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Comment by delecti

6 hours ago

In a thread about movies, it's perhaps more relevant to talk about how those two platforms handle movies.

In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".

The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".

Not to defend this, just to further observe the different nature of their marketing -- games also haven't historically had similar "rent" options in the first place. Timed demos are a newer trend, demos in general have usually been smaller sections of the content, and they typically aren't something you're paying for.