Westerners appear to under estimate how much the anime industry is about connections, yet its challenge going west has been for lack of users. Sony's consolidation is all about getting users.
Years back Bandai funded "daisuki" anime, which folded. In fact I worked in the same office as the executive who needed to fold down that division. Daisuki failed due to lack of users, not content. Likewise Sony tried a home spun distribution platform too, and folded it as well.
Now years later with all that industry experience in hand Sony is moving in and consolidating. Bandai is licensing their stuff to Netflix domestically, as is Sony. Yet those contracts can switch in a moment if a domestic conglomerate secures the users. Sony appears to be making those moves and could establish Japan's strongest beachhead in the streaming wars.
Japan cannot compete with Americans easy access to Hollywood negotiations, but likewise a Japanese platform should have strong negotiations securing anime.
I think the reason they couldn't find enough users is that their offering just wasn't convenient/good enough compared to piracy. Not only was pirated content more accessible, it also often had better subtitling. Official subtitles seem to have way more localization than fansubs. This might be great to capture a broader audience, but it also means that the fans that are already there don't want to use your subs. Sometimes they'd just rather not watch a show than put up with your subs.
What they probably should've done is what Qidian ended up doing with webnovel.com. They should've approached the fansubbers and the release groups and offered them a job. That way they would've retained the expertise and fanbase. It would've likely caused a lot of issues like Qidian did, but they would've likely had far more success.
Alternatively, putting anime on places like Steam could've also been a good choice.
Years back Bandai funded "daisuki" anime, which folded. In fact I worked in the same office as the executive who needed to fold down that division. Daisuki failed due to lack of users, not content. Likewise Sony tried a home spun distribution platform too, and folded it as well.
Now years later with all that industry experience in hand Sony is moving in and consolidating. Bandai is licensing their stuff to Netflix domestically, as is Sony. Yet those contracts can switch in a moment if a domestic conglomerate secures the users. Sony appears to be making those moves and could establish Japan's strongest beachhead in the streaming wars.
Japan cannot compete with Americans easy access to Hollywood negotiations, but likewise a Japanese platform should have strong negotiations securing anime.