Sony set to buy anime-streaming service Crunchyroll
2020 is a terrible year, but for streaming services? It’s been a dream come true. With many people forced to stay inside, and for good reason, most have turned to streaming services. So it’s no real shock that Sony has set their eyes on Crunchyroll, an anime-streaming service that includes popular titles like Dragon Ball Super, Naruto, Yuri!! On Ice and so much more.
Originally reported on by Nikkei Asia, Sony could spend up $957 million on the service, “gaining its 70 million members” in the process. That’s nothing to turn your nose up at and, if that means they could get exclusivity, global competition between services like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix could intensify. After all, with the coronavirus pandemic still on-going, demand for video distribution continues to rise.
Sony already owns Funimation, another anime-streaming service that mostly specializes in creating English dubs for anime series. It doesn’t quite have the numbers that Crunchyroll has – having only 1 million subscribers – but with Crunchyroll in tow… Sony could easily monopolize anime on its entertainment products, such as the PS4 and PS5.
Sony paying $957 million for the anime-streaming service isn’t just loose change, though, as Eurogamer points out, it does pale in comparison to Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. We wonder what this means for Crunchyroll – will we only be seeing the anime-streaming service on Sony consoles from now on? Only time will tell.
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