Rumor: Sony Will Be Releasing A New Service Known as Video Pass Is This A Smart Move For Sony?

[Herbert]

It's being reported that their was an accidental leak recently by Sony in regards to a new service known as PlayStation plus video pass.

Now this news doesn't surprise me at all, back in December of 2020 news broke that Funimation(which is owned by Sony) was going to purchase Crunchyroll.

I immediately shared my thoughts about how Sony may have cornered the anime market and could create a sort of Animepass that would act as a magnet for keeping people subscribed to their platform.

No matter how it turns out regarding the anime streaming purchase, I think this is an extremely smart move by Sony to leverage its existing properties and create an additional service for its subscribers.

Sony has a library of movies and other video content that people would love to have access to. Why not roll that into an additional service or bundle it up with PlayStation Plus.

Microsoft Counter Move?
The countermove for Microsoft would be to turnaround and buy up many of the mega manga producers and the companies that have the rights to the manga. Create a manga reader on the Xbox platform and then turnaround and negotiate with Funimation/Sony on a revenue sharing model for manga to be streamed on their platform. And if by some chance the Crunchyroll deal falls through then buy Crunchyroll and add it to their platform.

Either way I fully expect a Microsoft response. I can't imagine that they've been sitting blind on this one.

At the end of the day though I think this is an excellent move by Sony. PlayStation subscribers will be very pleased to have this additional service. Its all about giving people loyal to your band additional value and additional options/reasons to keep coming back to you.