I now think the film was the reason for shortened S3. Alicorn finale, then film focused on it. With hindsight MLP was never in any ratings danger.

Not ratings danger, but the theory was that Hasbro was cutting seasons just because they figured 13 eps was enough to sell the toys, viewing the show purely as a vehicle for toy sales, whereas if the ratings were high enough, the show would merit its own full-scale treatment from a revenue perspective.

Although like you said, it's now apparent that they just did it for the movie.

Episode preview clip indicates they might make up for the lack of Rarity coverage this season in the finale. Maybe.

bump

de Lancie quit working on the Documentary DVD bonus content because sales weren't high enough. He blames piracy.

You know, after raising $350k and then charging $13 for a digital download of it.

Here's the relevant post for those interested.

They do sound pretty butthurt about it. I can say that I didn't pirate it. Or pay for it. I stopped caring a while back about it, to be completely honest. And after reading this... Well, I'm glad I didn't support the project. Maybe piracy was the problem, but maybe they should contemplate the possibility that they have provided a product that people just aren't willing to pay for. I'm pretty sure many of the people who pirated it wouldn't have otherwise bought it anyway.

"They clearly don't understand, appreciate or respect the work and feel that since in their view, you the supporters paid for it, they are entitled to get it for free. Lesson learned, we are moving on and focusing on distribution to the mainstream public."

Playing the blame game is not going to help their case at all; this just comes across as immature whining.

Same, I didn't watch it either (pirate or buy) but I have no respect for these people because of the way they approached this and their comments.

They communicated this wrongly from the start, by not being clear that they would charge for the final product and that this was a business rather than a love letter.

Another thing: ponies is no longer a growing market. It is at best stagnant; everyone who would enjoy it has found it by now, and the overall content quality isn't increasing in appeal to more people with more episodes like it once was (this was inevitable regardless of how good or sustainable it was). We're going to get a lot more bad news stories and drama over this, because the economics of it all was based on a bubble market.

I've seen this with Starcraft II tournaments that I watch. It had a community that built up, each successive event, team, announcement and so on was bigger in scope than the last, until quite recently it levelled off and then all those investor-funded promises and projects disappeared. The fundamentals are still standing, it's just an attitude change.

This project was concieved during the bubble and released during a cool period, of course it wasn't going to meet expectations even if execution was perfect.

That is the way of things with... everything. People buy into a growing phenomenon expecting growth. Even if stagnation is in a good holding pattern, it is derided.

Not relevant to other posts: