When some users rushed to download Disney’s new streaming service on its release day Nov. 12, they were met with some familiar characters from Wreck-It Ralph and an unfortunate error message that read “unable to connect.” Now, according to CNBC, Disney executive Kevin Mayer suggests why that happened.
What’s Happening:
- When Disney+ launched on November 12th, many users (approximately 8,000 according to website, DownDetector) were met with error screens asking them to try to reconnect to the service at a later time. First blame went to the extreme popularity of the service that a spokesperson said “exceeded their highest expectations.”
- Back in 2017, Disney acquired the streaming technology firm BAMTech for $3 billion dollars, and uses that to power Disney+ as well as ESPN+, but Disney Executive Kevin Mayer said that the firm was not prepared for the tremendous traffic seen at launch. BAMTech also has worked with HBO NOW and MLB.tv in the past.
- It was later, at ReCode’s Code Media Conference that Mayer said that it was technical matter that lay within the coding of the software and that they were going to recode it.
- Disney announced that Disney+ saw 10 million sign-ups one day after the service launched, despite the technical issues. It was also mentioned the technical issues will see updates over the coming weeks.
What They’re Saying:
- Kevin Mayer, Disney’s chairman of direct-to-consumer: “It’s literally one part of the tech stack that we use in a certain way that we should use another way. It had to do with a way we architected a piece of the app. As prolific as BAMTech has been, we’ve never had demand like we saw that day and what we’re continuing to see. There were some limits to the architecture that we had in place were made apparent to us that weren’t before. It was a coding issue and we are going to recode it.”