[agila61]

Originally Posted by Damius

I remember I read an article on ANN I believe saying that it would be more difficult for CR because of that deal. The point was that Funimation could get home video rights as well. It's a really good thing it never happened... The deal with Sentai is fine (well if only we could get everything Sentai gets...) since CR do their own subs.

Yes, but that was just not reporting, it was speculation by Chistopher MacDonald.

I wouldn't want to be the competition right now though, especially Crunchyroll. With this deal, there's very little reason for any licensor to let a title go to Crunchyroll if NicoNico wants it, even if Crunchyroll offers more money. This is a prediction, but I fully expect Funico to tell licensors “We're very unlikely to license a title for video if it streams on Crunchyroll.” By no means will it be impossible for Crunchyroll to license simulcasts, however the number of titles available to them will probably decrease, and the MG (upfront minimum guarantee, or the minimum amount of money per episode they're willing to pay for the right to stream the show) they need to pay for each license may increase again (they were ridiculously high for a while but have now stabilized at “reasonable” levels). Crunchyroll's only attractive option may be to find a home video licensee to align itself with.

But that was based on a particular vision of how Funico would have worked out, if it had worked out. And that particular vision didn't seem the most likely outcome at the time. The benefit to Funimation is that Funimation will sometimes see some titles they want to license right off the bat, and a set of other titles that they will be seriously considering, depending on how the popular they end up being.

But being committed to the strategy of dubbing everything they license, that will never be a a majority of titles in a season. So the titles that would have been licensed by Funico as such would never have been the majority of the broadcast season.

So if Funico had worked out, it seems like that the total number of series licensed under Funico would have been about the same as the six series that Funimation has picked up for seasonal streaming this season. A bigger range of anime than that for niconico would have required niconico to land those additional titles on their own. And the challenges that niconico faced in landing additional titles on their own was something that Christopher MacDonald passed over without consideration.

For that, unless their Japanese parent company had been willing to use a big bigger chunk of their Japanese revenues to subsidise US streaming licenses, they were behind the eight ball in trying to license on terms competitive with Crunchyroll without foundation of subscriber revenue to back it up.

What niconico brought to the table for simulcasts in Japan was its already established user base, which also implies a user base willing to tolerate its player. But North American simulcast viewers were used to a better streaming experience than niconico could provide, and between the limited selection and the shonky player, they were never able to get any momentum going on their US focused site.