>>109754122>one company makes a calculated move to begin cautious, measured expansion into the EN market>finds sudden and unexpected success, lightning in a bottle>rival companies race in hasty and ill-conceived attempts to replicate that success>western entrepreneurs and grifters throw themselves on the bandwagon to turn over a quick buck while the trend is hot>the trend inevitably dies down>rival companies suffer the compounding consequences of their hasty and poorly-planned expansion and are forced to drastically scale back activities or cut them loose entirely>grifters and entrepreneurs cash out as the bandwagon slows down, leaving evangelists and slowpokes holding the bags, leaving the market stagnant and oversaturated>original trendsetter, who entered the market never expecting the trailblazing success, continues its slow and measured expansion while maintaining a stable and modest profit.Call this a regression to the mean if you like.
The truth is that most of the EN corpos that cropped up always planned to be short term ventures that would cash in on a fad and then cash out. Nobody seriously thought an endless deluge of similar entertainers competing for the same market, all of whom are financed entirely by donation, would be sustainable. The problem with Vtubing is that it does nothing to expand the overall audiences of platforms like twitch and youtube. All of its growth comes from redistributing viewers from other entertainers, who didn't feel adequately served by the niches already being filled. There were a lot of people like that, which let vtubing grow rapidly. But once that audience is adequately served, viewership and watchtime can only grow at the expense of another vtuber. We've long reached that saturation point of market capitalization, which means competition to increase viewership becomes more cutthroat and more expensive as talents must go further and do more, better to keep attention on them. A few years ago vtubing was the wild west, now it's the Thunderdome.
It's only natural that companies whose model relied on the low operating costs and high growth potential of vtubing would inevitably be chased out as costs rise and growth potential stalls. Youtube is like a highway with too many cars. It's beyond the power of any one vtuber or any one corpo to add an extra lane.
