[Mr_Paper]

Originally Posted by AvatarADV

There's a whole panoply of different factors involved.

At the same time, c'mon, folks. If you can't figure out that Naruto would sell like crazy just by seeing it, you shouldn't be picking shows to license... ;p We did not check our sense of "cool" at the door, you know.

I'm sure it's not just the 'cool' factor that goes into licensing a show like Naruto...

I'm pretty sure those little white demographic questionaires that you've been sticking in your products for the last eight years or so have a large effect on which series you decide to license.

Originally Posted by Tommy

I want to know what decisions licensing companies make when picking up a series. Do they ever stop by these download sites to look at the number of downloads a series has to see if its popular? That in itself seems like a smart method for Licensing anime.

Honestly speaking, there are better ways to know which series will be popular or good candidates to be licensed. Companies like ADV have invested, I'm sure, millions of dollars into market research and demographic studies to find out exactly what shows will sell and be popular before they even air. To base the decision to invest the amounts of money that go into a license agrement solely on a download site would not be a wise business practice.

Originally Posted by Tommy

For example Naruto and FMA have massive amounts of downloads so why don't the companies capitalize on this? I hear some of you say that they don't like to license anime until the series is completed but I would think that the companies would get wind of how insanely popular Naruto is and make a move on it.

How would they capitalize on the illegal distribution of copyrighted material?

Why haven't Naruto or Full Metal Alchemist been licensed yet? It's simple, as others have said, who ever acquires that title stand to earn a sizable return on their invest. Assume that Naruto was to end next week (at episode eighty... simple math) then get licensed. You could expect about four episodes a disc meaning you'd have to buy twenty DVDs just to get the television series. I'd expect the series to sell atleast one hundred thousand units per DVD, a conservative guess... Then again I could be over estimating it... I'll let you work out the potential profit for yourself. Noone has licensed them, Naruto or Full Metal Alchemist, because, again as stated, noone has out bid the others yet.

Now, about companies that "don't like to license anime until the series is completed..." Companies can and will license and announce their having licensed a series whenever they see fit to do so. The only people who don't like a series being licensed before it finishes are the people who feel they have been robbed of a good free series by the licensor. Personally, I think it is in a company's best interest to license and announce a series early. This allows them to drastically reduce the number of free/illegal fansubs of the series in circulation and increase their profit.

Originally Posted by Tommy

So you work for ADV? Out of the new April series that are being fansubbed (I assume you guys check them out?) what do guys look for. Like Midori No Hibi for example seems to me like it would be an exellent show to pickup. Bakuretsu Tenshi also looks like another show that could do well here in the US.

First, I sincerely doubt AvatarADV watches fansubs or holds them to the same regard as most anime fans. In his position, I'd guess his view of them is something akin to that annoying fly you want dead yet can't seem to swat. Second, I also doubt he needs suggestions from us on what series might make for good licenses. Odds are, he has an entire research department doing that for him.