Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Does Darker Than Black's License Withdrawal Mean?
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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More than twice the sales, actually, as a home video purchase is not completely profit. Say you have a product you're selling for 1000 yen. (It wouldn't be an anime home video disc, that's for sure.) And to make things simple, you're selling directly to your customers, with no retailers or other middlemen involved. It cost 250 yen to make that product, so you're getting 750 yen of profit. Let's say you sell a thousand of them. You've made 750,000 yen of profit. But let's say you think that price is too high, and people are telling you that. So you cut the price down to 500 yen. You're making 250 yen of profit per object. To get that 750,000 yen of profit total, now you need to sell THREE times as much even though you cut the price in half. But that's not the issue here, as the western market is a very different beast than the Japanese market. Companies like FUNimation and Viz have sustained themselves selling anime at lower prices. |
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HdE
Posts: 50 |
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It's one of those situations where, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an ideal solution.
I really do honestly believe that asking western audiences to pay Japanese prices is only going to further shrink the market for physical releases - just going by the logic that if you charge a consumer base more for a single product, they're likely to buy less of that product. Do the economics of that situation shake out in favour of the industry? We could talk about that all day. There are some good reasons to say that we should pay more, and some equally good reasons to say that we shouldn't. But I can't shake the feeling that apart from all of that, there's the age old issue of businessmen turning a profit. So we can probably expect to see SRPs pushed as high as they'll go before customers decide to spend their money elsewhere. That's depressing to contemplate. |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1229 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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http://i.imgur.com/u6hVSjI.jpg (Singles died in 2010, they were GONE, that is the biggest reason as to why there was a huge drop in sales. The audience didn't grow enough to offset the huge drop in prices.) Like the Japanese market (But not to the same extent), there is inelastic demand here. Like Geneon found back in the day that lower prices did not really increase sales much. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1snsi4f?new_post=true (I recommend just listening to the ANNCast timestamps) The title matters more than the price (What matters more, that it's $50, or that it says "Darker Than Black" on it?), and everyone interested is already going to try buying it anyway. |
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scatteredshadows
 Posts: 22 Location: Chicago |
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Based on conversations I have with people about media purchases in general, there is a surprising lack of historical awareness of the extent to which media go out of print. Sometimes for only a short while, sometimes to never return (at least in ones lifetime). Especially today when it seems anything one could possibly want can be downloaded anytime. But it only seems that way.
I don't have any special knowledge of licensing issues, so it's inexplicable to me why some properties aren't at least available for purchase as a digital download. What I do know from my own history as a media consumer who's lived through the lives and deaths of countless formats and distribution channels, is that if you really and truly value something, and have the means, BUY IT WITHOUT HESITATION! Don't think that because it's a popular title, that it can't vanish. Don't assume that it will be repackaged affordably down the road. Don't think that you can always check it out on Netflix, Hulu or some other streaming service. Just buy it. Sure, it is crucial to understand your values and preferences. Do you think a title is great, but are unlikely to ever revisit it? How likely are you to grow out of it as your tastes and values evolve? What other titles are competing for your limited budget? These are good questions to ask in my experience. However, in the end, you have to answer one thing. "How much would it suck if I could NEVER see this again?" If you can't bear the idea, buy today! |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I doubt that reverse importation is a significant problem now because the current license agreements are written to minimize it. If the Japanese thought that they were still losing money to reverse importation they would make the licenses even more restrictive.
None of those will be the best for every situation. Which is more profitable for the Japanese will depend on several factors, including how popular the show will be here and who it will be popular with. One thing that I do feel sure of is that if the Japanese believed that higher prices here were always better for them then those higher prices would be part of the license agreement. Funimation, Sentai, everybody would be forced to sell at Japanese prices, or not sell at all. So far that has not happened. |
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MrBonk
Posts: 192 |
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What is acceptable and works in Japanese market=/= what works in another market. No matter HOW much a show costs to make. The primary dependency of revenue is NOT North America. So it really does not [expletive] matter that our releases would be cheaper. And already 200%+ more on average than any other entertainment media released on Home Video locally. (Which more than likely costs far more to make. But it's a different system of making things. So that's not comperable) There's nothing stopping you from supporting overpriced releases aimed at hardcore fans who will slobber over everything they can get no matter what the cost. And that's the Japanese releases themselves. Since the financial and time cost of learning Japanese shouldn't be an issue. There is nothing keeping you. While the rest of us have no alternative if any it is little. Piracy is more lucrative than wasting money on Japanese priced releases. And NO, Japanese releases are never always so perfect like you seem to think they are when it comes to video quality. I've seen umpteen BD and DVD releases from Japan that aren't so great. What companies like AoA are doing is pricing their audience out of their own product. (In Japan, they do the same to the people who make a pittance making the damn thing. ) And for people like me, that not only means i'm not only not buying it , i'm more likely to pirate it. And i'm sure not streaming it. Reverse importation is only a fear because some idiot thought it was smart to put NA/JP in the same BD region. It was not always as much of an issue with DVDs. Plus there are ways to help get around this now to help alleviate it more. In addition to delaying releases. Some don't do any of this though, like Sunrise and Gundam. I'm a huge Gundam fan, and have supported every reasonably priced release. And then there is the likes of the Origin. I'm not paying insane Japanese prices for those. Especially when our only legal option is a 100$ LE that is the same as the Japanese release with none of the extras translated. While the SE available in Japan costs around half that.
Changing prices over a small sample size and small period of time is not enough to make a clear conclusion. There needs to be more effort and risk taken. (Most people probably don't even know or are even going to bother in the first place even CONSIDERING purchasing in Japan when they know from experience over the years that prices are a certain way. How and why would they possibly be even be paying attention to what they are releasing,when they already expect the norm? High prices. So they are oblivious and don't go out searching for Video releases. What about the people who wouldn't know it's available at all period to begin with? Or the people who took one look at prices once, and never looked back? Because it's all only being aimed and leveled to the same small sample size of hardcore otaku who are already going to buy it regardless. Somehow expecting more of them to just miraculously show up because the price changed and that's all the effort they made?) And that's the thing. Japanese companies and business culture do not value taking risk. This is a well known fact. You don't get out of the pool after dipping your foot in and saying "fudge it's cold. I'm not swimming today" The water is always cold at first. {Please don't over-quote. Thanks. ~ Psycho 101} |
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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The irony here is that in this day and age only hardcore collectors buy more than a few anime DVDs/Blu-rays a year. Just like everything mainstream it's about streaming, and people generally can live with the expired contracts because, man, it sure has been a long time since Darker than Black was new and relevant. Anyway, whining about Blu-ray pricing is not productive if you want to reform the anime industry. Most people worldwide, in 2016, don't buy physical media in order to consume it. |
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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Well, based on what happened with the switch from DVDs to Blu-rays and with the move start streaming stuff, it's clear that it's not all that hard for the licensing agreements that companies like Funimation and Sentai make to not include everything that you think that they might. I don't have any more special knowledge than you do, but it does seem like the terms are pretty specific about what is being licensed as opposed to even something like licensing a show to be released on "home video." For instance, when Blu-rays came about, a number of shows weren't released on Blu-ray, because the US companies didn't have the license to do so, even though they were already releasing the show on DVD. One example would be Baccano. It was released by Funimation on DVD but not Blu-ray, and Aniplex released it on Blu-ray in the US while Funimation was still selling it on DVD. Other shows did eventually get released on Blu-ray but had quite a wait even though they were getting their initial releases, and those releases should already have been enough after the Japanese release to not run afoul of reverse importation issues. Similarly, we get licensing announcement for streaming completely separately from home video releases. Crunchyroll licenses stuff all the time that ends up being released on home video by Sentai, and Funimation doesn't license everything for home video release that it licenses for streaming. So, if a US anime company wanted to do any kind of "download-to-own," they'd almost certainly need that specifically listed in their licensing contract, and I don't know how willing the Japanese companies would be to allow that sort of thing. For that matter, I don't know how willing the US companies would be. That would probably depend on what the pricing scheme was and how DRM-laden the resulting release was. I want to say that Funimation had done some "download-to-own" stuff at one point, but I don't recall for sure. Regardless, it clearly isn't something that's big, and I think that whatever they did do was prior to streaming catching on. The reality of the matter is that download-to-own isn't much better than streaming if it has DRM, because then its lifetime is going to be restricted (maybe not to how long the company has the license, but definitely to how long the company is around to have the servers to authenticate that you're allowed to watch the video), and if it doesn't have DRM, it makes sharing the content really easy. So, it doesn't really surprise me that it's not happening much. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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The fact remains that these companies continue to exist using the approach they have chosen, however. That they have lower-price releases means they have a broader audience than a company like Aniplex, Sentai, or Pony Canyon, and they likely have a different audience than any of those companies, namely someone like myself. Even if they're not making as much money as higher-priced single releases, they are still serving a market that the other companies aren't serving, which is just as significant when you're running a business. Carl's Jr./Hardee's is not the biggest hamburger chain in North America, for instance. Not by a longshot. But it is a very financially stable chain because during the healthy-foods craze (which is still going on now), Carl Karcher Enterprises went in the opposite direction, making bigger and fattier hamburgers. In other words, whereas the other hamburger chains were trying to sell to people who wanted healthier options, CKE was selling to those who didn't care about it and resented the direction the other chains were taking and thus gained the respect of people who wanted bigger, fattier hamburgers, a minority that might be.
Well, except for classic Disney films, which get re-released each time there's a new home video format, or about once every ten years if there's no new change. It's kind of funny to see all of the new ways Disney can rename its releases, like "Bambi: Diamond Edition." Even unpopular movies like The Black Cauldron get this treatment. Unless you're looking for Song of the South.
Unfortunately, Aniplex is taking away the streaming rights too. While much of the discussion has been about home video releases, that's also a huge deal, as it means Aniplex is effectively stopping anyone from watching Darker than Black, Baccano!,or anything else it wants to yank out. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5828 Location: Virginia, United States |
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A couple of things. Your comments on hardcore collectors are inaccurate. A hardcore collector is someone that buys expensive Limited Edition sets. The rest of us that buy more than a few anime a year do so to maintain libraries of anime so that we can rewatch it at our leisure or watch it when it is no longer available streaming. And if your last paragraph was accurate; Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and F.Y.E. wouldn’t be selling DVD’s and BD’s anymore. RightStuf would probably be out of business too. The Japanese consumer base supports the Japanese anime industry. It doesn’t rely on international sales to stay afloat. We are only gravy. It is quite clear by now, that Aniplex had decided they are going to milk their fans for all that they can get. They are well in their rights to do so. Their products sold internationally are expensive, not because it is a superior product and worth the money you are paying, not because they need it because the Japanese market can’t sustain them, and not because they are trying to deter reverse importation. They are expensive because they know that a select group of fans will pay that amount. Sadly, these are just the sign of the times for Aniplex products. Since there hasn’t been a Standard (as we call it) Edition BD for their first titles under their new business model, we probably won’t see one for the foreseeable future. So as long as Aniplex is putting out hit shows, their model will continue to work for them. So for most of us, Aniplex titles in the future will be like Macross ones, digital only. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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Funi did do download to own at one point and I believe so did Viz early on. I don't think it lasted long because of the infrastructure, expertise and upkeep it required at the time. So basically stuff moved to iTunes and Amazon. You can still buy stuff and download it there. You can get Ghost in the Shell SAC in HD (even though there's never been a physical HD release in NA) on iTunes, at one point you could get When They Cry even after the DVDs went out of print for download on Amazon, Time of Eve was on iTunes before its kickstarter, and there's a fair amount of others (not comprehensive obviously). What it basically serves is people who don't want physical media, but want to own a digital copy (a minority probably) and most importantly it serves as advertisement for the anime medium. "You like Family Guy? Look there's this other stuff that looks like cartoons too! Why don't you try it out!?" But your point about DRM is spot on. Most of the download services have stated in the past that they can't guarantee that digital products will be available in the future. I had this happen to some music I owned. The thing is that sometimes companies have conflict with contracts. Look what happened with Amazon and Hachette which got really ugly. Sometimes media companies decide to yank their product because they might be having a legal dispute with an artist, so that artist's work disappears from a streaming platform. So there's no guarantee of having your purchases available for download in the future. |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 1229 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Haibane Renmei has a similar situation. It first hit Blu-ray July 2010 with an MSRP of 22,000 yen. It sold 3,075 copies in its first week. It got a re-release in October 2015 with an MSRP of 13,000 yen and it sold a measly 599 copies. Now let's bring in another example, one that had a price so high, even some otaku complained about it (It cost much more than even the full MSRP of the DVD singles-6,300 yen x 8 volumes=50,400 yen). As you can see here, Kanon (2006) got two BD box releases, the first had an MSRP of 59,600 yen, while the re-release was 18,500 yen. The more expensive release sold 3,197, while the cheaper one did only 850 by comparison (Average of the TV series on DVD was 18,170). And I could bring up other examples of say cheap Emotion the Best re-releases of older shows that don't do that well, among others, but Japan has experimented plenty of times, and time and time again, it's shown high prices are the only answer for those selling the discs as sales don't increase enough to justify the drop in price. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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The problem there is that all of those examples are of a discounted release long after the show has ended and interest has waned significantly.
Are there any examples of a show released at a lower price when it is still new compared to a roughly equally popular show that's released at a normal Japanese home video price? |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I think there are a few variables you aren't taking into account: -those shows are all pretty old -the expensive release for each was several years prior to the cheaper re-release -most fans of each series most likely already bought a previous release -the cheaper releases each had fewer extras and would be much less appealing to a collector, so few people who already owned the show would have any reason to purchase it. I have a feeling that if you released those sets at the same time, the results would be much different. I'm not arguing that the Japanese market isn't inelastic, there is plenty of evidence to support that it is, but I don't think these are very good examples of Japan experimenting with cheaper releases. They are all barebones box sets that came out 5+ years after their more expensive LE box set... which was already several years after the TV broadcast. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4378 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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especially if there is a small chance that aniplex might to a redubing of the series now that its got the license back. though what would that mean for the FMA franchise since its also an aniplex product?? you better believe people are goo\nna be peeved to no ends if they decide they want that license back and tell funi to let that license expire too. |
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