Crunchyroll Drops Older Apple Products Amid Conquering Market

While continuing to purchase other companies and expand its empire, Crunchyroll has announced the decision to drop support of older Apple products. As anime fans who have been keeping up with the news know, Crunchyroll has been pretty hard at work conquering the Japanese animation market. It started with the purchase of one of the company’s biggest competitors, Funimation. Then, it expanded to the acquisition of Right Stuf.

As Crunchyroll continues with their anime market takeover, they’ve just made it a little harder for subscribers with older Apple devices to use their service.

Crunchyroll drops older apple products, conquers anime market

9 To 5 Mac reports that users of older apple products have about a month to find an alternative way to stream their favorite shows. When exactly will the support be dropped and what older Apple products are going to be dropped exactly?

September 15, 2022, is the day the Crunchyroll app will no longer be supported on several older Apple devices. This includes any Apple device that is not capable of running the newest version of tvOS (which is version 15.6). Here’s a quick rundown of the Apple devices that will no longer support Crunchyroll:

Apple TV (1st generation – Model Number: A1218)
Apple TV (2nd generation – Model Number: A1378)
Apple TV (3rd generation – Model Number: A1427 and A1469)

Fortunately, this does mean owners of Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD will still be able to use the Crunchyroll app to stream their favorite anime shows. The company, however, wants subscribers to know this doesn’t mean they need to throw their older Apple TVs out and get an upgrade. Subscribers still have the option of using their iPad or iPhone to stream directly to their TVs.

Furthermore, Crunchyroll subscribers also have the option of bypassing the app completely and just browsing the website directly.

What company will they go after next?

Next to Funimation, HIDIVE could be a streaming service that Crunchyroll targets next. HIDIVE is an extremely cheap option for streaming your favorite anime shows. Seeing it as competition, the company could try to purchase HIDIVE simply to control it or remove it from the anime market.

Streaming giant Crunchyroll acquired Right Stuf, one of the largest anime retailers in North America. All of RightStufAnime's adults-only products and orders will be transitioned to a different store as a result of the acquisition. https://t.co/xxm7UAa8jh

— Siliconera (@siliconera) August 7, 2022

On Twitter, anime fans aren’t happy with the recent acquisition of Right Stuf as an almost immediate action after the fact included removing all hentai (18+ mature content). Many anime fans fear hentai content could cease to exist if Crunchyroll continues to dominate the anime market.

Are you going to run into problems with streaming your favorite anime next month?