Hi Andrew, it might not be a ridiculous RRP to you, but to an average consumer, even myself who has bought everything you have put out day 1, £99.99 does seem ridiculous, especially when you compare it to the RRP of your collectors editions which on average are £59.99 at most. It is then on Anime Limited to convince us that this is worth the extra £40 on RRP when the only difference is i)A larger outer packaging ii)amaray case iii)A4 artbook instead of an A5 booklet.
To many, the increase in price for the artbook, no matter how much work you guys may have put in to it, is not worth the price of asking. We had a whole other thread dedicated to Akagme Ga Kill where everyone and their mother basically admitted "yes this set is ridiculously overpriced for what it actually is" and still feel this way, so a case of "look how much AgK is compared to this" is not rgoiung to go down well :lol: Something like Fate Stay Night Limited Edition Part 1 is probably more comparable with an RRP of £79.99 and a sales price of £59.99 atm,[/quote[
You are totally right that it is down to us to sell you on it being more than the £59,99 average price we go for
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As far as the book goes - if it were just an artbook I would probably re-consider doing an Ultimate but there is a hefty amount of interview content too so what we've created is actually more of a full book you could sell separately as a publisher would you believe there.
If you factor in that a standard Anime Ltd Collector's is £59.99 on average for 11-13 episodes and a full softback book with 128 pages sells for £26.99 SRP (Record of Agarest War 2: Heroines Visual Book as an example) then for a Collector's Edition + Hardback book with comparable detail and mix of contents then you're not far away from the cost overall. Add in cost to scale packaging up to fit both in and you're there
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For the above reason, the difference is profound from a booklet in our Collector's editions where we have to use the assets we have or we have to make a choice and an Ultimate edition there too where we have an ocean of material and a permission to use it all.
Whether that puts it out of your bite point for price vs what you get there is another topic but that doesn't make it ridiculous vs the cost of creating it, just unrealistic to expect everyone to fork out on it. There's a very marked difference both as a consumer and as a producer to that too if that makes sense and it was never meant as a jab.
britguy said:
So you could have done TiR artbook as a standard 200 page book but decided it would read better as an A4 book? You have precedent for doing a book around 200 pages before, with Space Dandy Season 1 which had a 195 page book and an RRP of £69.99. So why is this set £30 more than that?
Absolutely valid question too and one with an equally valid answer that you'd not be expected to know which is twofold in the production:
1) Translation cost - There was next to no cost of translation for Space Dandy (the bit at the end I redeemed on credit for an old job we did) and the rest were using assets I felt wasted on the DVD/BDs only there and cost nothing to access. Terror in Resonance we had to translate assets and cover cost of access for smaller parts, which added up.
2) Economies of scale - For Space Dandy, we printed alongside France for both BD + DVD and used the same base packaging for both Collector's Editions creating a good economy of scale allowing the price to come down. For TiR there will be 1,000 copies produced only and then that's it - for Space Dandy we produced multiples of that number. Had we done only 1.000 you'd have found a similar or higher SRP which for the size of product and only half the show, would have been a no-go for us all. It has to contain the complete series for me to breach a certain line really regardless of that is 11 episodes or 150.
On a creative level, yes we could have done it as a 200 page standard one but with so much interview content, it would have felt unwieldy when mixed with the images too so on a creative level there was a choice to be made and we'd be hit either way
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britguy said:
Unfortunately though, every release seems to be getting pricier and pricier, not just from yourselves (Durarara being £69.99 RRP is a bit
) so there will be a point where people have to stop supporting shows like this day 1, and when people stop buying day 1 and waiting for HUGE markdowns, that's going to affect you guys in the long run and cost you a lot of money, I personally don't want to stop supporting your company day 1, I also don't want to stop supporting your collectors edition/Ultimate Edition lines, but I budget and eventually it will reach a point where i'll just have to stop. Standard Edition DVD releases don't even register on my radar (no offence) because the format is mostly dead to me, unless it's a release that is not nor likely will not be available on BD for a very long time.
Durarara at £69.99 is markedly less than the USA cost for the first 12 episodes and was a huge fight to get by the by there so is a completely different kettle of fish. That said it's a combined issue pricing-wise, no longer does Amazon massively slash anime before release often or if they do, it happens for a very short time so that plays a part in perception.
With a standard Blu-Ray coming not very far after on Ultimate's and Collector's Editions remaining stationary at our £59.99 - £69.99 price point depending on licensor, there is at least consistency for our products now which is basically:
Ultimates: £99 - £149.99 (yet to find something that merits the £199.99 point though and wouldn't do that unless it fits).
Collector's (Blu-Ray): £59.99 - £69.99 on average depending on title
Standard BD: £34.99 for 12 eps, £49.99 for 24-26
Standard DVD: £24.99 for 12 eps, £39.99 for 24-26
We have stayed within those lines basically throughout and unless something prompts a need to change up or down (ideally down if we get costs down) then you can at least work within those guidelines
. May I add, we do so at expense of our own margin at times so if we do something cool (like in Illiya we did Tarot cards too) then we absorb that cost and don't go up outside of our standard price points either.
britguy said:
TL;DR On first impression, this set does not seem to have an extra £40 worth of value versus the standard collectors editions you release.
