Quote:
Originally Posted by Random32
If anything it is quiet acceptance of piracy. It is them coming out to say that "we realize that not many are buying what we produce, so we are going to ask for more money out of those who are able and willing to pay and let everyone enjoy our creation gratis."
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That certainly seems the motivation behind the way Aniplex is distributing
Madoka. As I said, I'm still a little puzzled that they chose to dub the series at all. Fansubs created an intense demand for a very niche product. The decision to stream the subtitled version on Crunchyroll seems intended to expand the market, but we're still talking about reaching generally younger viewers who are comfortable with streaming and subtitles.
And, at least in North America, fansubs are fading quickly as a method for building demand for most new series in favor of streaming. For the large portion of the audience who only wants to watch the shows and doesn't care about owning them or watching dubs, optical discs are fading fast as a distribution medium. Disc purchases will become ever more concentrated among a small group of collectors and people who will only watch dubs. As the disc market shrinks it becomes inevitable that prices must rise.
It's not a matter of enjoying their creations "gratis," either. People like me pay my monthly fee to Crunchy, and people watching on services like Hulu generate advertising revenues. True, these sources of income aren't as lucrative as selling discs, but they are definitely an improvement over a situation where thousands of people were watching their creations and giving back nothing in return.
Overall, I see these trends as generally positive. Many more shows are available for legal viewing in R1 than ever before, so the audience as a whole has benefitted greatly. These developments won't please people whose commitment to the hobby is based on building collections of discs, but those people have always represented a small and declining portion of the total audience after fansubs became widely available via torrents. I'd say the biggest losers will be the dub-only audience as they'll have fewer and fewer options available, and the English voice actors who'll have less work as time goes on.