Is DC Universe worth the price for the launch content?
Subscription prices and launch content for DC Universe were announced Thursday at Comic-Con 2018.
DC Universe potentially sounds like a dream come true for any fan of DC movies, TV shows and comics. All that history of great content potentially available at your fingertips for one price in one service sounds potentially fantastic.
However, especially when a new subscription streaming service comes out with already loads of them out there that have been out there for years with large libraries of their own content, there’s a question of if a new service will be priced competitively enough to compete. It’s a tricky balance of providing the right amount of content at an attractive enough price.
Well, the pricing for DC Universe and what you will have to watch when the streaming service actually comes out has been announced, coinciding with the first official day of this year’s San Diego Comic Con.
DC Universe will be $7.99 a month or $74.99 for a year, which is actually undercutting current popular streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. But what do you get to watch at launch? Well, the whole library of DC content will not be available. That stuff just takes time no matter what, and there may be licensing and rights agreements that hold certain shows and movies back for a short period or maybe quite a bit longer. A good example is the various CW shows based on DC properties. Those are tied up in a multi-year deal with Netflix to stream on that service so you likely won’t see those on DC Universe until whenever that deal expires.
So what will be available right at launch to watch? Here’s a quick official list but it’s not final and more will apparently be added: Batman: The Animated Series, Wonder Woman ’77, Superman I-IV, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Batman Ninja, Batman Beyond, the Justice League animated series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Original series Titans, Young Justice and Swamp Thing will also be available.
In addition, you get some reading material in the form of comics. While you can read them on your tablet or phone, you can also read them on your TV. The comics also have an “autoplay” function to move at timed intervals. This is also in addition to a massive DC encyclopedia that will potentially include info about anything in DC you might want to look up.
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Is DC Universe worth the price? Probably depends on how much of a DC fan you are. It’s certainly a little light on streaming content and original programming, but it’s also unreasonable to expect it to be on par with competing services that have been around for years and have had time to build libraries of popular content along with their own unique programming.
DC Universe certainly has the potential to be something unique with it being more than just a place to watch movies and TV shows. Only time will tell if it lives up to that potential. No official release date has been set for DC Universe but it is entering a beta in August. If you pre-order it you will get three months free.