Forum - View topicNEWS: Amazon Prime to Stream Animeism Shows Including Altair Worldwide
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Radames125470
Posts: 14 |
|
|||
I guess people prefer that to supporting shady things like AS with their clear greedy scheme. |
||||
|
||||
|
lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1393 |
|
|||
Okay so there's a lot of talk about how competition is important, and that's right. The question though is: What form is that competition taking? The idea of competition within a single market is that in the interest of gaining consumers, the companies will behave in ways that will attract customers. Wal-Mart and Target will compete for big-box retail shoppers via price, but also by how they train their employees for customer service, how they organize their store layouts, and how they select what products to carry. So then, the question in this situation is how is Amazon competing with Crunchyroll/Funimation. It's not by price - Strike is roughly 3x the price of a CR subscription and still 1.5x the price of a subbing to CR and Funi together. Is it in streaming quality - the consensus seems to be no considering the multitude of complaints about delayed episode launches, poorly timed subtitles, questionable video quality, and the like. So if Amazon isn't competing by providing superior service or a more attractive price point, what ARE they competing with? The shows they're purchasing, obviously. Now one might say that that's just the industry - after all Funi and Crunchyroll were always competing in a similar fashion before their partnership and getting exclusive streaming rights is just part of the business model. But the difference here comes in scale. Simply put, we know Amazon can afford to spend as much money as it takes to get as many high-profile shows as possible to bolster their library becuase anime isn't their primary business model. It's a single part of their much larger, much more global business that has far more revenue streams than an anime streaming service could ever dream of. And that's where the issue of "competition" comes into play. This isn't 2 fairly equal companies working to garner the interest or good will of a collective audience. This is a company on a monumentally different scale poking its head into a niche market and mulling over just how big a bite they want to take out of it. If Amazon wanted to, they could buy up every title for more than its worth just to ensure they're the only name in town. I'm not saying they will, but that they are capable of purchasing power that nobody else in the anime streaming business could hope to match. Now, some might argue that this isn't inherently a bad thing. After all, even if Amazon's paying more than the shows are worth, they're still paying the production committees, ensuring a flow of cash into the Japanese anime industry, and that's obviously a good thing right? The thing is, that's not a sustainable or healthy business model. I'll be the first to admit this is speculation, after all Amazon never releases numbers for their streams. So we have no idea how much money the shows they buy are making compared to what they paid for them. But if this is anything similar to the ballooning license bidding wars that happened in the 2000s bubble, then they could likely be purchasing shows at a loss. This isn't unusual for Amazon as operating in the red when starting a new venture is essentially their model for expansion at this point. They have the enough money to burn that they can outlast in any market not dominated by another giant megacorporation like Google or Apple. So then what happens when Amazon is the only real buying force in the industry and decides they're done operating at a loss, time to better negotiate these fees so they can start turning a profit? Then that previous cash-flow gets restricted and there's nobody else to bid against them because anyone else left in the game doesn't have the buying power anymore. Essentially, Amazon diving into the market with wads of cash isn't going to remain the case forever if they can effectively stomp out competition. That's a bubble. And this is all without bringing up how Amazon's service is itself a drastically less consumer-friendly approach compared to any other anime streaming service. They have no free option available, no way to try out new or old series without first paying 3 times their competitor's price, and so far have done virtually no visible advertising for the shows they have. That likely leads to 2 things: fewer people watching their shows legally, and fewer people trying out anime casually. CR's biggest innovation to the industry hasn't been in their streaming quality but in their marketing and accessibility. They've structured their business around growing their audience and making it convenient to get new people into anime. Amazon's structure with Anime Strike does the exact opposite by encouraging piracy and making it way, way harder for people who aren't already anime die-hards to get into the hobby. tl;dr: Amazon's past business practices paint a pretty worrisome view of the future if they continue to take interest in anime, and their business model does more to hurt the market they're trying to serve than anything. A healthy industry needs competition, but that competition needs to be healthy itself. |
||||
|
||||
|
Radames125470
Posts: 14 |
|
|||
|
Exactly they know which shows are most anticipated. All you have to do is look at the lists all the big anime sites do. One of their interns can do all that and then report back saying these are the titles most hyped. Then what do they do? They offer loads of cash to the company to then HOSTAGE the product.
Then when they get the license. They don't even bother to promote it. Or even engage with the online fanbase. The only thing they ever tweet is when it's available. Nothing else. And even then it's so sloppy and mishandled and many times delayed multiple times. CR isn't in trouble by any means.They just celebrated their 1 millionth payed subscriber a while back. I don't think this is damaging them because people are loyal to CR and will stick with them because of the way they've marketed themselves and their brand. However this is damaging to those shows being taken hostage by AS. Sure they're getting money but how much of that money will continue to flow in once the show ends? Not much considering nobody watched their show nor bothered to promote it. It will just fade into obscurity. |
||||
|
||||
|
uchuushelf
Posts: 7 |
|
|||
15 titles exclusive to the US only. Anime Strike doesn't broadcast to Canada, let alone elsewhere. The problem isn't a monopoly. The problem is their broadcast rights as too limited. Unfortunately, I'll be sailing the seven seas with Altair until a legal stream is available. There's just simply no excuse for AS to be US only. |
||||
|
||||
zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
|
|||
|
^The titles acquired through Amazon itself (the Noitamina and Animeism deals) are available worldwide on regular Prime (the availablity is in the title of the article for Animeism ones). HIDIVE has announced some if not all of Sentai's outside the US.
@Radames125470 Sagrada Reset isn't popular because it isn't that good. It may have been hyped before it started but it hasn't panned out. There is a reason it is near the bottom of the rankings on this site and it isn't because it is on Strike. I could see Grimoire of Zero, Rage of Bahamut, and Re:creators doing marginally better on CR but none are obscure and the latter two are among the most popular and talked about shows of the season. Compare this to The Great Passage or Little Witch Academia. The former would have done much better in the megapoll had it been available legally while it aired. I can see Little Witch Academia being more talked about in the community had it be available legally while it aired. While Anime Strike's titles may not be on a site many approve of, at least some people can watch it as it airs while Netflix's (and the title Amazon held until Strike came out) no one watching legally can see it till its over and perhaps when its moment has passed. |
||||
|
||||
|
Lynx Amali
|
|
|||
|
I feel like this is worth pointing out again.
That's a whole lot of crap right there if you're Canadian. I've made it incredibly clear the past year that I'm not impressed with CR's behavior in general, from the unpaying viewers getting screwed over from the back catalog because of the Canadian dollar (If that's really the case, why aren't countries with worse economies getting the same treatment?) to the whole fiasco with the bitrate and quality of the streams dumping the dump so I'm finding it absolutely hilarous that people are willing paint Amazon as the devil, ignoring Cruncy's significant screwups. |
||||
Blanchimont
 Posts: 3448 Location: Finland |
|
|||
A little off-topic, but as the first half should be on Netflix starting today, is it dubbed, or subbed only? Just curious. |
||||
|
||||
|
zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
|
|||
As least from a PR perspective, CR (and Funi to a lesser extent) have to be loving Strike. Just the way people are going out of their way to lionize CR in particular has got to be great for them considering not long ago people were saying the same sort of things about CR that they were about Amazon now (not necessarily the same people). Now I like CR better than Amazon, but still. @Blanchimont It's dubbed! In English, French, German, and Spanish and it has English, Chinese and Spanish subtitles. |
||||
|
||||
|
Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
|
|||
|
Alright this has turned into a general debate on AS and other streaming services which is not the topic. We already have this debate on AS going on in another thread, so let's get back on the actual topic in this one.
|
||||
|
||||
|
uchuushelf
Posts: 7 |
|
|||
Is this newly implemented? I have Canadian prime. Its not accessible here. Edit: Yeah no. Its not available in Canada. There's a few anime on Prime Video but I can't get into Strike here. |
||||
|
||||
|
zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
|
|||
|
^The ones through Amazon itself like this block and Noitamina should be available worldwide. I'm not sure about the Sentai ones though.
|
||||
|
||||
|
uchuushelf
Posts: 7 |
|
|||
I'm aware of that but thats Amazon Prime Video, not Anime Strike. We do not get Anime Strike in Canada. |
||||
|
||||
|
dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
|
|||
That's what he was trying to tell you. You don't need Strike. The Amazon and Sentai titles stream on Prime there. Look up the individual show, not Strike. |
||||
|
||||
VinceA
 Posts: 126 Location: Bayonne, NJ |
|
|||
Watched the first episode dubbed a little bit ago |
||||
|
||||
|
leelee85
Posts: 66 |
|
|||
You can also wait till either funimation or crunchyroll get a home distribution license for anything Sentai hasn't licensed |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group