Quote:
Originally Posted by Last Sinner
Here's my other concern - do you think that with a monopoly like this that Crunchyroll will abandon physical and even digital sales, condemning everything to streaming services only? And that when licenses run out, those titles are lost forever? I honestly fear that is what is about to come to pass. If so, welcome to hell, newer gen of anime fans.
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I read some analysis recently that suggested the opposite, actually -- that the industry on the whole got spooked by Netflix's revenue/growth situation, investment into streaming is slowing down, and this purchase of a retailer suggests they want to diversify their revenue and increase the emphasis on physical sales and merchandise.
I also don't think they'd have any reason to buy RightStuf (and Funimation previously) if this was "the plan" -- they could just stop putting out their shows on disc and retailers would suffer accordingly. If anything, it makes more sense to do the opposite and use this synergy to push "conversions." By owning the store themselves, they retain more of the margin, and can be a real "one-shop stop" for licensors who want to maximize their revenue potential.
Besides that... not to put too fine a point on it given this site's origins, but piracy does still exist. If they start playing too many games with catalog availability, it'll just cause an uproar with the fans and drive people to other places that won't care about licensing. Even today there are a lot of anime fans who watch "Crunchyroll shows" every week without ever visiting the site, so it's not like they can pretend they can really "disappear" a show by removing it from the site. I'm sure they are quite aware of this. Plus, any revenue licensors make from catalog shows is just gravy because production costs are already sunk, so I don't really see why they wouldn't want their shows to be available, barring very unusual licensing complications (e.g., Macross until recently). Likewise, I can't really see why they wouldn't want to get whatever revenue they can get from disc sales if possible, unless it's so unpopular they don't think the discs will breakeven.
I do think the work of archivists is important and we should be concerned about media preservation in the streaming age... but yeah, anime is the one area where I think the fans are passionate enough and there's enough a history of access issues that it'll end up being one of the better-preserved. (Now, anime-based mobile games on the other hand...)