Expo Licenses & News

MrLaserSharkKH said:
It's Definitley very interesting that Broken Blade Blu-ray has actually had more presales over the DVD and this is also on places like Amazon too!, I think that's a good thing?!
According to the ANN report, MVM said that pre-orders for the Broken Blade BD have "substantially exceeded" those for the DVD. Good work, people.
 
Mohawk52 said:
Shana S2 is a major Plus . I will be buying that one when it's completely out. I've read some pretty bad reviews about Season 3 and final, basically calling it a copped out bag of gobshyte.
The problem with Shana 3 was that towards the end, it became obvious that it had skipped some things from the light novels. I definitely felt it was handled better, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bag of gobshyte. If I had to give it a score out of 1-10, I would probably give it a 7.

Although, the majority of the people who say they hated it, also loved the more romcom parts of season 2, which were mostly original to the anime (in that they weren't in the novels).
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
MrLaserSharkKH said:
It's Definitley very interesting that Broken Blade Blu-ray has actually had more presales over the DVD and this is also on places like Amazon too!, I think that's a good thing?!
According to the ANN report, MVM said that pre-orders for the Broken Blade BD have "substantially exceeded" those for the DVD. Good work, people.

How is that possible?, I thought anime on BD was almost impossible since 90% of UK anime BD releases flop anyway
 
Its possible simply because of the price difference between the 2 formats...for example from the AOL Site
Broken Blade
DVD Version £22.49
BluRay £25.99

Difference is £3.50

Compare that to Kaze's Samurai Girls

DVD £29.99
Bluray £39.99

Difference is £10.00

And if we compare the prices on Amazon...

Broken Blade
DVD £20.00
Bluray £25.00
=£5.00

Samurai Girls
DVD £24.49
Bluray £33.49
=£9.00

Clearly MVM have got the pricing correct and i believe that is due to the fact that they are sharing costs with Madman. Now if only Manga would follow suit....
 
Samurai Girls is the most expensive Kaze/Manga BD which has been released yet though. Manga's FMA Brotherhood BDs (which flopped) were £25 on release just like Broken Blade.
 
Brotherhood's BD release did pick up though - it just wasn't an immediate hit. Manga don't have a very good track record with waiting, only judging on first week/month sales.
 
Joshawott said:
Brotherhood's BD release did pick up though - it just wasn't an immediate hit. Manga don't have a very good track record with waiting, only judging on first week/month sales.
But then they also went down in price massively after it became apparent they weren't going to be continued. Once they were down to six quid a set I imagine they did shift a lot faster - that's about what mine went for on eBay.
 
VoxPhantom said:
By most accounts the Shana BDs for s1 and s2 were pretty badly done upscales. :?
Yeah, I saw comparison pictures in another thread. There is a slight improvement, but it's not as amazing as one would expect from a blu-ray. I wonder if FUNimation will use the Japanese BD masters or upscale it themselves? Still, I'll buy their season 1 rerelease, if anything to show them that I will support the show.

Shana III will definitely be the one to look out for on BD though, I'd imagine.

ayase said:
Joshawott said:
Brotherhood's BD release did pick up though - it just wasn't an immediate hit. Manga don't have a very good track record with waiting, only judging on first week/month sales.
But then they also went down in price massively after it became apparent they weren't going to be continued. Once they were down to six quid a set I imagine they did shift a lot faster - that's about what mine went for on eBay.
Fair enough.

When FMA:B started coming out, I didn't own a blu-ray player, so I purchased it on DVD. Since buying one though, I've been a "GET EVERYTHING ON BD!" guy.
 
ayase said:
Joshawott said:
Brotherhood's BD release did pick up though - it just wasn't an immediate hit. Manga don't have a very good track record with waiting, only judging on first week/month sales.
But then they also went down in price massively after it became apparent they weren't going to be continued. Once they were down to six quid a set I imagine they did shift a lot faster - that's about what mine went for on eBay.

Since the DVDs for FMA:B were £14.99, the £10 difference between DVD and Bluray could have made a significant impact. Broken Blade being a one-off release rather than an ongoing series might be a factor as well. There was also the small matter of PlayUSA selling the US BDs for £17.99...(I took advantage of this for Part 2 after the UK BDs were cancelled)

If Panty and Stocking actually makes July 30th I will find a hat, put it on and then take my hat off to MangaUK.
 
That may be the case. I can't say that I understand the mindset that thinks "well, I own a BD player and an HDTV, and this BD is a fair price but I'll get the DVD version instead because it's ten quid cheaper" though.
 
ayase said:
That may be the case. I can't say that I understand the mindset that thinks "well, I own a BD player and an HDTV, and this BD is a fair price but I'll get the DVD version instead because it's ten quid cheaper" though.
With me, I only got a BD player because my little brother has loads of well off friends so he wanted a HDTV like them, so now we're renting one. We had Sky until we realised it wasn't worth the money, so I realised "Why have a HD TV if we don't watch anything in HD other than news?".
 
Don't get me wrong, if people don't have a BD player or really can't afford the BD then that's fair enough. But that's different to someone who does have a BD player and can afford the BD still choosing the DVD because of the price difference, which is what's being suggested and what I find a bit harder to believe.

Anyway, I'm straying from the point a bit now. It's good Broken Blade seems to be doing well on BD, that's what matters now and for the future.
 
I have bought a DVD over a BD even when I can easily afford the BD and have the equipment, but in those cases whether the price difference was £3 or £13 wouldn't have changed my mind; I was always picking the DVD for some specific reason beyond that. FMA may have been affected by people calculating the total cost of ownership over the series, true, but I'm not convinced many buyers think that far ahead, either.

Perhaps it's just a slight difference in the demographics both appeal to (FMA is undoubtedly more popular online, but how much of that translates into people who preorder BDs is unclear), and perhaps with FMA there was some confusion about whether the series was new or a repackaging, because remaking a successful non-vintage TV anime doesn't happen every day. MVM are also more specialist so a BD outselling a DVD on preorders (a specialist method of purchasing something in the first place) when it's being promoted most through smaller, more niche stores/publications, might make sense. Maybe. Good luck to them anyway!

Maybe one of the reps can be persuaded into revealing a general DVD:BD performance comparison for Samurai Girls if someone asks nicely.

R
 
What were some of your reasons for choosing DVD over BD if you don't mind me asking Rui? The only cases in which I'd do that now are those where the BD is known to have flaws or be of poor quality.
 
VoxPhantom said:
It was more that the ukanime twitter was reporting it as a special Kaze panel, and heavily implied that you'd be talking about other stuff. More of a miscommunication that got my hopes up than anything else!

Nevertheless, other than the Tiger & Bunny stuff and Berserk, Kaze seemed to be very quiet in terms of announcements this time round...

That'd be because I have 4-5 contracts on my desk that require sign-off from legal before we can talk on them ;). Plus another huge project to talk about soon!

So don't worry - plenty of announcements to go round soon :).

Andrew
 
CloudedMinds said:
Its possible simply because of the price difference between the 2 formats...for example from the AOL Site
Broken Blade
DVD Version £22.49
BluRay £25.99

Difference is £3.50

Compare that to Kaze's Samurai Girls

DVD £29.99
Bluray £39.99

Difference is £10.00

And if we compare the prices on Amazon...

Broken Blade
DVD £20.00
Bluray £25.00
=£5.00

Samurai Girls
DVD £24.49
Bluray £33.49
=£9.00

Clearly MVM have got the pricing correct and i believe that is due to the fact that they are sharing costs with Madman. Now if only Manga would follow suit....

The reason Samurai Girls cost is so high is that Manga underpriced it originally and when we requested a price-change it was too late to apply the regular discount tranche that websites like Amazon usually do. It was painful for us too as we know that lack of discount was going to sting sales.

Our bad on that one and we're sorry about that - usually you'll see more discount.

Examples:

AMAZON:

Mardock Scramble BD: £14.99
Mardock Scramble DVD: £15.27

Roujin Z BD: £14.99
Roujin Z DVD: £12.00

HMV:

Bleach Movie 3 DVD: £16.00
Bleach Movie 3 BD: £20

You'll start to see that kind of price difference now that things have been corrected and a more standard discount applied via Amazon too in short :).

Hope this helps clarify things!

Andrew
 
Only a "Possible" on the Madoka BR huh?

I guess it's only a Possible from me on my buying a UK Madoka release then
emotcolbert.gif
 
ayase said:
What were some of your reasons for choosing DVD over BD if you don't mind me asking Rui? The only cases in which I'd do that now are those where the BD is known to have flaws or be of poor quality.

More extras (historically quite common, ridiculously, though that age is now passing), or being a show I'd like to watch away from my living room are the most common things. If it's some cheap UK release I don't care about that much (like Fight Club which I saw a few months ago) I'll just buy the crummy DVD as I still don't have a local region BD player and I don't feel like getting one for the small amount of local purchases I am making at the moment.

Combo packs are nice as they eliminate the second (and third) issue entirely by including both versions, and if it's a show I really love I'll buy it twice if I have to choose between some desirable extra feature and a decent encode.

Oh, and locked subtitles on the BD used to put me off too, but only rarely now. I got used to having to accept that and one of my players ignores the restriction anyway. If I catch wind of any titles with the annoying flickering subtitle issue we discussed here once before though, I'll probably think twice before buying them on BD for the sake of my eyes.

R
 
Thanks for that Rui, always it's interesting to know how other people view things. Though obviously, your lack of a Region B player does make your case a little different. What's the make/model of your BD player which can turn off locked subs!? I'm sure some people would love to get their hands on one of those.

kaze_andrew said:
The reason Samurai Girls cost is so high is that Manga underpriced it originally and when we requested a price-change it was too late to apply the regular discount tranche that websites like Amazon usually do. It was painful for us too as we know that lack of discount was going to sting sales.
Interesting. Care to elaborate on how this works, Andrew? Do you and Amazon agree a certain level of discount on Amazon's consumer price, determined by the price you wholesale to them at? Presumably when you informed them you were putting the price of Samurai Girls up at short notice they refused to offer as large a discount as they were going to previously?

Even after looking it up I still don't really understand what the word "tranche" means". They keep using it on the news as well, feeling ignorant like this is most frustrating.
 
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