Even if that were to be a factor in the retail price, that’s not the case here:
- It‘s rather unlikely to be anything more than a BD25 disc at <30mins with no extras. Other releases would span multiple discs and require BD50 dual layers.
- A quick evaluation of material would be that the CE is the standard Amaray cased product put into a card outer sleeve with a 16 page insert.
- It’s not like there’s even any art to commission, (assuming outer sleeve uses the same as the JP release, and booklet materials are supplied)
Tell me I’m missing something here, or that 16 page booklet is worth around £15 (’cheap’ pricing £25 CE vs £10) or £25 (srp of both: £40 CE vs £15 )
If you’re just looking at material costs (not licensing), there‘s one heck of a mark-up with anime anyway.
I’ve previously looked up BR pressing companies to see how much more the ‘premium’ digipak packaging costs, and you can fairly well approximate £1 per item for a (pricey) short run with flashy/premium bits, or half that for more basic items. That‘s £3-£4 of material cost at most.
I guess you could infer that the material costs for the CE may be up to double the cost of the ‘standard’. But that doesn’t work either, as the end price difference is more like 2.5x…
In summary: the CE costs more than 2.5x as much as the standard edition. That extra £15-£25 gets you a 16-page
leaflet, and an outer
slipcover.