Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
You are mixing up the price points in Japan (where Nyororin lives) and in America. The price for anime DVDs in Japan runs about 4 times those in the US. That being said they are still expensive.
Anime publishers are not idiots and to think that they would price them so high in the US that no one could afford them on purpose is insane. The problem is that bringing anime to English isn't free. Voice actors, translators, sound studios, licensing...all this costs money.
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This.
The reasons for low sales in Japan and low sales in the US are completely different from what I can see. In general, if prices were a bit better in Japan (Not the equivalent of $40~50+ for one episode) a lot of people would would jump to buy. You can see this in action by watching Amazon`s DVD sales - when something drops to a reasonable range ($10~20/ep) on sale, people snatch them up at an amazing speed. EVEN IF you can track it down for free online.
On the other hand, from what I have seen of US sales, if there is the option to get it for free or close to it - except for a small percentage of fans - pretty much everyone will take that route. Why pay when you can get it for free?
The same goes for manga - it isn`t that hard at all to track down scanned copies on the net the very day they`re published... But in Japan it isn`t popular at ALL. 95% of people head to the bookstore and buy, as the price range for a manga/manga compilation magazine is perfect for the marketplace.
Anime is
cheap in the US.
Extremely cheap, in my opinion, if you take into account all the extra costs of localization. Citing costs as the reason for downloading is silly, as no matter how cheap they make it someone out there still won`t be able to afford it.