What’s next for VRV?
10–28–2016 | Mike Aragon, General Manager of VRV
Ten years ago, Kun Gao and a few members of our team embarked on a journey that would become Crunchyroll. They wanted to share their love of anime with a group of friends and together they built a service beloved by millions of fans. Crunchyroll is about much more than just video; it’s a community where people come together. Over time, we noticed that Crunchyroll users have interests beyond anime, so we started working on a way to bring you even more great content.
Last June at E3, we first told you about VRV, a new kind of video experience with curated channels dedicated to serving fans of anime, animation, gaming, comedy, fantasy, technology, horror and more. A few weeks ago, we announced our lineup of 14 channels, all of which will provide free content and premium access a la carte.
Today, we’re kicking off the next phase of VRV by allowing a select group to preview the VRV experience through the rollout of a private beta program. We are also introducing what we are calling the VRV “Combo Pack”– our full premium experience from Crunchyroll, Funimation, Rooster Teeth, Cartoon Hangover, Geek & Sundry Alpha, Nerdist Alpha, MONDO, & Tested — all bundled together for only $9.99 a month. This is not a limited time offer, and you won’t find this bundle anywhere else. Not only does VRV facilitate a new and bigger community built by the team that brought you Crunchyroll, but it also offers a new model of value for fans of these related genres.
Consumer choice was really important for us to maintain, so each channel will have free, ad-supported content as well as a premium option that unlocks ad-free, first and exclusive access to the full lineup from each channel. We are still hard at work with many new partners to bring more channels to VRV in the coming months.
When we launch publicly in the coming weeks, you will be able to subscribe and pick individual channels and/or the Combo Pack at VRV.co, and watch all your favorite shows on both your mobile device and game console. We can’t wait for you to experience the depth of content that our channel partners are bringing to VRV — so much so that it would take you over 10 years to get through the content, and we are just getting started.
So if you haven’t done so already, go sign up on VRV.co and put your name on the beta wait-list. Throughout the beta period we will be adding additional content from our channel partners each day. Our engineering and product teams are working hard to release this to everyone soon, so stay tuned. VRV was inspired by you, and this is just the beginning. We can’t wait to see what we are going to build together.
