Forum - View topicNEWS: Geneon Layoffs
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poweranime
Posts: 51 Location: Los Angeles |
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eh... 5-10 years ago they were right. With enough money you can push anything into the market for a while. The same thing could have been said about the dot bomb era too... the 'Information Superhighway' and 'all business online', and we all know what happened there. People still use the internet for shopping, but its not nearly to the extent that was predicted... from what I've witnessed in the US, anime is really just a blip in the main scheme of things as far as main stream sales. This is why many major retailers are scaling back on the whole anime thing. You think they'd shrink their shelf space if something was really hot or even potentially hot? I'm seeing a pretty big shift in leading anime companies very soon as more true Japanese companies start doing their own publishing and distribution. Tokyopop's doing Nick crap and is trying to redefine 'manga' as if they created the word (and hasn't had and probably won't get a hit series since Fruba), ADV spread itself out too thin by trying to do too many things at once, and Geneon... well, I don't know... layoff are a part of business, but if people are getting laid off, that's not a good or even normal thing... if a company was knowingly going to have hot times and cold times, they'd just hire temps... its cheaper and alot more efficient. But laying off people? That's trouble. It doesn't really make too much sense to me being that Geneon's only been around for, what, a whole 2-3 years as an independant label.... and they're already laying people off? Maybe its a sign of regrouping, but its also a pretty obvious sign that business is not what they expected. I wouldn't say the anime industry is going to die. As a matter of fact, with the Inet, it'll continue to thrive, but as far as trying to promote anime through traditional channels its not looking too good. |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10430 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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The layoffs are several weeks old. I was first told about them in confidense and chose not to report them at that time. However more recently more and more people have been talking about them, so the "secret" is essentially out. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10430 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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A few corrections 1) Gleicher leaves Manga Entertainment. (Forced or not) Good eye. It is indeed worth noting. 2) Bandai announces that foeign sales contribute to decline in earnings. The sales slump was at BAI (Toys). BEI (DVDs) was not mentionned. 3) ADV, CPM and Geneon layoff staff. correct 4) Number of titles being licensed drops significantly. Correct 5) Funimation or Navarre decides to enforce copyrights strongly. This was actually a trademark enforcement, and it isn't the first time. Its just the first time someone chose to make it public. Whiel researching the matter prior to posting the news, I learned that Funimation has contacted other stores previously over different imports. These events took place before the market slowdown. 6) No shows get licensed at AFM last week despite the fact that most major Japanese companies were there. Good eye. I evn missed that one. 7) Anime shelf space at Best Buy and Suncoast are shrinking. This is one of the most important things. But does it indicate that anime sales are slowing, or does it indicate that major chains don't know how to deal with the excessive number of skus. My vote is "both" but with more importance placed on the secodn than most people would think.
Intersting, wasn't aware of it. Thanks. I could speculate several answers, but I doubt we'll get a concrete answer. -t |
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sinistertaco
Posts: 96 |
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No, the industry has lots of places to go, and many of them aren't favorable. Especially since fans have been "spoiled" by recent success and many seem to believe that anime is bigger than it actually is (as seen by the amount of shock that Geneon only employs 70 people). When pop culture phenomenon peak and reach popularity like anime has in the aforementioned 5-10 years, things are usually followed by a severe down cycle, which I believe we're seeing the beginning of. It happened (and continues to happen) to pro-wrestling, it happened to American comics (the mid-90's crash that almost killed the industry following their most successful years ever), it happens with music and movies. Entertainment is cyclical, and you can't ride the wave forever. That isn't to say that you won't collapse and rise again, but that's often the case, but the collapse is inevitable. I think the most apt comparison here is the American comic crash. While there are obviously differences, the similarities are almost jarring. The tremendous success followed by the massive oversaturation and the first "cracks" appearing is almost verbatim what went down with the U.S. comic scene in the 90's. You had something that had been around for a very long time suddenly becoming the hottest thing around and for almost 10 years (between the late 80's and mid 90's) comics were IT. Then the bottom fell out in such a collosal way that it almost singlehandedly killed the industry. We're seeing something similar here, and I'm going to state that my opinion is the undoubtedly popular one that anime/manga is on the downward slope of it's current success cycle. The amount of oversaturation we're seeing is insane. Crappy properties are brought out in droves to cater to niche within a niche fanbases, upstart companies start licensing things just because they can, then fold, then start again, then fold again. Eventually the product starts to outweigh the consumer, and casual fans can't be bothered to care anymore and move on to other things. Sales start to slide. You still have your core group of fans, but with any genre that's really only enough to keep a few companies afloat, let alone an entire industry. There are differences. Anime/Manga doesn't have to deal with the speculator's market like comics did, and availabity isn't an issue like it became with comics, but the industry downfall by way of business practices are basically identical. The reality is, the industry has gotten to big for it's britches. There's too much out there and not enough people to keep it going, and history has shown us that this sort of model invariably leads to collapse. It will survive. I'm not saying it won't. But I think it would be prudent to expect some company closures (especially the smaller ones) in the next few years and less brick and mortar retail space devoted to anime and manga, and possibly some big reduction in licensing and overall business from the larger comapnies. There'll still be anime and manga, but this thing we're seeing now, this massive entity the industry has become? A lot of it will die and a lot of it will change. It's the nature of business. Nothing stays on top forever, especially after it's ostensible peak. So to summarize, the next few years might not be fun. We've all been spoiled by the insane amount of availability we've seen, and it's my advice that everyone at least gets the idea in their head that we're going to be seeing changes. And soon. |
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dlw
Company Representative
Posts: 11 |
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Just want to make one clarification Chris, yes the number was bigger, but as a percentage of the company ADV's was a lot smaller. That was a year ago now and since then things have been fine. Even hired several of those people back. As has been pointed out, this news is just hitting the net but happened some time ago. Companies make adjustments all the time, I still see the industry in a positive light overall. 
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Steventheeunuch
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Well, you'd have to, otherwise you'd be trying to gas yourself in your sleep, right? |
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remember love
 Posts: 764 Location: Germany |
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Well I can't notice. not where I live anyways. Seems everything fine here because all the shelves that always held the anime are still full with different anime.... not like they had an extreme amount of anime to begin with but I haven't seen anything I would call downsizing. |
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dlw
Company Representative
Posts: 11 |
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Not really, I'd just end up going back to software development or move full force into my photography. I just prefer working on anime to running herd over programmers or taking baby pictures.
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sinistertaco
Posts: 96 |
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It's been ver noticable where I live. The difference between now and two years ago is staggering. I don't want to say that there's been a reduction is display space by half, but I'd say probably a quarter. Enough to be very obvious. |
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ac_dropout
Posts: 88 Location: Newark, NJ |
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Any singular anime title is never going to outsell the Titanic in the USA.
Given that's the case Big Box retailers will scale back on anime as a prudent economic decision. So that leave the oh so creatively named Mc-Anime stores to push out these titles. Which means gross sales goes down, which means cut backs, which leads to layoff. Basically the market in North America will not be dominated by Japanese content, due to the fact we have a very mature entertianment industry that is able to fill most market needs. That is not to say Japanese content cannot grow in North America, but it will take a more time. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10430 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Points to both of you for snarkiness. Anyways, if I haven't already made it clear, I agree with DLW. I've said this dozens of times already, but the anime market isn't in "bad shape." Its explosive growth merely levelled off, and this cought a few companies off guard. Especially companies that went through big investment and expansion recently. Online anime retailers are doing extremely well overall (some aren't, but that's life). They're catering to the niche market in ways that brick and mortar stores, with limited shelf space can't. With the growth of mainstream interest in anime, we've seen a large shift of sales from these stores to major chains. We're now seing a bit of a backwards shift as the two sides figure out where they fit into the equation. Major stores don't like carrying 80 different sku that will sell 5 units each, they want to carry 1 that will sell 400 units. For this reason many of them (Target especially but not exclusively) are cutting back on all the non-blockbuster anime. They're learning to pick what titles to stock, anime companies are doing a good job of educating them about what sells fast, and what sells slowly. So to echo David's statement "I still see the anime industry in a positive light overall." And I would lose sleep at night if I didn't, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. -t |
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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I can remember when Best Buy hardly carried any anime. What they have now is immense compared to how it used to be, at least at the stores near me. Two shelves eventually became an entire aisle where I shop. Be thankful for what you have. I think we're just seeing a shake-up of the middle men that's been in the cards for a few years now.
The US still has the second best selection of anime (and H) in the world. The US anime market would have to take a massive nose dive just to bring it back to where it was when I first started watching anime, and I'm still years away from seeing most of what's already been released here. IIRC, my first real anime experience was from a bootlegged VHS tape of Galaxy Express 999 someone copied off HBO. These days we still have it very, very good compared to what we used to have. Personally, I'd probably buy more Geneon products if they'd drop their prices a bit as I tend to enjoy their titles and I think they do a good job with the transfers. At their current prices I'd rather just rent them instead. I know AN's John says that lower prices are what's hurting the industry, but I disagree. Lower prices bring more people like me to the cash register. Dropping $30 per disc in multi-disc series just isn't all that attractive when you can rent all the anime you can handle for $30 or $40 per month. Know what I mean? |
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PantsGoblin
 SubscriberEncyclopedia Editor  Posts: 2969 Location: L.A. |
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There is one anime title that came close though and actually outsold Titanic for opening weekend earnings. Pokemon: The First Movie earned a total of $31,036,678 on the opening weekend with Titanic earning a total of $28,638,131 on its opening weekend. Although Titanic made more money overall, Pokemon's earnings are certainly nothing to sneer at. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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What? This has nothing to do with anything. Please tell me how Pokemon the first Movie's gross of $70 million domestic is "close" to outgrossing Titanic's $600 million domestic take. MOST blockbuster movies outgross Titanic's initial release numbers in their opening weekend. Hell, this summer's biggest films - Star Wars, War of the Worlds, etc, all grossed nearly three times as much as Titanic did in their opening weekends. Titanic had an unremarkable opening weekend (despite beating a new James Bond movie that opened on the same weekend), but the launch frame had very little to do with why the film was so huge. Titanic was a massive global pop culture phenomenon that was fueled by repeat viewings. It had what the industry refers to as "legs", a movie that can continue to steadily produce big weekend grosses over a period of several months. The film went on to rake in nearly 2 billion dollars worldwide. Titanic didn't just "make more money overall", it clobbered every single financial record in film history. Pokemon the First Movie doesn't even belong in the same baseball stadium in terms of success, let alone the same continent. It was a successful film, yes, but it was hardly a blockbuster and comparing ANYTHING to the success of Titanic is a mistake. Pick a more reasonable frame of comparison and your point is better made. |
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PantsGoblin
Subscriber Encyclopedia Editor Posts: 2969 Location: L.A. |
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I know it has nothing to do with anything I just wanted to make a point that an anime DID outsell Titanic. Opening weekend, but none the less an anime did outsell it in some aspect reguardless of whether Titanic made more money overall. Its a fact. Basically, I just felt like proving him wrong because I'm board.
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