Over on the Netflix blog, CEO Reed Hastings offers a lengthy “my bad” about the way the video delivery service abruptly announced the fracturing of its services into separate streaming and DVD-by-mail offerings. But that doesn’t mean Netflix is going back to its old pricing model. In fact, Hastings announced that the DVD delivery service will soon become even more distinct from Netflix’s streaming side.

In the coming weeks, the DVD-by-mail service will be renamed Qwikster, which Hastings explains, “We chose… because it refers to quick delivery.”

The Netflix brand name will remain with the streaming service.

In addition to the name change, Hastings announced that Qwikster customers will be given a “video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games.”

While there won’t be any price increase in the near future, customers with both streaming and DVD services will need to be aware of the following:

A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. So if you subscribe to both services, and if you need to change your credit card or email address, you would need to do it in two places. Similarly, if you rate or review a movie on Qwikster, it doesn’t show up on Netflix, and vice-versa.

Netflix recently announced it expects to lose upward of 1 million customers this quarter, with around 80% of that coming from defecting DVD-only customers.

An Explanation and Some Reflections [Netflix blog via Hacking Netflix]

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