Forum - View topicNEWS: ADV Files 3rd-Party Claim in Funimation's Lawsuit
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 674 Location: New Zealand |
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*glances over to his bookshelf to check out his Dennou Coil DVD's  )*
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GATSU
Posts: 15304 |
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Shana:
Then why would they sell titles which aren't big moneymakers, like R.O.D. and Baccano?
Considering how money is divided between multiple companies over there, probably.
That's admittedly not bad, but again, the economy was better. Not sure if that Fate/Zero set will work out as well over there. superdry:
I didn't say licensing out; I said expanding.
They're a subsidiary of Sony, which has a notorious reputation of keeping a lot of unprofitable subdivisions, so I guess so. |
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superdry
 Posts: 1309 |
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For one, the Baccano BD set sold out and they are doing another print. Why ROD? Who knows?
Fate/Zero box set 1 sold like 50K the first week and I think it's up to like 60Kish? That's pretty damn good for a BD boxset only release.
I know you didn't say licensing. You said and I quote:
Replace expanding with licensing and you get my point. If Aniplex Japan was rolling in money, they wouldn't care about money received from licensing. Considering there is possible money to be made in R1, have you thought that Aniplex Japan opening up a branch in the US allows them more control over their product than just simply giving the license to a US company? |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1229 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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As for R.O.D., who knows how that did. Contrary to immense popular belief, the set is not a limited edition (There isn't a single place that states it's limited). They probably felt with R.O.D. considering the show has been OOP on DVD here for years, the DVD boxes are going for inflated prices, a Blu-ray Box costing around the same as the DVD boxes Geneon put out would do quite well. The only hint that it did well was when Rightstuf had that special $100 discount during their holiday sale, it made the Rightstuf best-seller list a few times.
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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Is that 80,000 copies including all the discs sold put together, or does it mean each single was bought 80,000 times? 'Cause if the second was true....at $80, Madoka made back 6.4 million from merely ONE of its discs. God knows how many from all 6 (there 2 episodes on each disc, right?) combined... |
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superdry
Posts: 1309 |
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I don't know about 80K (probably at most volume 1 sales, maybe volume 2), but on average Madoka sold 71K per volume. Which is damn amazing - second best sales for TV anime since 2000. |
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3186 |
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The reason Aniplex of America did what they did with R.O.D was because they were still trying to "feel" their market out. All of their releases have been experiments to see what sells. They took a risk by giving us basically a spot on replica of a Japanese BD box to see if the hardcore consumer would bite. I'm guessing it wasn't received well because we haven't seen another release like that from them. I asked their president about it last year and although he wasn't allowed to give me specific numbers, he didn't seem to ecstatic about it. The Rakkyo BD box on the other hand was another story.
Aniplex is trying to reinvent our market with their experimental releases. Instead of resorting back to singles they are trying to win over the consumer with higher end releases and limited goods coupled with their ability to get these products into the hands of North Americans as fast as humanly possible. A few of their releases have almost been concurrent with the Japanese DVD release schedule. They are trying to find a way to make money from us again. I think when they find a method that works they will stick with that concept.
I consider it a premium release. The quality for that show especially was way above anything else we had been given. Very little macroblocking was present and the bitrate is consistently in the high 8s and 9s. It's an incredibly clean image. The audio plays back at 448kbps which is unheard of on an R1 disc. Each volume also came with an eight page booklet, and if you preordered from dot-anime, a trading card. In my mind these discs are very worthy of a "premium" label. Whether it is worth the price they were asking is up to you, but I feel these qualities support it. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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I disagree. I'm with the firm belief this industry needs a monopoly, and the sooner, the better for everyone involved, including the Japanese, who seem hell bent in trying to get our businesses to fight with each other. If what FUNimation states is true, in that they have "first dibs" on new releases, then the first step for a monopoly exists. Now the second one needs to happen and that's just get rid of the rest of R1: -MB, Viz, and Nozomi: too small to matter. Love them all you want, but their trickling of titles in a shrinking market is more of an irritation than a necessity because the "other two" declined them. -Sentai: Slept with the devil, contracted VD, and broke apart. Fixed itself by screwing customers over with dub title releases so sporadic, they're pissed off. Sub-only fans wondering how grammar and spelling mistakes plague their purchase a 4th grader can spot. -Aniplex: Never ceases to show the entitlement fans have when this company decides "Fans" are not the same and treats them accordingly. Pay close attention to those who feel "left out". This leave FUNimation, a company that's done its best to distribute its products across every fan while trying to stay in the black. It's not a coincidence this company gets "first dibs". It's not a coincidence its titles outsell the competition. It's not a coincidence VAs can find work here. FUNimation may not be a perfect company now to run the monopoly, but it can be. It's fought hard to get Japanese to realize how important the internet is. It understands to make good anime means to produce it, and it's trying. FUNimation's role in the anime world is actually caring about anime and its fans, but that's a personal opinion. People fear monopolies for ridiculous reasons, but never once do these fears make sense. R1 needs a monopoly. Not that my opinion matters. The way things are going, a monopoly is inevitable. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Monopolies inevitable result in lowered quality and higher prices - the postal service being the quintessential example. If anything would be better than the current system, it would be a move from licensing and towards the Japanese companies opening or hiring distribution arms over here.
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shamisen the great
 Posts: 658 Location: Oregon, USA |
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I am in no way qualified to refute your statements,but I would like you to explain why a monopoly would be a good thing. Economics has never been my forte, but I just don't know how comfortable I feel with one company in control of the industry. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Isn't the USPS's problem that they're not being allowed to raise their prices to pay for better service? It's not like they don't have competition from private courier services. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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This is probably the most irrational non-sensical post here. A Funimation monopoly helps no one but them. The Japanese don't want it, or else we wouldn't have had Sentai pop up the in the first place, and they will likely do everything they canto prevent it. When Funimation did have a basic monopoly on R1, fewer titles were licensed, the ones that were took forever to come out, and even fewer titles were dubbed. A lot of us saw very huge stretches where nothing we were interested in came out. Also, I highly, highly doubt that Funimation had first dibs on everything coming out Japan. Sentai and Viz have both beaten them to the punch on many major titles, such as High School of the Dead, Horizon, Tiger and Bunny, Angel Beats, Kids on the Slope, etc. if that were true, That wouldn't not be happening. You also wouldnt see the vast majority of TBS an most Showgate titles coming from Sentai. It may have almost been true a few years back when it was said, but it is definitely not the case now. Let's also not forgot that there are plenty of people that really dislike Funi's dubs, their tiny blurays subtitles, shoddy artboxes that peel, and their longer than average time between license announcement and street date. Funimation didn't start to improve any of those until it had competition from other companies. It would go entire months with only one or two actual new releases in an ocean of re-re-releases, and there were even occasional months with no new releases at all. Competition is always a good thing. It causes companies to produce a better product to compete. If Sentai, NISA, AoA, etc, hadnt existed we would probably have never seen any of the improvements in Funimation that we've seen in the past year or two. We also wouldnt have had as many niche releases here that they wouldn't touch. If Funi wasn't around, Sentai may have never started dubbing titles to begin with. A monopoly is never beneficial for anyone, excepted company that has th monopoly. Irrational hate or love by someone for that company doesn't change that fact. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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The following is only opinion. Because they work. The majority of a monopoly's "evil" stems from businesses trying to break into the market and take a share of the revenues going to a single entity. Rarely does one ever hear customers complaining, because an exceptional monopoly ensures people don't know it exists. Case in point: Luxottica. If you've never heard of the company before, that's the point. Luxottica owns 100% of the sunglasses market in North America. If it's got a brand, it's owned by Luxottica. The reason you don't know is because of those very brands. Ray Bans are expensive, but those 99 cent specials at Walmart are not. They're owned by the same company. The reason this monopoly isn't being legislated to break apart, and force competitors to share is manufacturing (such as what happened with AT&T), is because consumers are satisfied. The R1 industry is hurting right now, and it's no secret. There are a group of fans who collect DVDs, and want their product to be "shelve worthy" while demanding the price stay fixed. There are a group of fans who don't care about dubs, and don't want to pay for the feature they'll never use. There are a group of fans who don't want DVDs at all, but the ability to own digital copies. It's impossible for multiple companies to cater to all these requests, but not impossible if one company could do it. Here's the reason: these companies are looking for the next Puella, a title that can sell far more than it cost to license it. To do so means they have to keep licensing titles. A title doing gangbusters in Japan may not do well here, and vice versa. When so much licensing has to be done, there has to be a market to buy it. This market is currently spreading its revenue between a handful of companies, and this benefits no one. In other words, it's much more a struggle for these companies, individually, to cater to a shrinking market than it would be for one, who would then hold all the revenue and this makes it easier to adjust to cater to a market in a more reasonable capacity. Yes, there's going to be changes, such as not as many titles being licensed, but when it comes to business, it's unwise to spend $100,000 on a series that'll only generate $20,000 in revenue. Therein lies the issue, because fans have a wide range of tastes, and they'll expect a company to license what they want to get their money. So, while they're buying Sentai titles currently, they're not buying FUNimation titles, and this applies across the board. With a single entity, the fan isn't going to give a damn who sells it, they just want it. It'll be much easier for a single company to take a loss on a $20,000 revenue-making title if they have 4 titles earning $100,000+ in profit. That's not going to happen in the current market, because there are two major companies spending lots of money to acquire as many titles as they can get, and most of those aren't generating profit. They're scraping by. And it's important to understand this, because FUNimation themselves stated one of their best sellers is still Dragonball. Consider this as it now applies to MB, Nozomi, Aniplex, and Viz, whose catalog is but a few titles each. Again, it's no secret why FUNimation owns the largest market in revenue. What's the point of the others hanging around? If FUNimation had those revenues, they wouldn't be passing on titles they're now leaving as scraps. @dragonrider_cody: Your personal bias against what you know of monopolies has left your post completely void of any reason for the bias. Just wanted to let you know. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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@Mesonoxian Eve:
Monopolies raising prices and cutting service is a basic tenet of human nature - nobody wants to get paid less than they can get or do more work than they have to. Claiming they're bad isn't personal bias, it's economic fact. In any event, Safilo's existence negates your claim - there is competition in the eyeglass market.
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linkismyhero
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I would argue that a monopoly would hurt the anime market moreso than help it.
You see all of the people in here bashing Funimation, for example, and that's just a small representation of the people who don't like them. Those people are buying titles from other publishers. If Funimation was the only studio in existence, how many people are just going to stop buying anime, and start torrenting subbed stuff (since that's what so many of you like anyway)? Let's look at the Mac vs. PC argument just to see an example of why competition works. On the one hand you have PCs (Funimation). Good, solid products that work well, and are owned by tons of people. Not necessarily the best, but good stuff. On the other hand, you have Macs (Sentai/whoever else). Made a little differently by different people, and maybe occasionally priced higher, but it provides a product for a niche market within that industry. They license titles that, for some reason, Funimation didn't pick up in the first place, and yet, they still sell copies. Each publisher has its share of fanboys/girls who would be extremely pissed if their favorite publisher magically disappeared. The smaller publishers provide titles that otherwise would NOT be licensed stateside, seeing as how you stated before, Funimation gets first dibs on titles. If they pass up on one, it magically doesn't appear stateside, and you've disappointed a group of fans who've either read a fansubbed version or scanlation of a manga for it. |
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