Forum - View topicNEWS: Aniplex to Ship Durarara, R.O.D via Bandai, Right Stuf
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ohstalon06
 Posts: 40 Location: Northern VA |
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*Checks the prices of both things*
Oh good lord, its freaking Bandai Visual all over again. They just never seem to learn over there! This is just plenty absurd when this kind of business model has been proven to fail multiple times and now Aniplex America thinks that they can do what Toei and BV failed so miserably in, and now Aniplex thinks they can do it. They just REFUSE to learn the lay of the land in home entertainment HERE and this is why those models that they use don't work at all. $160 for ROD...insane and damn criminal...I paid $5 for Manga Video's DVD of the OVA, and even though the price is better for this bundle for the series compared to what I'm finding now, its much too expensive to justify a purchase by most reasonable people. $40 per 9 episodes for Durarara.....this is totally the old $20 for 4 or 5 episodes business model with this and its insulting to me that these businessmen see fit to continue with these practices when they've A) Been proven to not sell well. B) to bog down the speed of releases and C) Cost us more money than we can reasonably spend. Guess I'll have to wait to get a decent affordable release of Durarara... |
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jsc315
 Posts: 925 |
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Couldn't have said it better myself. |
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reanimator
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Japanese MSRP price for R.O.D. blu ray box set is 39,900 Yen or about $400. It's one hell of deal because it's offers the identical packaging as Japanese counterpart less than half the price. I'm reading the same whining comments about Japanese-distributed anime videos again....  People are forgotten the fact these titles are extremely niche titles with few thousand sales. They're not some major Hollywood TV and movies where millions of people (perhaps billions outside of US) watch and buy hundreds of thousands of DVD's and blu-ray. Look at the price of domestically released anime DVD's. They're far lower price than Aniplex, but people are still complaining about $60 DVD season set. Despite their low price, only few thousand are being sold. I think Aniplex knows that R.O.D. is a niche title, so they're limiting the quantity. Thus the "high" price is inevitable.
I think people have forgotten the fact that they're buying the Japanese "import" with subtitles and dubbing attached to it. By contract, domestic licensees can't have the same or superior packaging design & bonus materials as Japanese. When you stand back and watch the business activity, you could tell that Aniplex itself is trying to establish themselves in US by targeting hardcore collectors and being extremely cautious with distribution. It's not trying to overreach themselves like the previous predecessor. One reason why we see their products from two websites only. I think Aniplex is not too interested in Joe anime bargain hunter who simply buys bargain DVDs out of impulse and his $5 bargain DVD purchase can't even make dent on short-term profit margin. If they decided to sell anime DVD season set for $30 or less, they need to sell at least a hundred of thousand copies to pay off the production cost. Aniplex spend tons of money for anime production, while domestic license fee is just a chump sum compared to the production cost. I'm pretty sure that Aniplex will eventually release the low price, bare-bones DVDs and Blu rays without pretty packaging and great bonus materials. Eventually they'll get rid of bonus materials once blu-rays become common place. Right now, those bonus features are just gimmicks to net in reluctant consumers. Anime fans, whether you're in Japan or US, always paid higher price for anime videos than average movies. Heck I always read comments from some Japanese fans moan about their Anime DVD and blu-ray price on Amazon Japan. Basically we fans pay high price for niche product available at extremely limited quantity. |
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jsc315
Posts: 925 |
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Well this isn't JAPAN!
If you are going to try and compete in the business at least make it reasonable where people will at least want to buy it. At this point this is just going to drive people away from buying the tittle and just torrent it. It wasn't to long ago that a NBC executive said that .99 cents was not enough for a show to make a TV show to make a profit on a big budget show. That may be true, but if you price the shows to high no one is going to but them. It's better off to make some profit from your product then none at all. Japan is well know it over price niche show like this and obviously take advantage of its consumers. This is a prime example of what not to do! I've been looking to buy Bubblegum Crisis on Blu-ray for years now, but its still well over $200. It originally was $300 when it came out. This is a 6 episode OVA on 2 discs that is over 20 years old now! Over a $100 per disc is insane. And guess who owns it, Yep Bandai. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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And so it is not surprising for those who are priced out of the market by that strategy to remark that they are priced out of the market by that strategy. If you charge 2x an established "full price" price point hoping that get at least 1/2 as many sales, that means half the "full price" market is likely to be on social media saying they can't or won't pay that. If you charge 3x hoping to get 1/3 or more, that means an absolute majority of full price buyers will be saying that. Add on top the bargain hunters who can't or won't pay the established full price price point, and you get a thread full of whinging about price, remarking on price, people saying its too steep for their blood, and etc. For Durarara, Aniplex seems to be trying to avoid that by pricing at the established full price price point, but by splitting two three month seasons three ways to push the price up by 50%, while cutting production cost by releasing in two-disk cases. Whether they will get 2/3 or more of those who would have bought two three-month season sets at $40 each is what they are testing. The market model they have in their mind is that the number of extra sales they would get at the next price points down, $30 and $25 per two-disc case, would not be substantially greater, and so would just represent lost revenue for greater distribution cost. And if they were to sell a full-season boxset for $40 MSRP, $30 street, would they really get four times the sales? It seems highly unlikely. So people who want a $30 street full-season boxset are just going to have to wait until 2012 or 2013 for it. |
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Ingraman
Posts: 1079 |
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/me looks at BGC BD box. It's 8 episodes on two BD50s (1-5/183 min & 6-8/150 min; and I don't recall the episode runtimes or have time to put 'em into the PS3 right now, but I presume that the two Hurricane Live video collections are in there somewhere in some form). Since the price shown on the box is ¥20,000, I'd say that anyone that was charging $300 when the exchange rate was in the vicinity of ¥100:$1 was being ridiculous. Amazon's currently listing it for ¥16,647 (w/tax) at the moment, which these days converts to $203 according to my widget. It's now $100/disc, but it wasn't always. I hate the current exchange rate, even if the US gov't loves it. ;_; Last edited by Ingraman on Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3187 |
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Pick up an extra shift at work or something. Take out a new credit card with a introductory APR. Sorry, but it's only $160... you whine like it's a grand. If you really want it than make it happen.
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jsc315
Posts: 925 |
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Seriously? wow what ignorance. I just dont like seeing companies take advantage of ripping costumers. It has nothing to do with how much it costs. It's the same reason I have not step foot in a theater in well over 7 years now. The prices are way over priced for what you get the food is criminally expensive and way to many ads. If they want to price it that much thats fine but then they will complain that they are not selling enough and that its fansubs that are killing the industry. Well it's there own damn fault when you price a series so high. The majority of fans of anime are teenagers, they dont have $200 to blow on a anime. Hell they would rather buy the Nintendo DS or a Wii or a ipod. They are not just competing with fansubs and torrents. They are going against video games and general entertainment. No one in there right mind is going to pay $160 for a series. Also @ Igraman I wasn't using amazon and its been a long while since i watched the series. But still my point stands. The Japanese market abuses their fans. I've heard this from few anime fans who have visited Japan, but basically those who have anime as a hobby it's much more then a hobby. Its a way of life. Anime is so highly priced there that its the only hobby you can afford as a fan. If they want to price them selves out of the market thats fine by me but dont complain and say its fan subbers. There are easily other ways to get these shows. I'm not going to support a industry that thinks they can just rip someone off and get away with it. I dont buy anime to help a slowly dying industry. I buy the anime I like and if it marked up to high then people will not buy it. It's Bandai Visual all over again. There is a reason they failed here in the U.S. Market. |
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luffypirate
Posts: 3187 |
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Then sorry, but you will never own it. Your comparing the price of anime collections to food and movie tickets?? This is a collectors item. Don't act like the companies owe you because they don't. Stick to your streams and bargain buys. Let us big spenders handle this
Oh and thank god it's BVUSA all over again. I was actually distraught when they left. I had just got into buying their products and had fallen in love. Yeah it was tough to justify spending almost twice as much as I had been used to, but their stuff just looks so damn good. Rage all you want. You can't deny the truth. |
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FaytLein
 Posts: 1260 Location: Williamsburg, VA |
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The anime market has become a collector's market. With the ever dwindling of an already small marketplace, companies are going to shift their strategies so that they can fully tap into what market is left to tap. Everyone is doing half or full season sets for about 30, and that is an attempt to appeal to frugal fans, most of which don't have tons of spending money and try to generate sales that way. But Aniplex is working without an intermediary, an R1 company to offset costs, so prices are going to be a bit higher.
But collector's pretty much don't mind prices, if we did, we wouldn't be very good collector's would we? I don't plan on picking up Durarara just yet, but the 120 bucks don't bother me much. I paid that much for Dunbine Vol 12 and didn't even flinch. Now, I would be lying if I said I wished the prices would be lower, but since anime sales are lagging big time, we gotta pay what we gotta pay. |
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jsc315
Posts: 925 |
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So we just have to take it? Since the industry is failing we just have to deal with there high prices? That ridiculous. That is no way of doing business. And no I have no problem spending money on a show I love. Back in the day when Trigun and Cowboy Bebop were just in singles I bout every single one of them and spent well over $200 on the whole set.
If you're a collector that great and if you want to be ripped off by greedy business men then that fine too. Just because a business is falling does not mean they have to screw over the consumer and and over price their product. With all that said I'm done arguing this point as it's just going to go in circles. |
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The Count
 Posts: 303 Location: Milwaukee,WI |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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After all, its not like those who are not interested in collecting it have to buy DVD's just to watch the show. Getting outraged by the DVD pricing when the show is available on free ad-streaming or for a $7 one-month subscription of you just want that back catalog titles and watch it without ads ... and there is no part of the market that they price themselves out of with "free if you watch it with ads". So the market for DVD's is the collectors market. The odds that they could more than double their sales by selling half-season cases for $30 street are very low. And if they cannot double their original sales by cutting their price in half, then it is a quite sensible pricing strategy to sell at the collectors price now, and then release a cheaper flipcase set in Fall 2012, if the DVD market still exists. Or sell downloads, if a viable download market has emerged. |
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