opposing the argument that Crunchyroll NEEDS a free option for simulcasts

celfhelp

the tweet above and most of the replies to it immediately got under my skin a bit

i know it ultimately doesn't matter what people on twitter (especially normie weebs) have to say about anything, but still the attitude is annoying to me

any thoughts on crunchyroll/funi/sony aside, imo any streaming service should be entirely paywalled; hell, any consumable product should be, and ten bucks a month is just nothing at all for simulcasts. like people wonder why they're not taken seriously or why the anime industry doesn't cater specifically to them....i imagine this demand for free service is part of the reason why

anyway, my obnoxious takes aside, considering the fact that Sony won't back down on the issue (and they shouldn't), any opinions on the matter?

i for one don't think it'll change much of anything; anyone who is paying for crunchyroll will continue to, anyone who isn't paying for crunchyroll was never going to anyway

TEAnubis

It gives CR an excuse to focus on video quality as opposed to prioritizing ads, so that's a plus.

I honestly had forgotten that CR had a free option, but the uproar surrounding this just tells me that a significant portion of the Western anime subculture (Granted, selected for people who're on Twitter) basically just want to get anime for free.

That said, it'll be interesting to see what moves they decide to take from here. As I understand it, from a business model point of view, the ad-supported model is more scalable than the subscription model, so the way I see it, either they weren't making a whole lot off of their ad-supported service, or they've got some other revenue stream they're setting up that they'll reveal later on.

kaloo

I don't really care either way. When I want to watch things on a streaming service I just paid for it regardless of the ad-free option existing.

Taking about the people who just want to watch for free I think it's important to remember that most of the fandom is High School and College kids though. Most of the rest of us "age out" especially in regards to keeping up on seasonal anime.

On the piracy end I never had any moral issue with it, but at some point a large part of the manga scanlation/game emulation/anime subbing community forgot they were doing something illegal. Like by all means go watch it on some shady site, but don't be self-righteous about it.