On a day when it’s easily overshadowed by the 100+ degree
heat and Valve’s release of Meet the Pyro, Viz Media just issued a press
release about a new service called Neon Alley that’s going to be streamable on “a
major game console.” The quick and dirty notes are that it’s going to stream
live and not on demand, with English dubs, and premiere what looks to be
several shows to US audiences for the first time through this service (rather
than the more popular Cartoon Network, streaming, or home video release). The
full press release can be read here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-06-27/viz-to-launch-24-hour-anime-service-on-major-game-console
This is Viz’s, I believe, first huge move toward anime
rather than their usual focus on manga. Their Shonen Jump Alpha was a huge step
in the right direction for Viz and, although I personally had one poor
experience with the service, I do intend to pick it up sometime in the future
(maybe if they expand what’s in the magazine or I expand my own manga
horizons). Funimation and Sentai Filmworks have previously tried a pay-to-play
video service similar to the more popular Hulu, Netflix, and Crunchyroll and,
in my opinion, they kind of flopped (that is if you compare it to Crunchyroll).
Funimation’s Elite Video Subscription is a great idea, as is Sentai’s Anime
Network, but they weren’t executed in any useful fashion. For this to truly,
truly work, it has to combine with these services and provide a huge library of
anime available on a 24-hour anime channel. It took the first step in the right
direction by streaming it on a “major game console,” something that
Crunchyroll, Hulu (though not Hulu Plus), Funimation, and the Anime Network has
failed to do thus far. Just that one step is pretty big considering a good
portion of people watch their streaming video on a console and not on a laptop
or desktop. I, in fact, have not used Netflix on my computer since buying my
PS3 because it’s just so much more convenient to watch it on A. a bigger screen
and B. not my computer.
What this spells for the anime industry is another
potentially huge, potentially bust service for us fans. As I and the press
release said, it’ll premiere some dubs of anime AND this allows a new
generation of fans to potentially just find anime by browsing the video
services of their X-box or PS3 (I doubt the Wii is in contention here, people).
From the outside, right now, this looks like a great service that’ll bring in a
lot of current fans and could bring in some new fans (it’ll be nothing like Deadman Wonderland and Casshern Sins on adult swim, but short
of also being on adult swim, you can’t reach out to a huge number of people
immediately).
I hope, hope, hope that this service will be great. From the
looks of it, it’ll provide a free portion with ads to support revenue (which is
a good move). And $6.99/month is not a bad price for a 24-hour anime channel
that has more availability than Funimation’s channel (which has almost no
availability). But it needs to be advertised more than just ANN and Crunchyroll
press releases (I have no idea how to go about this, but it needs
advertisement). Viz is likely to launch a big in-house advertisement campaign
by using Shonen Jump Alpha and their own website, which is a good enough start.
We’ll see how it turns out in a few months, but I could see it being great.
However, I can just as easily see it be a huge bust to Viz.
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