Provo Paying for spoilers?

What is the general consensus here regarding the Hyperspace edition of StarWars.com? "Premium" content is being offered at the cost of $19.95 annually.

Would you pay for this or would you just wait for the movie release?

 

Greetings Navaren,

While I currently have mixed feelings regarding StarWars.com's Hyperspace, I must say that I'm not surprised in the least. This is the direction the revenue model has been moving on the Internet after the fallout from the dot.bomb totally decimated the advertising model in 2001. Everyone stopped giving out free services and content in 2001. CNN.com and other news sites stopped giving out free video, the Motley Fool began charging for it's best financial advice, the New York Times and other online versions of big newspapers started forcing people to register to view articles and developed an electronic subscription model, and the list goes on. In 2001, almost every "free" webpage hosting company dropped it's free services like a rock and went paying customers only. The fact of the matter was and still is this... You just can't make real money on Internet Advertising anymore.

How does this relate to StarWars.com? It's not a cheap website to run. Lucasfilm has gradually been adding more and more services to the site to reel in Star Wars fan's surfing habbits as a regular destination and not just simply as a place to go for the latest "George Lucas select photo." Services like the very factual and comprehensiveDatabank, the Community Section with the relatively new Message Boards(Targeting the *cough* *cough* TFN audience *cough* ), and the very useful Collectors Database are all designed to be "sticky apps" to keep fans coming back. I suspect all these new features with it's subsequent increased web traffic has not yeilded the income that Lucasfilm would have hoped. Even the casual visitor to StarWars.com surely must have noticed how the amount of advertising has dramatically increased over the last 8-12 months. So, in short, moving to a subscription based service for exclusive content is a natural progression and good business choice for StarWars.com.

Considering all the new features on the website, which one is StarWars.com's most valuable commodity? Of course it was and still is the officially released conceptual artist designs, set photographs, video, and other tidbits for the current prequel in production. I remember looking forward to Friday mornings in 2001 with great anticipation as the new "George Lucas Select Photo" for Episode II was released. Spoiler and non-spoiler fans alike just eat this stuff up.

So, that's probably enough analysis on the business decisions behind "Hyperspace." So, what about Navaren's original question? How will the fans react to this? Well, to be honest, I was a little dissapointed. George Lucas has always shown that he cares about his fans and this new service certainly looks on the surface like a blatant jump at the wallets of those fans.

I did mention above that I had mixed feelings about this. I did get quite excited to see that Lucasfilm was finally releasing the Ki-Adi-Mundi bombing run deleted scene from AOTC on Hyperspace. Also, after thinking about it $19.95 per year isn't too bad for what you get. That's about the price of a typical magazine subscription. I highly doubt most people will consider the Episode III material on the service to be spoilers. Lucasfilm has always been very careful about that. I read every Episode II tidbit and devoured every photo on StarWars.com before AOTC came out and I considered myself to be spoiler free. There are quite a few other features other than just Episode III content. I also find it quite nice to have the entire StarWars.com website to be completely ad free for Hyperspace members.

It will be quite interesting to see how fans are going to react to this.

Let's hear everyone else's opinions.

 

Greetings Everybody,

Check out the views of the TFN Staff on the Hyperspace content...

http://www.theforce.net/episode3/index.shtml#21068

Later,

 

Wow, impressive analysis, Mike

Basically, my opinion is that I think it's mostly good. The web team got some great ideas, but all that stuff has got to be quite expensive. If it were me, I would probably do exactly the same thing. Heck, if TFN got a license from lucasfilm to have a live webcam and embedded reporter on the episode III set, if only they could cover the production costs, what do you think they'd do?

I think the starwars.com people are geeks just like us that want to provide the coolest content they can.

I don't have cable, and I really want to see the Clone Wars cartoon. That's probably one of the main reasons I'll buy it. I also want to most of the other content too. Especially an Anakin avatar on the message boards, oh boy!!!

Being a spoiler person is like a lifestyle. I'm sure I'll waste hours and hours on that webcam. And then, I'll call my friends up and say stuff like, "HOLY CRAP, I JUST SAW DARTH VADER!" and I'll feel really special.

All for 20 bucks a year!


And regarding sites now-un-free content.... If I see an interesting-looking members-only video on CNN, I go to BBC to watch the British take on it free. For example, when I've seen on the CNN site that a UN security council meeting is being shown, I head over to BBC for their coverage. I wonder if this is a strategy of the BBC?

 

Greetings Everybody,

If you haven't done so already, make sure you go check out the new StarWars.com website with the Hyperspace preview.

So... What does everyone think of the new site? ?

Later,

 

I'm not digging the fact that I have to put in my credit card (with automatic billing in 3 days no less) for the "Free trial"