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Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

polygon.com

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Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#51

Post by Symbiote »

hinoki wrote: post #40
jbay808 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I visited Japan I was astounded by the high price for animation. I naively expected that buying from the source would be cheaper but... think 5000~7000 JPY for one DVD disc of a seven disc series. For DVD at least, Japan is region 2 (same as EU). I don't know about Blu-ray.

Japan is the same DVD region as the EU, but you can’t play EU DVDs because Japan players are NTSC instead of PAL in the EU. Which is probably what the GP was referring to?

Conveniently, DVD players sold in PAL regions would often play NTSC too, although not the reverse.

I think decoding NTSC is a subset of what's required to decode PAL, if I remember my electronics classes well enough.

Or, searching around, it might be because region 2 DVD players had to support PAL, NTSC, 50Hz and 60Hz. Region 1 is only 60Hz NTSC.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#52

Post by hamolton »

mindcandy wrote: post #4

A billion dollars is not bad for a site that started as a fake-it-til-you-make-it piracy site. I only know the story 4th-hand. But, my understanding is that it started as a user-upload site (I.e. piracy with disclaimers). And, of course, the seed users were actually employees with puppet accounts pirating media to their own site. That kicked off real users who competed on getting the highest quality subtitle jobs upl…

I don't know if this is true, but I read somewhere that Pornhub/Mindgeek was a "fake-it-til-you-make-it piracy site", and still is for studios that aren't active about takedown requests, except with their money they were able to buy a lot of the IP from studios that had shut down due to streaming.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#53

Post by fishbacon »

hamolton wrote: post #52
mindcandy wrote: post #4

A billion dollars is not bad for a site that started as a fake-it-til-you-make-it piracy site. I only know the story 4th-hand. But, my understanding is that it started as a user-upload site (I.e. piracy with disclaimers). And, of course, the seed users were actually employees with puppet accounts pirating media to their own site. That kicked off real users who competed on getting the highest quality subtitle jobs upl…

I don't know if this is true, but I read somewhere that Pornhub/Mindgeek was a "fake-it-til-you-make-it piracy site", and still is for studios that aren't active about takedown requests, except with their money they were able to buy a lot of the IP from studios that had shut down due to streaming.

A recent video by youtuber We're in hell actually covers this quite well imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEYB02EZtVs

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#54

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mwlp wrote: post #6

Sony email from 2013: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/1285

Mixed feelings. On the one side, there's a similar brouhaha about Yahoo (?) being able to acquire Google back when. On the other, if it was bought at that time by Sony, it probably would not have gained the traction that it does nowadays.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#55

Post by Cthulhu_ »

trothamel wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it means the two big distributors of anime in the US are now one. It's creating a monopsony from the perspective of the anime studios, though I suspect a rival will emerge shortly.

I've actually noticed Netflix adding more 'big' anime titles to their offerings. Mind you, that's in NL where Funimation is not available and Crunchyroll has limited offerings, so license wise it may be a different thing.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#57

Post by odessacubbage »

jbay808 wrote: post #38
jrockway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Crunchyroll was successful because Japanese media companies considered the US market a joke. The companies that distribute anime in Japan never tried to sell into the US, they just assumed we weren't interested. Crunchyroll could then show up, say they had some customers willing to pay, and decided $LOW was better than $FREE. It's still this way; you can buy anime box sets in the US for an entire series…

When I visited Japan I was astounded by the high price for animation. I naively expected that buying from the source would be cheaper but... think 5000~7000 JPY for one DVD disc of a seven disc series. For DVD at least, Japan is region 2 (same as EU). I don't know about Blu-ray.

the ova market was pretty much entirely based on the willingness of japanese to buy rental copies. arcades have survived for similar reasons. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_video_animation#Histo...

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#58

Post by Aerroon »

trothamel wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it means the two big distributors of anime in the US are now one. It's creating a monopsony from the perspective of the anime studios, though I suspect a rival will emerge shortly.

A lot of people that enjoy anime-style games are unhappy with some of the censoring that Sony has done on the PlayStation. I expect that they will bungle this up as well.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#59

Post by Aerroon »

snicker7 wrote: post #36
trothamel wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it means the two big distributors of anime in the US are now one. It's creating a monopsony from the perspective of the anime studios, though I suspect a rival will emerge shortly.

This is a good thing. Anime outside of Japan is still niche. I don't want N competing streaming services. Even with a Funimation+Crunchyroll subscription, I still have to resort to less-than-legal means to watch some of my favourite material.

>I don't want N competing streaming services.

I do. When Sony inevitably censors or localizes something they shouldn't then I can show my displeasure by using their competitors.

Re: Sony acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll

#60

Post by Aerroon »

Danieru wrote: post #48

Westerners appear to under estimate how much the anime industry is about connections, yet its challenge going west has been for lack of users. Sony's consolidation is all about getting users. Years back Bandai funded "daisuki" anime, which folded. In fact I worked in the same office as the executive who needed to fold down that division. Daisuki failed due to lack of users, not content. Likewise Sony tried a home spu…

I think the reason they couldn't find enough users is that their offering just wasn't convenient/good enough compared to piracy. Not only was pirated content more accessible, it also often had better subtitling. Official subtitles seem to have way more localization than fansubs. This might be great to capture a broader audience, but it also means that the fans that are already there don't want to use your subs. Sometimes they'd just rather not watch a show than put up with your subs.

Stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUtoQaRfE0

What they probably should've done is what Qidian ended up doing with webnovel.com. They should've approached the fansubbers and the release groups and offered them a job. That way they would've retained the expertise and fanbase. It would've likely caused a lot of issues like Qidian did, but they would've likely had far more success.

Alternatively, putting anime on places like Steam could've also been a good choice.

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