So basically instead of competing to license shows to put on the shelves of Best Buy, they are competing to license shows to put on their respective streaming services? Outside colluding or finding a way to make their streaming services appealing outside from having exclusive access to particular shows, I'm not sure how one combats this issue. What do you suggest?
Well, restraint as ultimate suggests. Hell, Funi is starting to get into the anime production game (although I guess they did that with the Bioware movies), and honestly this will probably end in disaster. Except now that people have gotten paid to do subs, I wonder if any of these people would even consider going back to doing subbing for free as "fans". lol
Yeah, what mystical reason could be the cause of people preferring to watch television shows in a language they natively understand?
Well, beyond the fact that I think the acting is generally bad or at least bland, I just think it's better to watch anything in their native language. I wouldn't want to see a dubbed version of Borgen, for example.
AnimeSols wasn't related to anything and was doomed when it was NA-only.
I just meant in terms of trying to get old anime to buff up an archive. No one gives a shit about old anime. Hell, no one gives a shit about last year's anime. lol
Crunchy's dramas are doing well, so I'm not worried about that. It's the loss of additional revenue the (previous) all-access license had that worries me.
I think they believe that contracting it all into one sub will help their numbers, but I think they are two completely different audiences. Especially since kdrama fans are probably a different group of people than anime fans (or even jdrama fans). Then they are also competing with Viki, which is a whole different can of worms.
Dubs are popular and a great way to get people to watch shows that weren't used to subs, but it's just not feasible to dub everything you have. Sentai's easily the smartest with that.
I think Funi can do it since they have their own studios anyway, and they presumably are planning to use these dubs on their disc releases. I know someone who has stopped watching simulcasts and switched to simuldubs, even though they are several weeks behind.
Funi's distribution is likely better now in theory. Universal can get into more physical stores and get better deals on discounts than Funi could before, but Funi has to move enough product for Universal to continue. It's a decent risk-high reward strategy pending the titles can move, which doesn't have good signs with the decrease in unit sales.
Well, considering how positive they seemed to be about their own distribution a year ago, I just think it's an interesting sign. I guess since Funimation already has the Christian Home Video stuff, they'll never really get out of the physical media business though. But I presume this lets them free up capital for other ventures.
