• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony to buy... Crunchyroll?

Kssio_Aug

Member
Hopefully they give a better support in Brazil than Crunchyroll currently does.

Woke anime? I hope not! Fuck off soyny, stop trying to kill my entertainment.
I don't think it will be too much affected, if affected at all. Animes will continue to be produced by other studios, they will just use Crunchyroll so people can watch it, as it happens currently. If Sony wants to produce something exclusive, that's ok... but it's easy to ignore if it looks boring.
 
Last edited:

Lloyd22

Member
Is this old news? i heard about it 3 months ago, still they did not acquire them? i guess this is last steps of the agreement.
 

Compsiox

Banned
Well better Sony than ATT. The people in charge now thought weebs wanted original woke American made animation. Get rid of them.

me6160qv1tc51.jpg


Thank fuck it never released.
 
Last edited:

onQ123

Member
That may be, but as several people in this thread seem to be oblivious to the fact (as was I), here we are.

I remember it from a few months ago but now it seems to be finalized & at a cheaper price


 
Hopefully they give a better support in Brazil than Crunchyroll currently does.


I don't think it will be too much affected, if affected at all. Animes will continue to be produced by other studios, they will just use Crunchyroll so people can watch it, as it happens currently. If Sony wants to produce something exclusive, that's ok... but it's easy to ignore if it looks boring.

That would be the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, and knowing their past history, they'll either have tight control on what they deem acceptable, or completely eliminate in one fell swoop all their competition in their dystopian future. They already planted their seeds by eliminating Senran Kagura and Atelier Ryza 2 from their catalogue of acceptable games, and those were rather tame compared to some other anime, what's their endgame here?
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
That would be the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, and knowing their past history, they'll either have tight control on what they deem acceptable, or completely eliminate in one fell swoop all their competition in their dystopian future. They already planted their seeds by eliminating Senran Kagura and Atelier Ryza 2 from their catalogue of acceptable games, and those were rather tame compared to some other anime, what's their endgame here?
Wasn't aware of that. Well... I just hope they don't fuck up then.
 

petran79

Banned
"We drove away our Anime fans with our censorship rules, so let's win them back with some ctingey anime streaming service."
 

Dabaus

Banned
Is anime a really lucrative market or is it a niche sony feels compelled to have a monopoly on because they can?

Edit: From wikipedia "Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) valued the domestic anime market in Japan at ¥2.4 trillion ($24 billion), including ¥2 trillion from licensed products, in 2005.[94] JETRO reported sales of overseas anime exports in 2004 to be ¥2 trillion ($18 billion).[95] JETRO valued the anime market in the United States at ¥520 billion ($5.2 billion),[94] including $500 million in home video sales and over $4 billion from licensed products, in 2005.[96] JETRO projected in 2005 that the worldwide anime market, including sales of licensed products, would grow to ¥10 trillion ($100 billion).[94][96] The anime market in China was valued at $21 billion in 2017,[97] and is projected to reach $31 billion by 2020.[98] As of 2018, the anime industry is estimated to generate over $300 billion in global revenue.[99] "
 
Last edited:

MayauMiao

Member
Horrible news to hear. Woke Sony gave us Ghostbusters 2016, MIB International, bad enough that Sony is pushing censorship to please the tumblr crowd.

I don't like it at all.
 

EverydayBeast

ChatGPT 0.001
Adding CRUNCHYROLL will THRUST SONY into Netflix, streaming giants conversation.
70 Million active users
Over 1000 anime shows
3 million paid subscribers

As memory serves SONY has acquired a streaming giant before (Gaikai)this would transform SONY into an entire community of tech and by far the best.

SONY getting stronger:

tUSkPD.gif
 

Solid Bra

Member
They should've spent this 1 billion to acquire a new studios instead, insomniac cost them 200 million, they could've used this money to buy 4 big studious like insomniac.
 
Last edited:

Fbh

Member
Good for them I guess.

Unless this somehow benefits consumers (Free with Ps+ or at least a discounted price if you get Ps+ and Cruncyroll at the sametime) it doesn't change much...other than possibly more censorship.

Why?
What do they do that sony can not do themselves, better?

Well they are well positioned as far as anime streaming goes, do have contracts for a lot of popular shows, have a fairly large amount of content on the service, they already have the whole service set up with their own website and apps and they do have millions of paying customers.

Depending on the price it's probably cheaper and safer to just buy Crunchyroll than having to build and market a new anime streaming service from the ground up.
 
Last edited:
So that they can censor shit in other form of entertainment?
Fuck off, Sony.
Sony buying all the anime to censor it.
So they can censor all the anime content.
Well I guess my conjecture above wasn’t wrong then... Disappointing.

It seems there's some misunderstanding on Sony's role in the anime industry, so I'm going to clarify to the best of my ability.

Sony has little to do with the actual creative direction and production of anime. Anime is produced by studios in Japan which then sell the rights of broadcast to other companies, both inside and out of Japan. Sony and its subsidiary Funimation basically license the rights to streaming said anime from the individual studios to audiences outside Japan at the same time they are aired in Japan. They don't have any hand in the production of the anime. They simply subtitle or dub the anime and stream on their platform.

As far as censorship goes, most anime with "questionable" content when initially being broadcasted are already censored by the studios due to (presumably) Japan's strict censorship laws, as these anime are aired on TV over there. The uncensored version of these anime are only made available later by the studios during the Blu-ray release, once the series has finished airing. Interestingly, Funimation (Sony) actually provides the uncensored versions of any previously censored anime as an option to watch once it's released in Japan.
 
Last edited:

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Crunchyroll already was censoring stuff... it is industry-wide and a sign of the times and a portion of outrage culture.... it is natural for a company to be afraid of backlash. They are between a rock and a hard place.

It seems like it's becoming a standard in the Japanese industry. Sony has already done it in a lot of titles the last few years (with the exception of TLoU2 for some reason), so it's not surprising.

But thank the fat blue haired cunts who eats five burger King meals every day and are jealous about women who actually takes care of their bodies.
 
S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
This one has been in the news for a little while but doesn’t have anything to do with PlayStation. Sony is a big company that does more than PlayStation after all..

Also, I’m not sure consolidating more power with Funimation/Crunchyroll will be great for anime fans. Less competition in the market surely isn’t a good thing-these are essentially the only streaming services for anime. There is also some friction there with Western political values and their influence on Japanese media. I’m admittedly out of the loop here so not sure to what end, if any, that connects with Funimation/Crunchyroll.

Paging @SLoWMoTIoN @Bernkastel @Happosai

ICifi36.jpg
 

Bryank75

Banned
It seems like it's becoming a standard in the Japanese industry. Sony has already done it in a lot of titles the last few years (with the exception of TLoU2 for some reason), so it's not surprising.

But thank the fat blue haired cunts who eats five burger King meals every day and are jealous about women who actually takes care of their bodies.
Yeah, we all know the type of people trying to pressure these companies to bend to their will... like some shitty power-trip.

I just wish that they would realize that those people are usually not real customers.

Art is art and I would hate to see someone paint over any parts of the Sistine chapel that showed any breasts or reproductive parts...same with games, film etc.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
As odd as this may be, they'll surely make some good money. Anime is still really popular and its popularity continues to grow. This move plus them owning Funimation means they have a lot under their belt.
 

Arkam

Member
Maybe Sony going to throw their hat in the ring as a would be Neflix challenger finally? I mean they own a GIANT film catalog. But who knows what the backend looks like, might be better to lease out the content.
 
Before 2025

Sony+
  • SONY PICTURES MOTION PICTURE GROUP
    The Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group’s vast film library includes more than 3,500 titles, including 12 Best Picture Academy Award® winners. The globally oriented studio has produced and financed some of the industry’s most notable franchises including Spider-Man, Jumanji, James Bond, Bad Boys, Peter Rabbit, Resident Evil, Men In Black, Hotel Transylvania, Ghostbusters, and Venom. Internationally, the studio operates a robust local-language business, and has distribution offices in 21 countries around the world.

  • SONY PICTURES TELEVISION
    Sony Pictures Television (SPT) is one of the television industry’s leading content providers, producing, distributing and carrying programming worldwide in every genre and for every platform. In addition to managing one of the industry’s largest libraries of award-winning feature films, television shows and formats, SPT is home to a thriving global content business, operating a robust portfolio of wholly-owned and joint-venture production companies across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, as well as linear and digital channels around the world. SPT is a Sony Pictures Entertainment Company.

  • ANIME MONOPOLY
    Funimation, Aniplex, Crunchyroll etc.

  1. Preloaded on every Playstation 5, Sony TV and Sony Phone. Comes with a 1 month free trial.
  2. Sony+ trailer in front of every Sony Pictures Entertainment movie in theaters.
  3. Marketing deals with Sony Music Group signed artists.
  4. Playstation+ subscribers get 1 month free trial and a 25% discount. after.
 

YCoCg

Member
Where is all this talk of Sony censoring Anime come from? They've owned Funimation for a while now and that still contains UNCUT episodes, the only censored ones on there are usually the simulcast ones which are the Japanese TV Broadcast versions which they later replace with UNCUT when the Blu-rays are out.

However I will say the app is shit! Was hoping that would improve under Sony, it barely did but it's still dogshit.
 
Not having a great feeling about this knowing Sony Playstation's propensity to censor even some of the innocuous stuff (except for TLOU2, of course). Of course, Sony also own Fate Grand/Order which has a lot of waifus and tiddies, so... maybe it might actually be ok...?
 

YCoCg

Member
Not having a great feeling about this knowing Sony Playstation's propensity to censor even some of the innocuous stuff (except for TLOU2, of course). Of course, Sony also own Fate Grand/Order which has a lot of waifus and tiddies, so... maybe it might actually be ok...?
PlayStation Sony and Other Sony departments are ran differently, Sony have controlled Funimation for a while now and it hasn't affected the output there, anime is still uncut when it can be. The only "cut" stuff on there is the Japanese Broadcast versions which are later replaced by the uncut versions after the Blu-rays come out.
 

sol_bad

Member
Wait, Sony are releasing a streaming service? Sony+?
How does Crunchyroll + Funimation work in Australia? At the moment, the Australian anime distribution company Madman has a streaming service called Animelab, somehow it's linked to Funimation. This is what I see if I try and sign up to Funimation in Australia.

OwEwu5n.jpg


So in Australia, does that mean Animelab and Crunchyroll are the same?
 
Yeah, it was inevitable.
The only disappointing thing is that Sony is American company now, so we can expect censorship - though it was bound to happen due to chinese market too.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom