Forum - View topicNEWS: Gonzo Shares Anime on Peer-to-Peer Network in Japan
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Its good to see openness to innovation in Japan. The price really isn't that bad when you consider what DVDs cost there.
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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I wouldn't like the price even with DVD prices there, just to make the context of my original comment clear. It's unreasonable for what is being provided. They are funneling the 90% of bandwidth costs onto the customer, the packaging/media costs are completely erased, and they still think they should charge about the same (or more if you go by amazon pricing) per episode for a digital copy. That's just crazy to me. If they were charging those prices here I'd just think they were insulting our intelligence. I don't think they are doing that here, but I do think they are giving a terrible deal.
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Fallout2man
Posts: 274 Location: San Diego, CA |
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You also have to consider the state of the Japanese market though. Over there they pay 40-60$ for a two episode DVD. They make a good deal of their profits from DVD sales on a lot of releases since only a few anime like DBZ or Naruto would ever get prime time placement on TV. If they make the price too low then DVD sales will hemmorage and their profit margins will fall. While you could say that they're keeping prices artificially high, with reports of how at english prices companies cannot even make licensing costs back except on their a-list, and licensing costs even paired with dubbing costs usually are less than the actual total production cost the Japanese studio spent making that episode in many cases. (Using ANN's numbers) So it may be necessary for them to sustain themselves. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Realize that the figures I was using were based on Gamen's post. He had reported that Amazon sells the box set for 18000 yen vs. 24000 that you'd pay for SD episodes. Even MSRP is only 30000 which is pretty close.
Going by this it sounds like a pretty bad idea to me. I understand your point about the prices being high out of necessity on DVDs, but this isn't really DVDs. It's my opinion that they need to be looking at the digital model as a an alternative/replacement to TV, not a replacement for DVDs. So I think streaming broadcasts (which could still off-load bandwidth in a bittorrent-like manner) is possibly a cheaper way to go than putting it on TV, while doing the advertisement/etc. directly. I don't think they can realistically expect to get people who are not buying DVDs at the current prices to buy this. And I don't know why they'd want the people buying DVDs to switch to this? |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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US$234 for the set is rotten when Amazon Japan is selling it for US$159. At least it's at a slight discount while the half-price special is running.
Because when you buy a DVD, part of the price goes to pay the retailers, part goes for the shipping, part goes for the materials and manufacturing process itself, etc. etc. If you buy online, there's a small bandwidth cost (very small since this is peer-to-peer), and whatever they're paying the techies who run the service. Their profit margins may well increase by 200% or more (depending on what sort of cut Japanese retailers get). If they weren't greedy, this would mean that they could drastically reduce prices while still making a higher profit. The drastically reduced prices would draw people away from retail and onto the online service, making it successful. That's if they weren't greedy, though (or maybe scared of doing anything that might have an effect on their established business model?). |
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