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Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Really Happening With The Crunchyroll Store Delistings?
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PilotPayback
 Posts: 140 |
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gonna be honest, i'm pretty mixed in general on the "one-stop" place to buy things post-2020. when i was like...16, i kinda liked the idea of having one place to do things, but nowadays...well, i-i still kinda want that, but there's always some asterisk attatched to it like delistings. i know it's inevitable (because who's gonna be making copies of gj club in 2026), but still.
...but then, using multiple platforms can be annoying, the amount of places i need to buy visual novels from (jast, mangagamer, some exclusive to steam) or importing stuff from other regions (melonbooks + zenmarket, mercari jp + buyee), well...i've lost count... again, you can see why i'm confliced, right? |
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TiagoCosta
Posts: 81 |
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The moment sentai manages to release more blu rays than CR, it’s all said.
CR while licensing the vast majority of series, is also single handily deciding to kill the home media market by having the power in their hands to do so. Their monopoly was the worse thing that could happen. |
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genzbulk
Posts: 3 Location: Australia |
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Yeah, I get it. One-stop shops are convenient, but delistings and licensing issues make them risky. On the other hand, juggling multiple platforms and imports is a pain, especially for niche stuff like visual novels. Being conflicted makes total sense—most of us just mix both approaches to balance convenience and access.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5379 |
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Clearly, something shifted on Sony's end. Crunchyroll already had a store before Sony acquired Right Stuf, so it's not like they needed it, and it would be a pretty expensive way to acquire a warehouse. Business connections, great customer service, and customer goodwill all came with that, and now even stocking newer stuff seems to be too much to ask.
I know the question was focused more on third-parties, but Crunchyroll has a growing number of titles of its own that have gone 2+ years without home video release when one year or so from broadcast was the standard. If you checked Right Stuf, there would be new pre-orders from Funimation every couple of months. Again, Sony bought systems to make physical anime a viable part of the business and isn't using them. I have a hard time believing something like Golden Kamuy season 4 wouldn't be worth putting on blu ray when they've licensed season 5 with a simuldub. It's annoying to have to keep track of different sites for different companies, but I suppose I've also had to do that for other products, and those also tend to follow the approach of relying on preorders to determine production. The main problem with that is that if you happen to discover something later on, there may be no option to buy it outside of second-hand options. |
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LuigiHan
Posts: 1 |
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This stuff infuriates me.
The one theoretically "good" thing about Crunchyroll absorbing Right Stuf was that the Crunchyroll store would carry all of Right Stuf's catalog. If the Crunchyroll store has stopped carrying a substantial portion of that catalog, the end result is that the Crunchyroll store is more like what it was before the takeover, and Right Stuf has effectively been destroyed for no reason. Companies shouldn't be allowed to consume their competition solely to destroy them. And while a lot of the third party products may end up on shelves elsewhere, Nozomi and Funimation's back catalogs are owned by this Crunchyroll entity, so most of those are gone completely. Nozomi had accomplished something massive by bringing effectively the entire Gundam franchise to home video here, and that entire collection is gone, along with who knows what else. |
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lemurs
Posts: 120 |
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For the first time in a very long time, I have no open preorders on Crunchyroll's store - since the days when it was The Right Stuf. Between a lack of physical releases of titles I'd want from their catalog that seemingly aren't going to get any, to a newfound preference for buying directly from the company (Sentai, Discotek and Media Blasters all have their own storefronts, while Viz and GKids titles wind up on Gruv), Sony/Crunchyroll's choices have left me with nothing to buy.
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Gilles Poitras
Posts: 498 Location: Oakland California |
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Having worked bookstore retail I understand you can't stock everything. However these days you can list everything online and allow people to order out of stock items or sign up to be notified when an item is back in stock . Get X number of orders / notifications order X + 2 copies and sell them.
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Greed1914
Posts: 5379 |
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Yep. Not too long ago, I was checking the open orders section to see if I had already ordered something, and saw that I had only two open orders, and one of those involved a figure that was preordered like a year prior, so essentially just one. That steady stream of releases I mentioned before meant that that basically never happened until now. It looked so weird, but they did it to themselves. Crunchyroll's handling of its own titles is arguably worse than how it is handling third-party partners since at least those companies have other options and are willing to use them. It didn't happen often, but we'd sometimes see the odd Netflix anime get a bluray from elsewhere, but I doubt if Sony is going to let somebody like Sentai step in to produce discs for them. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2563 Location: Online Terminal |
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If I recall, thoughts at the time were that the owners of TRSI were starting to look for a way out and CR gave them a Godfather offer. If I also recall correctly TRSI's warehousing costs were relatively trivial so it could keep things in stock for longer, probably longer than usual storefront policies, so part of this would be regressing to the mean to borrow a sports phrase. However, I think one thing that's understated is that TRSI certainly felt like a store first and a licensor second. Crunchyroll is a licensor and distributor 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Obviously it's important for them to have a store on just on pricinple, but if they could they'd probably not have a store and only provide subscription access. |
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Cypher997
Posts: 192 |
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It really is a bit of a headache on both sides of the pacific, trying to juggle platforms and store listings in order to find a series that one is interested in (manga and anime), only to find out that it's 'out of print/out of stock' brand new and going for an emperor's ransom on the secondary market (Revolutionary Girl Utena Blu-Rays being one example). Don't get me started on the 'region lock' or bootlegs of Blu-Rays & DVDs as that's whole other headache to deal with.
Manga is something I'm a little torn on as having it available digitally comes in handy when physical space is at a premium, but the downsides of that were mentioned within the article (discoverability and licensing on various digital platforms). On the other hand, finding a physical copy of said manga at a local bookstore (chain or independent) can allow one to discover a new series or return to a long running one. The downsides of physical versions of said manga is that they have to compete with one another for space on the retail shelves, especially if they're a new series or a one-shot, on top of trying to have enough copies for everyone to purchase. Just one of those weird problems to have when being an anime/manga fan, but far tamer compared to what's currently going on in the world. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5304 |
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I can say without much exaggeration that Sony buying Funimation and then Crunchyroll was an absolute cancer to the domestic anime industry, and now we're seeing the results of it metastasizing. I got into anime fandom 20 years ago, and it feels like almost everything I loved in those early days that still remained has been ripped apart by this company over the past few. Buying and gutting RightStuf, my personal anime mecca from the time they were still mailing out physical catalogs. Murdering the Funimation brand that had such a long history. Utterly botching the Dirty Pair Kickstarter rollout that they obviously didn't care about in the least. Not bothering to release more and more of their shows on home video. Locking out Toonami from airing their series, including continuing those that had been on the block for the better part of a decade. Hell, if you go back far enough, allowing their subsidiary Aniplex to charge highway-robbery prices for extremely popular mass-market titles. And above all else, twisting the domestic industry from one run by people with knowledge of and passion for anime as a medium, to one fronted by soulless corporate ghouls shitting out AI press releases. I have a physical anime collection of over 1200 releases now, but over the past year or two it's become less and less enjoyable to try adding to it, and it's almost solely because of how Crunchyroll has handled their business. I genuinely despise them.
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merr
Posts: 515 |
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Yeah, this is the real issue. We know anime was one of the few bright spots for physical media sales earlier this decade, which might explain why CR went all in on TRSI. Maybe that’s receded like other home entertainment categories have post-COVID, and CR decided to change tacts. But it’s also not like CR ever made a big push for physical with their own titles post-merger. The decline in quality and quantity has been steady ever since Sony bought Funimation. Then they buy TSRI, supposedly for its warehouse and distribution capabilities, but they do nothing with it besides close the storefront and empty said warehouse. I’d say the goal was to remove a sales source from their competitors, but they clearly don’t even intend to compete in the physical market. None of it makes sense. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 5379 |
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True. I know that one of the questions out there at the time was whether Crunchyroll/Sony would carry products from competitors. Not only did they continue to sell them, but prices were usually better than say, Sentai's own store. At least leaving competitors to fend for themselves would have made some sense. This is just conceding a market where they were set up to be yet another dominant force. Considering that streaming makes for a cost-effective way to watch a show and consider whether it's worth a purchase, it seems like the preorder model would make more sense than doing nothing. If overstock is somehow a problem, then sell to people willing to commit to it ahead of time. If MediaOCD can accomplish that, then it should be nothing for Sony. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3270 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Coincidentally, we received a PR about two hours ago that the CR Store is holding a "Warehouse" sale where various items are up to 70% off. They'll be releasing new sale items each week until March 1.
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Greed1914
Posts: 5379 |
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Just got the notification myself. They do frame it as an "annual" sale, which maybe is true? I don't recall, but the timing makes one wonder. |
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