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Marc Steinberg

2017

Asian Video Cultures

Duke University Press

1 Converging Contents and Platforms: Niconico Video and Japan’s Media Mix Ecology Marc Steinberg Draft for Joshua Neves and Bh Page 1 1 Converging Contents and Platforms: Niconico Video and Japan’s Media Mix Ecology Marc Steinberg Draft for Joshua Neves and Bhaskar Sarkar ed., Asian Video Cultures (Duke University Press) On October 1st, 2014, KADOKAWA, one of Japan’s largest publishers and aspiring media companies, completed a merger with Dwango, owner and founder of Niconico, Japan’s largest and most culturally significant video platform. Pundits speculated about the reasons for this merger and questioned its financial merit. As I write these words the KADOKAWA – now the subsidiary of KADOKAWA-Dwango – has announced voluntary retirements and large-scale restructuring, and share prices have dropped, leading some to view the merger as simply an attempt to bury the publisher’s …