Comments on: Ask John: Will Universal’s Acquisition of Geneon Affect Americans?

By: starcade

starcade — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:19:00 +0000

To answer the question: No one really knows. There is a belief out there that, should Universal actually decide to release anime to the US, in one form or another, that they could nullify especially the Funimation deals, undercutting them to the point where I’d believe they might be able to give Gen an “offer he can’t refuse” for the entire company.

But no one really knows what it all holds at this point.

By: starcade

starcade — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:17:05 +0000

And one of the reasons, Megumis, that they had to is because of the fact there are too many fans stealing the product. A $29.99 price point for 4 episodes requires a certain number of a _buying audience_ which, flatly, DOES NOT EXIST. The Bandai Visual people saw this, and cut it down to $29.99 for 2 eps, figuring there were very few “real anime fans” in America. (They’re right.)

Fact is, Bandai (Entertainment) won’t be around much past the first of the year, vis-a-vis anime, if the economy (esp. retail) continues to degenerate as most believe it will.

By: joechummer

joechummer — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:57:13 +0000

Where did you get those numbers? That might be true in Japan, but certainly not in the US.

Apart from boxed sets, all of the Geneon USA DVDs I bought — at retail, not secondhand — were 4 episodes per $25 disc, which was pretty standard pricing and amount of content for the industry at the time.

By: MegumisGuy

MegumisGuy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:09:04 +0000

And one of the reasons Geneon no longer distributes in the USA is 2 episode per DVD and charging $20+