Seagate, the world’s largest manufacturer of computer hard drives has announced that it has teamed up with Paramount Pictures to bring preloaded movies to its 500GB FreeAgent Go Portable hard drives. According to reports on the Financial Times, these hard drives shall come with 20 popular movies including contemporary ones like GI Joe and The Love Guru.
The movies will however have to be “unlocked” for the users’ viewing pleasure. FT writes that consumers may purchase license keys for these movies online which can then be used to watch the movies “as many times as the user wants!!!”. The license keys will cost $9.99 per movie.
While this appears to be a great deal for Paramount Pictures, the take-away for Seagate is not clearly evident. It is not like Seagate customers get an incentive for purchasing the hard drive with preloaded movies. If anything, users who do not go on to purchase the license keys only stand to lose the previous disk space.
What do you think?
[via FT]