Why does anime cost so much?

[Psygnius]

Lowering prices does not automatically equate to lower profit. Sometimes, lowering prices leads to a significantly higher sales volume. This is sometimes referred to as "making it up on volume". Sometimes it works. It depends on the specifics of the supply and demand curves.

Actually, I think it's sometimes referred to "the theory of relative demand". But then again, its been about 2 years since I've taken Macro Econ, and 3 years since I've taken Micro.

[Castor Troy]

Are you kidding?

Anime is cheaper than it's ever been. Don't like suncoast prices? go to best buy. Plus those new slimline sets are waaaaay cheaper than buying certain series by individual discs.

At conventions if you're convincing enough, you can talk a dealer into lowering prices (which probably won't happen much since the prices are already pretty cheap).

Find better places to shop.

[BasharOfTheAges]

I understand the whole licensing, dubbing, packaging, etc. thing. But wouldn't it be more lucrative for the distributor to charge less for it, thereby selling more of them?

Prices ARE much lower in the U.S. look at the retail prices of R2 dvds sometime.

[x_rex30]

I care so much about this I buy a lot of Nutech DVDs.

Besides.. I lived in Japan.. wanna bitch.. live there for a while and buy some of there anime DVDs, then complain.

[older_gohan]

I usually roam places like EB and find used games for decent prices. I got the excel saga imperfect collection for 17 bucks.

[Joe88]

Yea sometimes gamestop has some anime dvd on sale for cheap.
I saw dirty pair flash mission 1 ,2, 3 for $10 new.

[oldwrench]

Newegg.com has quite a few anime dvd's for under $10.

[DocturKnowles]

People, I know about supply and demand. My father is an economist and teaches the subject at a local college.

I simply cannot believe that lowering the price on an anime series would make people not buy it. Have you ever heard anyone complain about getting music for free on Kazaa? Or downloading an FMA episode on BitTorrent?

I admit, I don't know much about economics and so I may have my facts wrong.

As far as snide comments about telling me to find better places to shop - that's not what this thread was about. I was wondering why anime costs as much as it does. I'd like to thank those of you who answered that question.

[older_gohan]

First off, no one was being snide. They were merely offering suggestiongs were to buy cheap anime new or used because it seemed you didn't like the idea of paying so much.

Second, if someone answers correctly what do you expect us to do? Continue saying the same dang thing over and over again?

Third, if you understand the economical market so much them you'll understand why lowering it would make less people buy it. It's all fact of cause and effect.

Since the number of anime lovers doesn't change dramatically in the U.S. Sale projections compartively to new ones rarely changes much. True they increase but not substantially enough to produce any huge changes.

So lets say they lower the prices of anime dvd's but the number of buyers remain close to the same over the year. They've lost money. Now because the've lost money they have to cut back on expenses while producing and editing the next anime.

This results in a poorer quality video qise, voice acting wise, and sales wise. Thus the anime sales for the next year steadily drop. Not to mention because of certain servers, you find anime's that can be downloaded.

Now if the sales starts to drop because of quality issues, over seas companies can pick up the slack by producing the same anime at probably half the expense.

Thus the american anime industry has offically gone down the crapper in a matter of years.

This does not take in effect the preference of what anime's people wish to buy.

That itself is determined by the influsence of which anime's appear on network telelvision and how much is even allowed to premier. You see it already how much people despise dub's because they butcher the original anime.

So you see the anime dvd prices will never lower because the american economy screws the american working man.

[DocturKnowles]

older_gohan, I don't expect people to keep giving the same answer over and over again. I never wrote or implied that I "understand the economical market so much" - in my last post I said I don't know much about economics, I just understand supply and demand. I said:

"I simply cannot believe that lowering the price on an anime series would make people not buy it."

If you want to turn this thread into an Econ class, go right ahead. I understand that what I have quoted above would be proven wrong with a simple Supply/Demand graph. That's why it's what I believe, it's my opinion - not fact - and facts are what I wanted. Your reply was very good and it's that kind of discussion that I'm looking for.

I do appreciate you folks who told me where to buy cheap DVDs, etc.[/quote]