Just shy of a year after it debuted, Amazon’s first branded channel Anime Strike has shut down, as first spotted by Kotaku. The exclusively licensed anime shows and movies that were part of the channel, which used to cost $4.99 per month to access, are now included for free with a Prime membership. When Anime Strike launched, Fire TV owners did not have access to Crunchyroll, the most popular anime streaming service. Anime Strike may have been already been dead in the water when a Crunchyroll app arrived a couple months after Amazon’s channel debuted. The Bollywood channel Heera has also seen the same fate and has been integrated into Prime Video.
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Good in the short term since Prime members can now access a bunch of good content for no additional cost.
Bad in the long term since Amazon licensed that content exclusively to try to drive subscriptions to a niche service. No niche channels, no incentive to license that type of content.
Amazon’s move towards tentpole content is pretty concerning.
Good ‘Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul’ wasn’t dubbed because Amazon picked that season for ‘Anime Strike’ -_-
sepArate not sepErate
Good those Amazon channels are a ripoff. Cheaper to get them stand alone through the apps. At least Prime gives you something instead of nickle and dimming you all the time.