Sony Completes Acquisition of Crunchyroll - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 November 2021 / 3,249 Views

Sony announced it has completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion.

Sony first announced its plan to acquire Crunchyroll in December 2020 with a plan for Crunchyroll to join Funimation, which Sony already owns. Now that the deal has closed Crunchyroll and Funimation are one company and will work together going forward.

"We are very excited to welcome Crunchyroll to the Sony Group," said the President and CEO of Sony Group Corporation Kenichiro Yoshida. "Anime is a rapidly growing medium that enthralls and inspires emotion among audiences around the globe.

"The alignment of Crunchyroll and Funimation will enable us to get even closer to the creators and fans who are the heart of the anime community. We look forward to delivering even more outstanding entertainment that fills the world with emotion through anime."

Sony Completes Acquisition of Crunchyroll

Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment Tony Vinciquerra added, "Crunchyroll adds tremendous value to Sony’s existing anime businesses, including Funimation and our terrific partners at Aniplex and Sony Music Entertainment Japan.

"With Crunchyroll and Funimation, we are committed to creating the ultimate anime experience for fans and presenting a unique opportunity for our key partners, publishers, and the immensely talented creators to continue to deliver their masterful content to audiences around the world.

"With the addition of Crunchyroll, we have an unprecedented opportunity to serve anime fans like never before and deliver the anime experience across any platform they choose, from theatrical, events, home entertainment, games, streaming, linear TV -- everywhere and every way fans want to experience their anime. Our goal is to create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible."

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.

19 Comments

OneTime (on 10 August 2021)

I’m just hoping the price doesn’t go up. I always preferred CR to Funimation…

yvanjean (on 09 August 2021)

This might benefit switch owners if Sony merge the two platform Funimation and Crunchyroll, I doubt that Nintendo would stop support Funimation app if the service merge.

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DonFerrari yvanjean (on 10 August 2021)

I'm really looking forward to it so I can save some money since I have the 2 subs.

pitzy272 (on 10 August 2021)

Well that’s the first time I was downvoted to the point of canceling my comment. So much for the conversation that was taking place surrounding my comments. :(

-6

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pitzy272 trunkswd (on 10 August 2021)

That use to be an option for me to do whenever anyone’s comment was removed due to downvotes, but it’s not any longer. All that shows up is the acct and the up and downvotes—nothing else.

pitzy272 (on 09 August 2021)

Vizigoth04 pitzy272 (on 09 August 2021)

Microsoft bought Bethesda because they needed games and didn’t have the studios to put out as fast as Sony. Sony buys insomniac at a fraction of the Bethesda Price and already has two games to show for it . Bang for buck Sony is doing just fine.

pitzy272 Vizigoth04 (on 09 August 2021)

I agree that Insomniac was a steal at the price Sony got them. Bang for the buck, it almost certainly beats anything MSFT bought. But the issue is that Sony has 13 studios; MSFT has 23–nearly double what Sony has. There’s just no way Sony can compete with MSFT in terms of quantity. Quality-wise? I will still pick my PS exclusives every time. But Sony is dealing with fierce competition now, and people will go with the system with the most killer games.

-9

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pitzy272 twintail (on 09 August 2021)

Salnax pitzy272 (on 09 August 2021)

I'm not sure if Sony really needs more studios though.

Their strategy for most of the past decade has been releasing a couple of big exclusives per year in order to sell the PS5 exclusive experience to people. So in 2016 we got Uncharted 4, in 2017 we got Horizon: Zero Dawn, in 2018 we had Marvels Spider-Man and the God of War reboot, in 2020 we had The Last of Us 2 and Ghosts of Tushima, and this year the PS5 is getting Horizon 2.

If the sales of the PS4 and PS5 are any indicator, this strategy has generally worked. It sucks for fans of first party content, which has declined in terms of number of games since the PS3 era, but Sony and PlayStation are doing perfectly fine with their current AAA focus.

With Microsoft and Xbox, the situation was different. The X1 was well behind the PS4 and (though it's hard to directly compare them) the Switch, and this was in large part because their game output was lacking in quantity, quality, and identity. People buy Nintendo games for their Switch and Sony games for their PlayStation because those are among the best games on those platforms. Other than the Forza games, which are not enough to carry the console on their own, Microsoft's first party games paled in comparison to even other games on Xbox. That's why they needed Bethesda; say what you want about Bethesda, their games have a distinct identity, have a large fanbase, and often fill their own specific niche quite well.

pitzy272 Salnax (on 09 August 2021)

I agree with much of what you’re saying, and again, I personally will choose PS’s exclusives every time; but, I don’t think one (or even two) big exclusive on average per year is gonna be enough to compete with MSFT, who has a plan of releasing at least one major first party exclusive every 3mo—and for only $10/mo. Not to mention the slew of other games that come to Gamepass. If Sony doesn’t pivot to some degree, I have a hard time seeing MSFT not beating out PS5 in the US, maybe elsewhere.

-8

Tridrakious pitzy272 (on 09 August 2021)

So if you are personally unaffected, because you put quality over quantity, not saying that Microsoft won't have quality, but if you plan on staying onboard with PlayStation because of their quality...then what's the problem?

Because Sony is pumping out games and that's with 13+ studios, we also know that some studios have multiple teams, like Naughty Dog. So, again, what's the concern?

GaoGaiGarV pitzy272 (on 09 August 2021)

I don't think Sony really needs to acquire new studios when they just can task external studios with developing games for them as happened with Lucid Games and Destruction Allstars or Sumo Digital and Sackboy. If these studios deliver constantly high quality games then Sony can still think about acquiring them, as happened with Insomniac or Housemarque. (Though I can't really comprehend the latter one since their work wasn't THAT great. Oh well, maybe they were friends with Hermen Hulst...)

But buying outright studios where they didn't have longstanding relationships with and built new IPs together would be a pure act of despair and I hope Sony will refrain from those practices.

It is really shamefull for a platform holder when you think about that aside from Forza and Flight Simulator, Microsoft just outright bought all of their other IPs.

-1

DonFerrari GaoGaiGarV (on 10 August 2021)

Well Returnal was considered a success by Sony.

DonFerrari pitzy272 (on 10 August 2021)

I guess you didn't see that the acquisition of Crunchyroll have synergy with Playstation as well, they intend to make more anime/manga games.

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Sony Completes Acquisition of Crunchyroll - News

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