Thanks to our very own newsie AzT for sharing an article from The Hollywood Reporter that confirms that Verizon is Shutting Down their Video Streaming App Go90.
Hasbro announced new CG-animated cartoons produced by Machinima back in 2016, and we had three shows so far that are known as the Prime Wars Trilogy. It was kind of unexpected the decision to release the first series: Combiner Wars only via Verizon’s Go90 platform in the U.S. The following series Titans Return and the latest Power Of The Primes were also exclusive to Go90. After almost three years, Verizon has finally announced that they are shutting down their streaming app by July 30.
Fortunately, for the fans who are following Power Of The Primes cartoon, we will sure see the last episode next July 5 bringing the trilogy to a close. Several reasons are given for this decision: new interests of the company, the app was slow to take off with the young audiences, etc. So far, only Combiner Wars got a video release, included with The Target exclusive Blu-ray combo pack of Transformers: The Last Knight. It is unknown if the other cartoon will ever have a proper video release.
You can read the article here or a complete transcript after the jump. Then, you can share your impressions on the 2005 Boards.
Verizon Shutting Down Video Streaming App Go90
The telecom giant spent millions on content for the ad-supported app, but it failed to take off with consumers.
Verizon is shutting down its go90 video app less than three years after its launch.
The telecom giant will end support of the free, ad-supported app on July 30. “Following the creation of Oath, go90 will be discontinued,” a Verizon spokesperson confirmed in a statement. “Verizon will focus on building its digital-first brands at scale in sports, finance, news and entertainment for today’s mobile consumers and tomorrow’s 5G applications.”
Verizon launched go90 in the fall of 2015 with a star-studded party featuring a performance by Kanye West. It backed up the talk by investing millions to license live sports rights and content from dozens of short-form video producers, including AwesomenessTV (which is minority owned by Verizon), NewForm Digital and Funny or Die.
But the app was slow to take off with the young audiences it was designed to reach, especially as deep-pocketed players like Netflix and YouTube began to invest more heavily into premium YA programming. Only a handful of shows broke out, including @tagged from AwesomenessTV and competition series The Runner from executive producers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Partners also became frustrated by the lack of promotional push behind their shows, and talent complained that the app-only experience didn’t give them a way to share their work with their large fan bases.
Verizon retooled go90 several times, laying off some of its team in early 2017 and relaunching the app with technology from the team behind Jason Kilar’s Vessel and even launching a web-based version of the product that lowered the barrier for new viewers to find and watch shows. On the content front, go90 began to focus on programming buckets that included dramas focused on young female audiences, genre fare and sports. Verizon even began licensing library content like Veronica Mars and Fringe.
Following the completion of Verizon’s drawn-out acquisition of Yahoo, which merged with AOL to form Oath, go90 began to face an uncertain future — even as it benefited from the new distribution channels and saw its audience grow to more than 17 million average viewers per month.
Earlier this year, Oath CEO Tim Armstrong hinted at changes when he told the crowd at the Code Media conference that the go90 “brand will remain, I don’t know how long for.” Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that in recent weeks Go90 programming executives had largely stopped meeting with potential partners while they waited for direction about the future of the business. Verizon is now discussing with content partners what will happen to their shows once the app shuts down. As recently as earlier this week, go90 had planned to launch satire series Like and Subscribe in mid-July.
Despite the uncertainty, go90 won an Oscar in February with Kobe Bryant’s animated short Dear Basketball, which it acquired for distribution and released late last year.
Through Oath, Verizon remains in the content business. The division is investing in live sports mobile rights, reupping its deal with the NFL to stream games across its platforms including Yahoo! Sports.
RodimusSupreme
Ew, sports.
AzT
After Go90's Collapse, Who's Buying "Snackable" TV Now?
pokemonsdoom
well final episode happened and it was….whelming
Purple Heart
Go go find me a better streaming service.
Digger
So that would make it go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go.
myrrh
…i think it was supposed to be parsed "go-go", like go-go-gadget livestream…
WishfulThinking
No worse than Go90. Go 90 what? MPH? Go 90 year-olds? Go #90 for a sports team?
RodimusSupreme
I think people were more referring to Machinima taking some kind of hit because of the cancellation of this platform. Not sure how, considering The Prime Wars Trilogy was ending before it was to be shut down anyway, but still.
Digger
Good.
samisham
We'll always have the memes.
CyberRat
Go90 was a terrible name. It sounded like some hacking stream site. I do hope to at least finish the last PotP episode
Eric
I've honestly never even heard of Go90 until just now.
Olivus Prime
I guess now we can forget these ever happened
Darkprime
I'm not terribly surprised by this since there wasn't a compelling reason to use it, plus the marketing for it wasn't very good. The service itself I thought was pretty good.
Neko-bot77
Not sure how Machinima is connected to Go90 other than they used Go90 for streaming their content. So Go90's death does not necessarily mean Machinima is dead too. Just my $0.02
Spyne98
As people said, I hope no one is loosing a job due to this, but I won’t miss having to log onto it to watch something that is just kind of “meh”.
AnonymousDwell
"Schadenfreude: The TFW Thread."
UndertakerPrime
Lousy if people lost their jobs, but I'm actually glad to see one of the streaming services go kaput. Maybe now companies will start to realize consumers don't want a thousand different streaming services, each with their own app and content.
TCJJ
Good. Verizon deserve this. And more.
dragon
I’m not bothered by it I never stream person can not stream in rainy snowy bad weather it’s uselless for me I download if WiFi goes down weather interferes makes movie pause, skip, rewind fast ward, stops at random times I can still watch what I want to watch on my laptop and portable hard drives