Quote:
Originally Posted by NaweG
So you're betting that no one is going to sub that thing out there we aren't talking about?
Better point - I'd be willing to bet a decent amount of money that the average fansub viewer spends more money on real DVDs and Manga than the average non-fansub viewer. I certainly wouldn't have bought all those volumes of Kimi ni Todoke if I hadn't seen episodes of a show that aren't licensed in my region first. I highly doubt I would have bought the boxed sets of Haruhi if I had never seen the show first. And so on.
Given that, I wonder if they aren't likely to actually start to minimize their market if they really delay everything by six months to a year. For high profile titles like Haruhi and Evangelion you can probably get away with it. But for most other series, I suspect what little publicity there was when it released would be gone and forgotten by the time the DVD/BD becomes available.
And let me get off my soap box now before I REALLY get started  |
There are a lot of people who watch fansubs and buy DVDs. You should see my own library. But I'll just say this. There are four groups of customers for any potential DVD/BD purchase:
a) people who will buy it in any case
b) people who will not buy it in any case
c) people who decide not to buy it after they see a fansub
d) people who decide to buy it after they see a fansub
This is the case with any property, but the ratios differ from title to title.
Most people automatically fall into
b). It's sad but true. People are cheap, and with the anonymity that the internet gives, there's not even any moral compunction to give back to the creators, since for most their only moral compunction on this level of "sin" boils down to guilt avoidance. You are correct that some benefit might be gained by cutting the time between initial broadcast (or movie release) and first home release, but at least for movies, the longer it's in theaters, the higher the eventual profit margin is and the longer the publicity lasts. And home release dates kill ticket sales, so there has to be some time between the two.
There are some times where the existence of a fansub will give you more of
d) than
c), but not many. Primarily just new or little-known series that are very good.
For a number of reasons, primarily that Disappearance is well-known yet nowhere near an ideal introductory story for new fans,
c) is unequivocally going to be a larger group than
d). Very few people who haven't seen any Haruhi already are going to start with the movie, and as good as the story may be, those who do might even be so confused by it that they don't bother finishing it (it is 2 1/2 hours long).
And as Relentless Flame suggested, that crappy canrip that doesn't exist and that we're not talking about isn't going to be the "keeper version" in any fan's collection.