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Comment by nickthegreek | Hacker News Reader

Netflix subscriber count: 260m worldwide

Vision Pro Orders: Thought to be around 180k

Seems like netflix is making the right move. Why invest until that userbase is in 8 figures or until their web access telemetry shows a substantial use of their site from Vision users.

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It's a check box in the project target for their iPad app. It's not like preliminary support is some huge investment. But I guess anything that takes away from Netflix's core business of canceling shows and raising subscription prices isn't worth the investment.

1. investment cycles in things like this are multiple years, even if on someone else's platform.

2. Apple is a competitor to Netflix for the next decade of sports rights for things like the NBA, streaming deals, etc. Fan and movie viewer experience will matter.

3. AR/MR/VR is a green field right now and a lot of the best experiences in it from emerge from tinkering around, even if the current scale is zero. The next decade of streaming will not be determined by the same things as the last decade. Netflix was a leader to developing a digital-native approach to entertainment but that's just not going to be enough.

Plus Netflix will still be accessible for the 180K via Safari on the Vision Pro. Apple has shown onboard Safari being used like this and a streaming tab "placed" into the virtual environment.

If that’s all they are thinking about then that’s pretty shortsighted. Understanding new technology and investing r&d dollars into developing better cinematic experiences for their customers will yield results in the long run. What they are saying is just bluffery, at least it should be.

Yeah sure this is the reason, also the iOS market is too insignificant to bother with apparently making a native app. Having it work for that minor platform called ios does make it a bit easier to work on that tiny platform called Vision Pro.

Also totally get other reasons why you may not want to develop on ios, but just state them. Dont play games.

I don't think this was the whole calculus. I think they wanted Apple to grease their palms a bit more and Apple declined.

Yeah, probably something like “we'll make the shiniest Vision Pro app on launch day if you knock a few percentage points off the in-app purchases/subscription fee across our apps”.

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