With the announcement of the controversial film “The Interview” online and in select theaters just before Christmas, some online players were absent. Notably, Netflix, Hulu and Apple. Now Apple has jumped onto the bandwagon by making “The Interview” available on iTunes. The company made a really brief statement about this to re/code:
“we’re pleased to offer ‘The Interview’ for rental or purchase on the iTunes store”
That’s it. Seriously. That’s all they said. It’s available in the US and Canada for $6 to rent and $15 to own. Very curious. I guess Apple wanted to get a piece of the pie seeing as the movie has netted about $15 million in online sales and rentals:
That handily beats the estimated $2.8 million the film earned over the same time period in theaters. However, only a relatively small sampling of independent theaters carried the film — had the major theater chains been willing to show The Interview, these numbers would likely be very different.
Sources tell The Verge that the vast majority of the film’s sales came through YouTube and Google Play Movies. The film was also available on Xbox Video and a dedicated Sony website, and as of this afternoon, Apple’s iTunes Store. The figures reported by Sony today only include sales through Saturday, so the final weekend count will be a bit larger.
Seeing as Sony is making back the $44 million the film reportedly cost via online and limited theater release, one has to wonder if other studios might try the same thing?
Sony & Microsoft Gets “Pwned” As Playstation Network & Xbox Live Suffer DDoS Attacks
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked, Microsoft, Sony on December 28, 2014 by itnerdIf you got a brand new Playstation or Xbox for Christmas, you’re likely wondering what was the point as both the Playstation Network and Xbox Live are under a distributed denial of service attack which is allegedly being carried out by a group called The Lizard Squad for the purposes of highlighting lax computer security by “brand name companies.” It’s attracted enough attention that the FBI is now involved:
The FBI is investigating a cyberattack that saw both Microsoft and Sony’s multiplayer gaming services knocked offline Christmas Day, people familiar with the matter told the Daily Dot. The FBI and the agent assigned to the case, however, declined to comment.
Now services on both networks are coming back online, if not already largely online, but I suspect that it will be a day or two before full services are restored. In the meantime, you might want take this advice:
And this advice:
Meanwhile, I have the members of Lizard Squad have good lawyers. One of them has been identified, and it likely won’t take too much effort to identify the rest.
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