Quote:
Originally Posted by karice67
If you want a series that didn't bring in cash, Tatami Galaxy is a bad example. From the DVD/BD sales thread:...not to mention that it was originally a novel => there may well have been a little spike in novel sales during/after the series aired. Generally speaking, I wouldn't look to the noitaminA timeslot for examples either, for various reasons...
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Personally I'd regard Tatami Galaxies sales as pretty poor, I doubt those figures you cited would have covered all their costs. Furthermore, Tatami Galaxy won awards as well, so it at best brought dissappointing sales, and at worst made a slight loss. Most award winning shows can usually aim for a bit more then that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0
The entire mentality is difference... I'm pretty sure a lot of anime DVDs aren't driven so much by a need to own the show (they can just record the broadcast or rent), but because such expensive sets end up being an otaku status symbol. And I can't imagine western anime fans seeing such releases as status symbols rather than ripoffs.
(Note: western home video prices used to be similar to R2 anime DVD prices... that's why rentals were popular. I suspect that Japan is a rental heavy market, since it doesn't sound like non-anime DVD/Bluray sells that well there either, despite being somewhat more reasonable in price (albeit still quite a bit more than US prices).)
(Note 2: The closest thing we have in North America to typical R2 anime releases is probably some of those insane limited edition sets I occasionally read about while flipping through Sound and Vision magazines at my local library... ie. a $500 set of soundtrack CDs for Burton/Elfman movies that is housed in a box that contains a working zootrope, made in a 1000 unit run. But that's a product targeted to an established fanbase.)
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I'm not so sure. I remember that Kara no Kyoukai came out at R2 pricing in the US (something like $500 for the whole thing!) and it actually sold out all their first run copies, so I think there is a group of people in the US who would shell out that kind of money. The key is to identify what they want. I doubt they'd be going for the Moé vehicles that Otaku go for, but clearly something like KNK hit a chord.
Furthermore I think there's a flawed attitude here that you buy DVDs for watching. I see that as a flash in the pan thing, and soon it will revert back to the rental/streaming model, but with modern tech.
Instead they should aim to make their releases quite luxurious. The only people who will keep buying DVDs are those who like to boast about how big their collection is, Everyone else is going to move on to digital, just out of convenience.
Another alternative is to sell off their cels, storyboards and production sketches. I'd imagine there's a certain type of fan who'd pay hand over fist for that stuff, and it would hold more tangible value then a DVD as it's one of a kind. We're forgetting that every series has 1000s of frames of "art" that could easily be sold.