Crunchyroll was recently acquired by Funimation, who is owned by Sony, and with the announcement of Crunchyroll Premium coming to Xbox Game Pass, we will have a Sony premium subscription service on Microsoft’s flagship platform.
Announced by Microsoft earlier today, players who pay for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will receive 75 days of free access to Crunchyroll Premium. It’s not an entire additional subscription, but it’s still an interesting dynamic to see another intersection between Sony and Microsoft in this way.
Things are already confusing enough with games like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo release as PS5 exclusives that will eventually come to Xbox, and MLB The Show now and forever more being a multi-platform release.
What these intersections really show us though is how much the game industry has changed, and how focused platform holders are with providing the best service for players more than anything else.
Crunchyroll Premium is sure to help bolster Xbox Game Pass sales in some sense, and further align Xbox as a platform for anime and other Japanese content – while at the same time putting money in Sony’s pockets, as those players who sign up through their Xbox could stick around past the first 75 days.
It’ll be interesting to see how this continues to evolve, and how far the line is pushed in regards to having services owned by certain platform holders on multiple platforms.
Source – [Microsoft]