Sony is apparently betting heavily on streaming services, more specifically, anime-streaming. A recent report from Nikkei broke the news that Sony has entered into "final negotiations" to acquire Crunchyroll, the U.S. anime-streaming service. While the deal's exact value is not specified, the report mentions that Sony could end up spending more than 100 billion yen ($957 million). U.S. telecoms and Crunchyroll parent company AT&T was previously rumoured to ask Sony to pay $1.5 billion for the streaming service back in August. The deal apparently did not go through due to the steep price.

Sony already owns the anime distributor Funimation, which it acquired in 2017, which added 1 million paying subscribers to its userbase. Adding Crunchyroll to its portfolio would expand this number as the streaming service already has 70 million free members and 3 million paying subscribers in over 200 countries and regions. Moreover, this would mean serious competition against other popular streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.

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[Deleted member 194275]

Nice! Censored anime for all!!!

 

[eriol33]

70 million free members and 3 million paying members? that sounds really bad.

 

[Noctosphere]

 

[The Catboy]

Oh boy! I can’t wait for Sony to ruin it more!

 

[masagrator]

More censorship please.

 

[driverdis]

I would joke about censorship but Crunchyroll already uses the censored sources for pretty much all their stuff rather than the source material cable channels like AT:X use. FUNimation does the same until it hits disc then they use the uncut source as long as their name is not Interspecies Reviewers, which means to just drop it instead.

 

[_v3]

I'd give a damn if Crunchyroll was better outside of the US. I tried it for one month, it's atrocious. We're lacking a crapton of anime because of licencing issues. I'm not asking for Croatian subtitles, just making all of them available with English ones. You can't charge me full price and deliver 60% of the content from other regions.

 

[Noctosphere]

I'd give a damn if Crunchyroll was better outside of the US. I tried it for one month, it's atrocious. We're lacking a crapton of anime because of licencing issues. I'm not asking for Croatian subtitles, just making all of them available with English ones. You can't charge me full price and deliver 60% of the content from other regions.

I'd like to see them translate some of their anime in french for french canadian
But no..... only subtitles

 

[Silent_Gunner]

I can definitely see AT&T wanting to sell off whatever isn't producing money for them, as I remember hearing that, when WB Interactive was possibly up for sale to go to Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and other big publisher names, it was revealed that AT&T's debt was in the billions! O_O

 

[p1ngpong]

Negative Sony comment! Sony ruined my hentai streaming service I wasn't ever going to subscribe to anyway baaawwwww!

 

[leon315]

Oh boy! I can’t wait for Sony to ruin it more!

Since WHEN $ony became EA?

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70 million free members and 3 million paying members? that sounds really bad.

why can't them just charging monthly fee like Netflix does? Cauz no one would pay if you can watch shows for free.

 

[Noctosphere]

Since WHEN $ony became EA?

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why can't them just charging monthly fee like Netflix does? Cauz no one would pay if you can watch shows for free.

I dont own a crunchyroll account, but I guess if you have the free one, you get ads while watching anime

 

[FAST6191]

Since WHEN $ony became EA?

Hard to pinpoint an exact date but 2019 saw big changes and things had been happening since 2018
https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-metoo-censorship-playstation-games-2019-4?r=US&IR=T

All very amusing for a company that had their big break in games with them saying "come on over lads, let those nintendo losers rot while you make the games you want to make".

 

[leon315]

I dont own a crunchyroll account, but I guess if you have the free one, you get ads while watching anime

THE PROBLEM is, within Ublocks/adsblocks just fuck all ads, thus no one ever needed to pay for sub service.

 

[K3Nv2]

They should've taken that billion for their design team

 

[leon315]

Hard to pinpoint an exact date but 2019 saw big changes and things had been happening since 2018
https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-metoo-censorship-playstation-games-2019-4?r=US&IR=T

All very amusing for a company that had their big break in games with them saying "come on over lads, let those nintendo losers rot while you make the games you want to make".

oh, i expected something like $ony closing down studios like EA. meanwhile the censorship police well, $ony and Nintendo just swapped the place.

 

[Noctosphere]

THE PROBLEM is, within Ublocks/adsblocks just fuck all ads, thus no one ever needed to pay for sub service.

yea well, there are no adblock on roku, fire tv, etc

 

[emigre]

IIRC Sony actually owns (or at least owned) an anime streaming site. This is pretty much on brand for them.

 

[MiiJack]

What non-japanese company is in anime streaming service? How are they compared to Crunchy?