Forum - View topicAnswerman - All of Your Streams
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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Sure is. Perhaps one day, Hulu can actually help them earn it.
This is one of the reasons why they can't. The other was making it impossible for the CEO to do his job. The second Kilar left Hulu, any hope for the site walked out with him. This is my opinion, of course. Leave facts to the balance sheet as evident when Hulu was put up for sale and couldn't find a buyer.
Because the Japanese distributors know very well their market seeks cheaper alternatives but have no other option. It's called an oligopoly. When companies work together to set a price, competition simply doesn't exist. Reverse importation fears destroys any belief the Japanese are fine with the prices, or rather, it should. Then there's the fallacy "Japan tried selling cheaper disks, but it failed." Ask anyone who says this what those titles were and you'll get one of two answers: "No one knows" or "[catalog of crap title after crap title]" No Japanese distributor is going to drop the price of Evangelion or Gundam. Yes, they would need to sell twice as many, but the reason they don't is risk, and they're not willing to take any. R1 cannibalized its own market when it introduced the box set. $50 and 26 episodes are yours to take home. This is more than enough proof lowered prices can lead to better sales. FUNimation was once a $200 million company because it took a risk. Of course, we all know Dragonball was a considerable portion of those millions, but it would never have happened if parents were forced to buy $30 singles of 2 or 3 episodes of an entire series. The reason why it's not a $200 million company today is for the very same reason: the internet has cannibalized their box set model. Yet, rather than call this "business as usual", it usually falls under the other name of "piracy". Remember when people said streaming would never be profitable? Streaming can be profitable if it's done right. Sadly, not too many sites have figured this out, even in 2013. |
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Fencedude5609
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On top of your entire post basically being crap, this statement in inherently contradictory. |
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joelgundam00
 Posts: 153 Location: Western NY |
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Justin! I'm really glad that you took over Answerman. This is by far the most informative Answerman, that I've read so far.
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Yes yes, whatever. That statement still makes no sense. |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Also its pretty hilarious how many people are so desperate to demonstrate that Justin is wrong, despite the evidence clearly backing him up.
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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Also relevant. Courtesy of ultimatemegax:
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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The "lower price" thing is well-observed. And confusing it with fear of reverse importation just shows some fundamental misunderstanding. Justin says it as much--if you sell that 2ep/volume thing at half the price, you need to sell at least twice as many to make up the same revenue (and even more to make up the same profit). There has been a bunch of attempts to sell the stuff at a lower price point, but it never sells twice as many copies than if it was priced more in line with the industry average. There are always people who want to buy a thing for less money. The question is, by selling it at a lower price, do you get enough additional buyers (turn non-buyers into buyers) to make up the profit from lower profit margins? This is different than reverse importation fears (rational or not is another story), which is when the imported good, at lower price, displaces sales from buyers who would have had purchased it at the higher, domestic price.
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1229 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Anyone still willing to believe going straight to box sets made more money? Lowering prices does only so much. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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The thing about the fear of reverse importation is that it doesn't have to be rational, it doesn't have to be supported by real purchases. As long as certain Japanese executives have that fear they are going to be a roadblock. Since the Japanese try to get all parties to agree, it only takes one or two individual members of a production committee to cause a problem.
Certainly nothing said on any U.S. forum is going to change that. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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It's not a personal attack. It's a statement of opinion, and I find his one-liners to be trolling. Anyone worthy of a discussion adds context to their posts, and he's been called out for this more times than I care to count, nevermind the excessive use violates the one-liner rule. Moving back to the subject, what's comical is the kid just proved me right with his pretty little graph. DVD sales don't go down unless something else takes its place. Looking at the graph, we can see a strong correlation of dropping DVD sales as internet use increases (by year). Sadly, though, he's under the impression the loss in revenue means the box set was somehow not helpful, but purposely skews the graph by omitting the box set sales against the singles sales, the very point about lowering cost against a higher one. There's also this pesky little thing called "dropped interest in Dragonball". If FUNimation was once a $200 million company due to this franchise, and the interest wanes, this tells me that, at $20 million now, that franchise was huge. What's even more telling is, if you took out Dragonball from the sales, what would the graph look like? That's what people refuse to do, because if you take out a cash cow, what you get left is an actual representation of the anime market without the non-anime fans (and let's be real to say most Dragonball watchers at the time weren't anime fans). You can't have millions of people streaming anime on sites that return "millions" and have strong DVD sales too. It's a market change and some people just can't see it for what it really is, making up every excuse but the most reasonable one. Streaming is cannibalizing DVD sales. People like me saw this coming years ago. Others, well, let's just say they're in a bit of a shock that it did happen. These would be the same who believed streaming could never be profitable. I won't say I know everything, because no one does, but there isn't a single era in entertainment history where market change hasn't affected it. One day, even the very internet stream will be replaced, as entertainment is beamed directly into your brain, provided you have the $1999 chip installed in your head to receive the signal (and room enough to install it, since every distributor will require their own chip). 
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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I don't know if you are calling me or ultimatemegax "kid", but unlike you he (and I) know what we're talking about. Also that chart doesn't show what you seem to think it shows. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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I know exactly what it shows: a declining market of DVD purchases over time. What you fail to recognize is that the chart is also showing a changing market. What you didn't do was provide a chart which shows sales of box sets against singles (and you'll have to go back a bit farther, please, since this started around 1996, I believe, maybe sooner). There is no mistake the box set changed sales in the R1 market. Even today, that $50 price point is one of the most heated argument starters when someone says "Aniplex", who is shaking up the decade+ formula by increasing the box set price to points unattainable by the majority of the market. Profitable? You bet it is. It's overpriced plastic and cardboard. It's also marketed to a very, very small demographic in this market who don't see it as overpriced plastic and cardboard. Value has no price but a price can instill value. You want to see that pretty little graph of yours drop even further? Tell FUNimation and Sentai they're doing it wrong and raise the prices to $300 a box set. I've seen with my own two eyes how anime prices have come down from $200 2 episode VHS tapes to bargain bin collections of $9.99 for 26 episode series. You don't get that by looking at a pretty chart and say to yourself "Gee, so much for the box set helping!" You should also realize that chart's going to continue to drop over time. The DVD is dying. I didn't kill it. The millions of internet streamers did. |
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relentlessflame
Posts: 188 |
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But all you're doing is stating a whole bunch of possible correlations, and then arguing without evidence that it's the "most reasonable excuse" because you say so. How is this more convincing than anything anyone else has said? Streaming is a useful way to watch anime, particularly in an environment where most anime does not air on TV. But anime has been airing on TV in Japan for as long as it has existed. And it's not like streaming isn't also present in Japan these days, with many shows appearing on Nico Nico douga and others sites shortly after it airs on TV. And yet, despite TV airings, despite net streaming, despite prices others consider insane -- and even despite piracy -- the Blu-Ray market for anime in Japan continues to do extremely well. And these days, as was mentioned in one of Justin's other answers, they often go out of their way to ensure that even OVA episodes get web or TV airings before release. Why would they provide all these opportunities to watch a show before you buy if this behaviour is strongly correlated with a drop in revenue? Why wouldn't the same principles apply? Of course, everything has an impact, and there are no doubt some people who no longer purchase anime today who did in the past because they've decided that streaming is fine and they don't need to collect discs. But it stands to reason that there are also people who watch shows on streaming and decide they want to own the discs as a result. Net impact: who knows?
Actually, it's showing a decline in revenue, not necessarily sales volume. One of the points in the original Answerman post was that the amount of collectors is relatively fixed, and that halving the purchase price would not double the amount of purchasers. Given that that the declining revenue also correlates with the decline in singles (and thus the lower net price for anime), you could argue that the same sort of correlation may apply in the R1 market: that cutting the price by half doesn't double (or more) the amount of people willing to purchase.* This isn't to say there isn't a grain of truth in what you're saying that people may be choosing streaming rather than collecting discs. But particularly if that's the case, it doesn't necessarily follow that lower prices will be an effective remedy. * Edit: This begs the question, then, why did they do it? And I suspect the answer is basically: retailers made them do it. The anime boom was over and retailers wanted to reduce the amount of shelf space dedicated to anime, so multi-volume singles were out. And having an anime boxset on one shelf being many times more pricey than a TV series boxset on the shelf right next to it would only highlight the price discrepancy. Hence, the only way retailers would carry anime was as boxsets priced somewhat comparably to TV series. The hit to revenue as a result was preferable to the alternative of not being in retail stores at all. But now, a few years later, AoA can come in and reintroduce a different pricing model because they don't care about retail and are going more strictly for hardcore collectors. But conversely, it's difficult for the usual players to inch the prices back up because people are used to lower prices from them now. The only way to do it is with Limited Editions that bump the price up a small amount, and you gradually shift the base price back upward over time. Last edited by relentlessflame on Fri Jul 26, 2013 11:15 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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HitokiriShadow
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Jetro didn't have that, but apparently you do, so please share.
This isn't necessarily wrong, but if it's true, then dropping prices is the opposite of what they should be doing. And either way, it DOES show that "dropping prices will increase sales" doesn't work. Also, it's funny to hear "legal streaming killed DVD sales" after hearing "piracy is killing DVD sales" for a number of years. |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Yeah, because it's more expedient and overall easier. I guess it's not a great future for anime DVDs, but what can you do to revert it? |
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