. Redbox failed to catch on because in this Web 2.0 age, 'in established brands we trust'. The big ones succeed now because they are big, and the smaller sites like Redbox Instant get swallowed up because they fail to offer anything new.
Subscribers to Redbox Instant will receive detailed refund information regarding their accounts on October 10. The successful Redbox kiosk model will remain open, so clueless parents across the country can continue to accidentally rent the cheap Asylum knockoffs of popular movies.
Personally, I think the loss is directly attributable to Redbox's own lack of 'Blockbuster Kids'.
