Amazon finally decides to evolve its streaming service. Over the next few weeks, Prime Video will offer a new interface.
Prime Video is one of the heavyweights on the market, thanks in particular to the wealth of its catalog. Compared to Netflix, Disney Plus or other streaming services, Amazon’s video platform yet suffers from the comparison because of its interface. Far from being intuitive, it serves Prime Video by not offering a user experience worthy of what subscribers can expect. The service of the e-commerce giant, however, has good ideas such as the X-Ray function which allows information to be displayed.
However, this is not enough to hide the lack of optimization and difficulties to take full advantage of the content of the service. However, the situation will change in the coming weeks.
Amazon announces the deployment of a new Prime Video interface. A significant overhaul that users have been waiting for for many years. The deployment will take approximately two weeks and applies to most compatible devices with Prime Video. Jumbled up, there are solutions under Android TV, connected televisions, Fire TV boxes, Apple TV or even Android and game consoles. Regarding iOS and the primevideo.com site, they will benefit from the new interface in the coming months.
In 2022, everyone will be impacted by what Amazon sees as a new experience designed to be “less loaded and overwhelming”. The American giant wants a clearer experience… and more classic.
Netflix Prime Video: when Amazon is inspired by its rival
The first images show Amazon’s desire to review the Prime Video interface. The platform’s main navigation bar moves to the left side, with icons arranged vertically. There are six classic menus (Home, Search, etc.) and sub-categories to simplify navigation.
The result is finally very close to what Netflix offers. From the home page to the top 10 through the tab system, almost everything is reminiscent of Amazon’s rival and this choice is ultimately quite logical. At The Verge site, Amazon explains that the redesign of Prime Video is a project started 18 months ago. The commonalities with certain rivals like Netflix or Disney+ are not insignificant.
The interface change required extensive research and testing to achieve this result. Amazon wanted to bring something new, without upsetting user habits too much. The example not to follow was that of Hulu which brought too much change, to the point of disrupting the user experience too much. Faced with comments from consumers, the service has backtracked on certain points to return to a more traditional approach.
Returns that explain today, however, most apps look the same. For Amazon, however, it was necessary to better highlight certain ancillary services, such as Amazon Channels. Similarly, the service wishes retain certain features like this curious idea of displaying an “episode 0” in the series, in reference to the trailer, before offering episode 1. Prime Video can also continue to separate the 4K and HD versions of the same film.