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Ponycan USA Comments on Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers' Standard Blu-ray/DVD Cancellation


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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 9:02 am Reply with quote
Razzuel wrote:
Plenty of people have said PonyCan USA should have said nothing instead.

Yes, on the comments for this article.

But, you talked about people complaining about nothing being said. So, complaining about what has been said it different.

I was pointing out that there was an opportunity to complain about nothing being said, as the news of this broke out a few days ago. But, not many did.
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Dfens



Joined: 08 Feb 2013
Posts: 460
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:36 pm Reply with quote
I don't really have a dog in this fight since I didn't like the show and even at a rock bottom low price still wouldn't buy it.

But people really need to move on, either you buy it at their price no matter how you feel about it or you don't. It's the whole their charging too much, ripping their customers off, their evil business men all over again. That's the whole point they are a business which means they are in it to make money and not please every fan who only wants to spend as cheaply as possible for a show. They may only sell a small number at a high price and still make a profit and be happy or they will break even or worse loose money. That's the risk they take as a business.

As a person that runs a business I had a customer the other day come in tell me my price was too much and leave. Fine that's his choice while yesterday another customer who had a more expensive job to complete happily paid more than double to have it down right and with a quicker turn around time. Some times I'm the cheapest in town and will do it right while other times I'm not the cheapest and that's not what I'm going for.

Yes 18 dollars a episode is a lot more than most other vendors even Aniplex averages as low as 10 dollars per episode up to 15 or so.

Look at Madoka Magica their CE was 75 dollars each for 4 episodes and it sold out, Kill la Kill CE is over 60 dollars for the same content. At least you are getting both DVD and Blu-Ray. If it irks people so much sell the other set on Ebay to lower the over all cost.

It appears that they decided to only do non bare bones releases in chipboard boxes with extras and charge for them. And that is their CE and maybe in the future they will have a standard edition. But if all they do is a CE it's still their choice in the matter.

For most Pony Canon shows they just don't appeal to me enough to pay these higher prices and a lot of people agree that they aren't the mega hit titles Aniplex gets away with. Hell even if their prices were the same as Funimation I still wouldn't buy most of their shows based on my own personal preferences as none so far was a must buy. I might buy Hibike! Euphonium since it was a beautiful show and I ended up liking it much more than I thought.

As I said in the past Anime isn't so expensive you'll never in your life be able to save up to purchase 1 particular title. If by principle you won't pay over a certain price for 1 show than that is on you.
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AbZeroNow



Joined: 14 Jan 2013
Posts: 519
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:07 pm Reply with quote
Well, Robert's Anime Corner Store has mentioned that 90% of their pre-order action was in the Standard Editions. Make of that what you will

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=06aa224b-e0fe-492a-95de-625861185db0&c=66cb2ff0-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b&ch=66ced970-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b
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Divineking



Joined: 03 Jul 2010
Posts: 1296
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:15 pm Reply with quote
AbZeroNow wrote:
Well, Robert's Anime Corner Store has mentioned that 90% of their pre-order action was in the Standard Editions. Make of that what you will

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=06aa224b-e0fe-492a-95de-625861185db0&c=66cb2ff0-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b&ch=66ced970-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b


If that's true then they can kindly go to hell and they'll never see a dollar from me. Much as I've complained about high end business model practices at the end of the day people are free to buy what they want but man, I'm not sure why anyone would support them after this Evil or Very Mad
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SpacemanHardy



Joined: 03 Jan 2012
Posts: 2509
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:35 pm Reply with quote
If what Robert said is indeed true, then PonyCan just surpassed both Voyager and Harmony Gold as the most dickish R1 distributor out there. How anyone could defend them after this, I simply can't comprehend. Mad
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:37 pm Reply with quote
Vanadise wrote:
Ponycan just keeps digging their hole deeper. We've gone from me not wanting to buy their overpriced collector's edition to me not wanting to buy anything they release. I wonder what the numbers for their costs and projections would have to be like for this to make any kind of financial sense.
Nyron wrote:
In this case, the show itself is worth far less than the stuff theyre packaging with it.

Why do you feel the need to continually dump on this show in every thread about it? Don't you have any shows you do like that you could go talk about instead of jumping into the middle of a conversation and trying to start a fight with, "Hey guys, I hate this show that you all like!" ?


It's an objectively bad show made on a $20 budget watched by <1000 fans who have no idea how business works. Go buy something good
instead or stream it.

hth
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings



Joined: 04 Jul 2013
Posts: 1019
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:44 pm Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:
objectively


The moment you said that was the moment everyone stopped taking you seriously. Laughing
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:52 pm Reply with quote
ThatGuyWhoLikesThings wrote:
Nyron wrote:
objectively


The moment you said that was the moment everyone stopped taking you seriously. Laughing


"Feces is a subjectively bad food."

While a true sentence, one doesn't need to entertain the minority lmao
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2658
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:23 pm Reply with quote
Dfens wrote:
But people really need to move on, either you buy it at their price no matter how you feel about it or you don't. It's the whole their charging too much, ripping their customers off, their evil business men all over again. That's the whole point they are a business which means they are in it to make money and not please every fan who only wants to spend as cheaply as possible for a show. They may only sell a small number at a high price and still make a profit and be happy or they will break even or worse loose money. That's the risk they take as a business.


What you are trying to say is "It is business as usual". It is dangerous to think that PonyUSA business model can't affect me just because we live in a capitalist society. As I said before, the real danger is that if (by sheer luck) they manage to be moderately successful with their business model,it is just a matter of time before other japanese companies start to pressure for american anime releases to return to the pre-crisis high prices. That is the big problem, if most companies sell anime at high prices, once there is another economical bump on the road, what catalog do you think big retailers will drop first? Of course, companies nowadays depend on streaming for income, but that does not mean that the fragile anime production ecosystem can't be derailed once again and what would be the reason, sheer and stupid greed.
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Ali07



Joined: 01 Jun 2014
Posts: 3333
Location: Victoria, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:24 pm Reply with quote
AbZeroNow wrote:
Well, Robert's Anime Corner Store has mentioned that 90% of their pre-order action was in the Standard Editions. Make of that what you will

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=06aa224b-e0fe-492a-95de-625861185db0&c=66cb2ff0-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b&ch=66ced970-8578-11e5-a48d-d4ae52753a3b


Yeah, that doesn't sound great at all.
Quote:
I know everyone wants to believe that's the case [about the other versions] - but it isn't. Almost all of our pre-order action for Rokka was in the regular editions - about 90%. When Rokka was announced all I heard from folks was a collective sigh of relief that maybe PonyCAN had finally seen the light and was going to start making their shows more affordable. But I imagine when they started counting up the recent retailer pre-books and found most of us were almost exclusively going in for the regular editions, they decided that so many orders for the CE had been sucked into the SE that the more profitable collectors edition was doomed unless it was the only edition they pressed. Given a choice, the standard editions is where the lions share of fan interest will go for any given show when released simultaneously. It has nothing to do with the CE not being desirable, it's just that so many people just can't justify forking out $15-$20 per episode for a show. Those prices (similar to the Japanese market) are absolutely outrageous no matter how many goodies they stuff in a box set. I have said this many times. And a multi-tiered release model that serves the multiple budgets in the marketplace needs sales volume that requires a studio to make distribution partnerships here in the US they do not seem willing to maintain. I have also said that many times - ad nauseum.

So unfortunately, yet another decent show gets 'Aniplexed'. We will need to cancel all pre-orders for the SE editions, but if you had one of the SE's on pre-order and want to change it to the CE (as PonyCAN clearly hopes you will do), just drop us a line.

Sounds like some other places had more orders for the standard over the CE.

If the CE is really what PonyCan USA want to be selling, and they had announced a standard release for this already, my preference would've been to see them delay the SE release.

Of course, I do wonder how many would jump at the CE if the SE were delayed, where people that wanted the show would go for the CE in order to get it ASAP. Of course, there would've still been those that wait (myself included).

Oh well, at the end of the day they've done what they've done. Now to see how things go from here for PC. Unfortunately, we'll never know how sales would've been impacted of things were handled differently. As things stand, there are people out there that are just not going to be getting the show at all now.
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 519
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:48 pm Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:

It's an objectively bad show made on a $20 budget watched by <1000 fans who have no idea how business works. Go buy something good
instead or stream it.


Dude, take a step back. From the very first preview thread, you have never said a single good thing about this show. I don't know why this is so important to you, but everybody knows how you feel. Many people disagree. At this point you're just trying to start a fight. That's the definition of trolling. Give it a break.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 9:20 pm Reply with quote
Dfens wrote:
But people really need to move on, either you buy it at their price no matter how you feel about it or you don't. It's the whole their charging too much, ripping their customers off, their evil business men all over again. That's the whole point they are a business which means they are in it to make money and not please every fan who only wants to spend as cheaply as possible for a show. They may only sell a small number at a high price and still make a profit and be happy or they will break even or worse loose money. That's the risk they take as a business.

As a person that runs a business I had a customer the other day come in tell me my price was too much and leave. Fine that's his choice while yesterday another customer who had a more expensive job to complete happily paid more than double to have it down right and with a quicker turn around time. Some times I'm the cheapest in town and will do it right while other times I'm not the cheapest and that's not what I'm going for.


Of course. Anyone who's ever worked directly with customers will eventually get that person for whom any price you set is too much. The problem is that Pony Canyon announced a standard edition, which Right Stuf made available for pre-order, then removed it all of a sudden. That's going to make people feel betrayed.

I highly doubt you'd ever want to pull a fast one on your customers like that. You'd never announce you'll have two versions of the same item (doesn't matter what it is, how much they cost, or how much they cost relative to each other), then cancel one of them mid-pre-order, especially if a good number of people want it. It doesn't matter how much or how little they're willing to pay, because it's not a matter of price. It's a matter of trust.
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Arakiba



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 49
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:01 pm Reply with quote
Dfens wrote:

It appears that they decided to only do non bare bones releases in chipboard boxes with extras and charge for them. And that is their CE and maybe in the future they will have a standard edition. But if all they do is a CE it's still their choice in the matter.


No, what they decided on was to advertise and start to take orders on a standard edition, and then do a 180 and drop it later. That is pretty damn scummy and they should be called out on it, especially if the info from Robert's Anime Corner Store is true.

What they did reflects incredibly badly on them. Yes, some people would still be unhappy if they had stuck with CE-only from the beginning, but at least then it'd be business as usual. The route they went here basically dangled a cheaper option in front of potential customers and then yanked it away. All that does is build mistrust and anger. Any goodwill they built up with the initial SE announcement has been obliterated.
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strawberry-kun



Joined: 23 Feb 2008
Posts: 306
PostPosted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 2:24 am Reply with quote
If that is really why Ponycan cancelled the standard editions, that's so scummy. I really don't think I'll be supporting Ponycan in the future. Like I said before, this is from someone who buys Aniplex releases too.
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Dfens



Joined: 08 Feb 2013
Posts: 460
PostPosted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 3:00 pm Reply with quote
Call it what you want if the SE was either going to lose them money or that after all that was said in done they would barely make any profit off the release they have every right to cancel it.

It may seem like a bait and switch and it may hurt sales as a result that is part of the fall out Pony Canon will have to live with.

As a person who runs a business if I don't make enough for my time and effort or enough profit to stay in business I won't do the job no matter how easy it is.
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