So what you're saying is that when/if Bandai decides to provide some form of animated content for Tamagotchi, be it through a dub of the existing anime or something entirely new, they could license it to competing platforms like Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock, Crunchyroll, or Prime Video despite their streak of success in talking Disney into licensing their stuff for the franchise's core medium? That's seriously Meta if you ask me.
I have zero idea how you drew this conclusion. What I said was simply this: "
I don't think that it's a good idea to get your hopes up for this - programme-buyers for television/streaming channels aren't involved with licensing out properties to a toy-company with a line that's used for licensed pop-culture crossovers. There's no multimedia team-up going on here - just typical toy-business stuff.".
when/if Bandai decides to provide some form of animated content for Tamagotchi
Bandai does not provide or produce animated content - they're a toy company, not an animation studio. In that case, they would be the one licensing out their brand for someone else to work on. Though it's ultimately marketing, this is a completely different field to the toys with completely different people and skills involved.
And now I'm trying to brainstorm what a Tamagotchi-style Keyblade would look like
They
really should have included a little charm of this on the ballchain for this one - it would've looked cute!
That's fine, but it doesn't change the facts that myself and
@OldSchoolVPQ have already observed.
It's better to understand a bit about how business works, than to waste away precious time on something that is unlikely to happen and regret it later in life. If we ever see anything (and it's a big "if" given how past Tamagotchi animations have performed outside of Japan), it will probably be new content, since that has more commercial merit.
Sometimes age can be a factor, but other times, it can be irrelevant if its the best shortcut to making money. If age was a factor, for instance, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe wouldn't be getting DLC 5 years after its initial release, and it took the first MOTHER game on the Famicom/NES a whopping 26 years to get localized as EarthBound Beginnings.
These cases are completely different;
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is both the all-time best-selling game on the Switch
and the best-selling racing-game of all time, and it is still a current product with an insanely-high attach-rate. Also, Nintendo's management-structure changed significantly (and also fundamentally) between the time of its release and today, and the DLC is ported over from pre-existing games.
EarthBound Beginnings didn't take 26 years to be localised. The localisation was done in 1990, for release in 1991, but it ultimately wasn't released (and it got leaked onto the internet many, many years before Nintendo decided to give it an official release; If you've ever heard of an "EarthBound Zero", that was the name created by fans for it) - the localised name of "EarthBound" was originally chosen for that game, not its sequel, and the game as officially released shows only this and the original 1990 translation date on its title-screen.
Also, these products are video games, not cartoons whose primary goal is to sell toys to children. Those markets are
very different (and, regarding EarthBound and similar, more concessions are made for niches in the video games market than in the mass-market promotional cartoons market), and the windows for releasing promotional animated content (dubbed or not) are usually much, much smaller because the toys very often don't tend to be on the market for as long (even long-running lines see refreshes and reboots, necessitating new tie-in media in those cases).
If Bandai either responds to mine and other fans' requests to provide a complete dub of a 12-year-old anime or puts those matters into their own hands, I firmly believe that it'll have a good chance of making some decent money.
I'd certainly be interested in the business-plan for such a thing.
It's not tied to any current products, and if I'm not mistaken it had ties to older Japan-only products that came and went many years ago and aren't likely to return. And since the desire is for a complete dub, I assume that alterations and cuts and added superimposed content to sell modern products would not be acceptable, so I can't see how it would function at making money for Bandai - it demonstrably didn't pay off for them with what they
did dub previously.
And I never really saw Tamagotchi as having a consistent age demographic. It's honestly all over the place, especially with the Nanos. One moment, they announce a Demon Slayer Nano for hardcore anime fanatics, and the next they announce a Toy Story Nano for a broad audience. Any kind of Tamagotchi animation could, for better or worse, raise a fandom similar to the Brony fandom that caused Hasbro to have one heck of a presence in the 2010's.
The brand as a whole has wide appeal, and they leverage that with the licensed Nanos (as I said before, whether we like it or not, for better or worse Bandai often trades on nostalgia with this brand), but for the most part its demographic is very clear - take a look at the box for the Tamagotchi Pix, which is the current flagship toy. Toy tie-in animated content is primarily aimed at children, who are the target consumers, and fandoms that may or may not spring up outside of that aren't really a consideration.
Very nice.
(Jk)
