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NEWS: Anime DVD/BD Market in Japan Shrank in 2022

That's a huge decline. I feel like bd sales could do very well if they priced at a competitive range. I think there's definitely a type of customer who'd buy in if they didn't have to budget so much to decide on just one series. And I don't know how much bds cost to make but they could definitely be priced much lower than they are now and still turn a decent profit right?

Competing with streaming is hard, but as more streaming services start competing and making it hard to find series in one place, the more convenient a hard copy begins to sound.

The reason they're priced so high is because in the past the home video publisher usually would be at the top or near the top of the production committee, so they invested the most money.

Lotus Viridis wrote:

That's a huge decline. I feel like bd sales could do very well if they priced at a competitive range. I think there's definitely a type of customer who'd buy in if they didn't have to budget so much to decide on just one series. And I don't know how much bds cost to make but they could definitely be priced much lower than they are now and still turn a decent profit right? Competing with streaming is hard, but as more streaming services start competing and making it hard to find series in one place, the more convenient a hard copy begins to sound.

If they lowered the price, sales wouldn't increase that much. Cheaper re-releases tend to not do what you think they would. The reason they're priced so high is because in the past the home video publisher usually would be at the top or near the top of the production committee, so they invested the most money. The only people interested in buying in Japan are the collectors with an inelastic demand for their favorite anime, and it would take only a few thousand of them to recoup most of the costs. You have to keep in mind, Japanese homes are significantly smaller and most people there do not care about having large home video collections. Rental shops are still very much a thing there (helps when everything is close together) and there's also streaming. This results in having to sell fewer copies of something at a higher price in order to turn a good profit. Physical media in general is more expensive in Japan, not just anime Blu-rays.
animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-07

Inelastic demand has also extended here, though of course not to the same extent. Chad Kime confirmed that for Geneon during the anime DVD bubble era (print runs and sales were much higher back then), when they lowered the price, sales didn't increase very much. Basically everyone interested in buying a show was already doing so. Timestamps: 44:20, 66:00
animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2009-12-03
animenewsnetwork.com/audiovideo/anncast/anncast017.mp3