And since they already had the content and the marketing channels, the only thing they had to spend real money on is engineering. There's also a lot of cachet attached to working for Disney so I bet hiring talent was not an issue.
I'm guessing they would love for Disney+ to replace DVD/Blu-ray sales. Rather than making a one time sale, the customer pays for it every month! Forever!
Quibi was interesting bec it was trying to be something that no one else was doing, that requires more than an s3 bucket behind a Netflix clone.
All the other things they tried were foolish and self-defeating: mobile-only (can't watch on my laptop or TV, which makes it harder to watch with a friend), no screenshots (no sharing/memes to promote conversation about the app or content), etc.
There is an ocean of short-form content creators on YouTube, many of them quite talented, who are increasingly desperate for some kind of alternative platform. It would've been so much cheaper and more effective to scoop up a handful of the better ones to create exclusives than to bank the farm on the waning star-power of establishment Hollywood folk. I don't really understand who the target audience is supposed to be.
I feel bad for the handful of decent shows (there must be a few right?) that are stuck on this weird patronizing-feeling platform. "I, just like you fellow kids, enjoy Music-Band and short-form video content on the Cell-Phone, and Celebrities!" platform.
From my understanding, Quibi is a unique usage model, with unproven content, neither of which has initially panned out.
That's the entire point. You don't throw billions at something new -- you prove it out first and then throw billions at it.
Edit: my point is, yes, it's easy in hindsight to think it would be a success (and surely, a lot of things help). But HBO Go enjoys much less success (and has a lot of technical issues)
Tidal was built to compete with Spotify, see where it went.