Anime Sales in Japan - 2011

[Suzuku]

I was wondering what the submit query was for, since my computer won't show the symbols on that notepad. Can you post a screenshot?

[MelancholicMariya]

Does anyone know why Fractale volume 2 just shot up to rank 21 on Amazon Japan?

Link if you need it.

[something]

Originally Posted by MelancholicMariya

Does anyone know why Fractale volume 2 just shot up to rank 21 on Amazon Japan?

Link if you need it.

Because it's on sale for like 75% off.

Edit: Or, was earlier today. Must have gone back to 28% in the last few hours. Vols. 1-2 of Fractale had been heavily discounted for a week or more.

[something]

Originally Posted by Suzuku

I was wondering what the submit query was for, since my computer won't show the symbols on that notepad. Can you post a screenshot?

Not sure which one you mean exactly, but:

1) Product Page, expanded the text area a bit to show more data.
2) Hit "Submit Query" and get the calculation for that volume.
3) Click the 初動枚数推測ツール(試作品) はこちらから link to get a generic explanation of the variables.

I think you might be talking about the second one... when I first opened the page, the encoding as off. Page probably isn't set to the right one, so just switch to Shift_JIS and it should display normally.

The third link "Terminology Explanation" section says:
用語説明

■記録数
読み込まれたデータの記録数です。

■日数
記録数から割り出した日数です
日数 ＝ 記録数/24

■積算値
毎時順位の逆数の総和です
積算値 ＝ Σ{１/毎時順位}

■平均積算値
毎時の積算値の平均です。
平均積算値 ＝ 積算値/記録数

■平均順位
アマランの平均順位です。
平均順位 ＝ 1/[ Σ{ 1/毎時順位 } ÷ 記録時間数 ]

■積算係数
現時点における平均的な推移を示す数値
積算係数 ＝ [ Σ{ 1/毎時順位 } ÷ 記録時間数 ] × { 経過時間数/24 }

■線形近似曲線
統計によって求められた積算係数と売り上げの近似関係式
計数値の範囲によって最適な近似曲線が使われる
正直よくわからん^^

■推測初動枚数
最適な線形近似曲線に係数を代入して得られた推定初動枚数

くわしくは統計学部を参照してください。

You can enter whatever data you want - you do it as date, hour, rank, and it calculates a guess.

[hissatsu]

Originally Posted by something

500 seems a reasonable estimate for Steins;Gate v3 DVD. It's between 543 and 408, a narrow enough range to use. Vol. 2 was between 865 and 388 so probably about the same. That would put its sales at about, ohhh... 96% BD, hah.

I have to wonder at what point DVD releases will start to disappear. At this level, even releasing Steins; Gate on DVD was probably a waste of time and money. I have to imagine that within a year some shows just won't get DVD releases at all, because it's simply not worth bothering.

[something]

Originally Posted by hissatsu

I have to wonder at what point DVD releases will start to disappear. At this level, even releasing Steins; Gate on DVD was probably a waste of time and money. I have to imagine that within a year some shows just won't get DVD releases at all, because it's simply not worth bothering.

Yeah, been wondering the same. I guess it's a matter of perspective... if you're Yumekui Merry and are selling less than 2,000 copies even including DVD estimates, DVD is a large chunk of sales. Almost a third of the latest volume. But for Steins;Gate or Hanasaku Iroha, it's less than 10%. Maybe it's just hard to know beforehand, exactly, what the spread will be, and it would be frowned upon to pull future volume of the DVD release after buyers have already started on it with Vol. 1. Maybe it's worth their time to do DVD anyway for rentals (or are there a lot of BD rentals now?) or other promotional uses. Maybe there's a concern that some people just aren't going to upgrade to BD yet and companies don't want to lose them as customers while they wait for them to upgrade. Maybe the presence of the cheaper DVD indirectly justifies the overall increase in prices in recent years thanks to BD. If BD is the only option, will customers accept a permanent increase in basic MSRPs (...probably, we're all total suckers and that's the de facto reality now)?

All seem like slightly flimsy reasons though. VHS got dropped eventually. But we're probably years away, still, from DVD being similarly discontinued for even a small percentage of releases.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by something

[...] Maybe it's worth their time to do DVD anyway for rentals (or are there a lot of BD rentals now?) or other promotional uses.

Rental was my first thought too, but they do often make different masters for Rental vs. Sale. (You'll notice that almost all the R2s you have say "Not for rent" on them somewhere.) So it is conceivable they could keep making DVDs for the rental market, and only offer Blu-Rays as the purchasable option.

On the other hand, I think having multiple SKUs is part of the pricing/marketing strategy. A lot of shows still sell "Limited Editions" alongside "Regular Editions", even though the Limited Editions sell way more than Regular Editions (pretty much anyone who buys is buying to collect, and you're not usually going to collect the inferior version). We might think that they shouldn't even bother with the REs at all, but having the cheaper SKU there sets the baseline price for the content and promotes the LE's value proposition. At a certain point, economies of scale may actually make the DVDs more expensive to produce per copy than the Blu-Rays, but they can keep charging the Blu-Ray premium on top of the DVD base price based purely on "perceived value". Since the price of all this stuff is based entirely on perception anyway (the direct costs are minuscule), keeping up this illusion of "value tiers" may be what it's all about.

[something]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

On the other hand, I think having multiple SKUs is part of the pricing/marketing strategy.

Yeah, I think that's along the lines of the last point I listed. DVDs by themselves probably aren't worth it for highly otaku anime but they're basically an excuse to charge ¥1000+ more for every volume of the BDs, where 60-95% of the sales go anyway. Being totally frank and saying that nobody buys DVDs or REs anyway, so let's just offer the normal BD, means distributors can't point to the 2-4 different versions they release and say "hey look, consumer choice!"

Then again I think we all realize this and let ourselves be suckered in anyway... so I'm not sure if there would be much of a backlash if the industry just dropped the pretense that charging that much more more for a BD is in any way justified. We know it's not, but we're all masochists anyway so we'll take it.

[Suzuku]

Now Stalker has gotten rid of the prediction and rank archives, right after installing that new guess query...odd, I wonder if they're just being updated or something...

EDIT: Oh wait, no they haven't. When you click on the product's title it shows a new page where everything is wrapped into one big UI. Cool.

[Buster Darkwings]

Originally Posted by something

Yeah, been wondering the same. I guess it's a matter of perspective... if you're Yumekui Merry and are selling less than 2,000 copies even including DVD estimates, DVD is a large chunk of sales. Almost a third of the latest volume. But for Steins;Gate or Hanasaku Iroha, it's less than 10%. Maybe it's just hard to know beforehand, exactly, what the spread will be, and it would be frowned upon to pull future volume of the DVD release after buyers have already started on it with Vol. 1. Maybe it's worth their time to do DVD anyway for rentals (or are there a lot of BD rentals now?)

There haven't been any TV series anime BD rentals (and the non-TV ones are mostly Ghibli, etc.) in Japan since 2008 when Bandai was experimenting with them, then they just stopped. And after they released all of Gundam 00 S1 but none of S2.

But it seems that Pony Canyon might be experimenting with TV series anime BD rentals as I see that Yuru Yuri v1 is slated for a rental release (but no other series at this point): http://www.discas.net/netdvd/dvd/goo...eID=1575940922