I have a weird theory that the reason this is happening is physical media was on the low end of sales anyway but it was valuable to Sony and other game makers to keep the relationship with the retailers and prestige of being on the shelf but the stupid Tariffs that got thrown around by idiots made moving physical goods a nightmare and to be stable companies side step Tariffs by going digital only.
I wonder where Blu-ray discs are made nowadays. If anything it feels like they are something that can be feasibly manufactured inside the US since the process should not be that labor intensive.
They’d have to import the equipment and materials to manufacture them, and those things also have tariffs. They’re not gonna do all this just to deal with a tax that might end up disappearing after this year’s midterm elections.
Yeah but the Retaliatory Tariffs cause issues no mater where they are manufactured the only answer is to have two facilities and the scale of economics make two plants unrealistic. Plus the Tariffs change on a whim so their plans dashed from week to week.
No, peasant, you can’t own your media. Now sit down and consume whatever we put before you!
If the media will only be available digitally, then I will only be pirating it
The store was a ghost town for months before the “update.” Truly flooding the grave of TRSI with piss.
Why do people still use Crunchy Roll or centralized media distribution/streaming sites?
You can build a better library with a VPN, some good Torrent sites, and about 2 TB of storage. You’ll have better quality, won’t get ads, won’t have to pay for old anime/media, and won’t suffer from other issues that centralized platforms for media distribution suffer from.
Why do people still use Crunchy Roll or centralized media distribution/streaming sites?
Simple: it’s much easier and requires no effort on your end. Also, because people want to pay for media.
You can build a better library with a VPN, some good Torrent sites, and about 2 TB of storage.
This requires quite a bit more effort, especially if you just want to watch on your TV or phone.
Good torrent sites are pretty annoying to find tbh. There are online resources, but they’re harder to find compared to streaming, especially private trackers.
Storage is very expensive. A 2 TB NVME SSD is like 4-5 years worth of annual Crunchyroll subscriptions. About 2-3 years for HDDs.
2 TB might also not be enough if you want the quality Bluray rips.
You’ll have better quality
Only if you download the Bluray rips, sure, but these take up quite a bit of space and don’t exist yet when you’re wanting to watch the current season or previous 2 seasons. Those rips are at best the same quality as the streaming service. I have my own Jellyfin server (mostly for my own Bluray rips), but I still have a CR subscription for this reason. And if physical media will really stop, you’re own library will be the same quality or slightly worse than the streaming services, since the source of the better quality is gone.
won’t get ads
If you use an adblocker or pay for a subscription you won’t on streaming either.
