gaijinpunch wrote:Never understood how subs costed more at retail, but were clearly a fraction of the production cost. :-/
OK, I'll try and explain it from the POV of the companies.
It's about perceived market.
a dubbed anime show on VHS is expected to sell many, many more copies because in the words of Macek: "people don't like reading their movies (and by extension TV series)". It can be argued what the ratio is, most of the studios back in the day would throw around numbers like 20-1, even 30-1 dub vs. sub. So with that expectation of selling many more copies of a dubbed tape, they would duplicate in expectation of those sales, which by the economy of volume production supposedly resulted in lower per-unit cost, allowing a cheaper MSRP for a dubbed tape.
Follow that so far? They make more so it's cheaper per unit, and they make more because they ANTICIPATE selling more.
(aside: the old calculations of sales via the head of CPM was 5,000 units. Selling 5,000 copies of MD Giest was breakeven or better. The market as it existed in the VHS days pretty much guaranteed ANY VHS anime release was going to sell between 5 and 10 thousand units.)
Factors not taken into account: Retailers don't CARE what anime is. All they want is a product that will sell and they can make a profit on. What it is, how specific that customer base is, didn't matter. What mattered (and still does) is price. Show a buyer a sellsheet that says "this anny may movie has two versions, this one retails for $19.99 and THIS one retails for $29.99" and the vast majority of buyers are going to buy the twenny buck tape because that's most likely to sell. If it really IS going to be a giant hit (see Andy Frain, Manga Ent. and the 9-slot pre-pack counter dump of MANNNNGAAA videos) they'd rather have 10 $20 tapes on the shelf then tying up precious 'open to buy' money with 10 $30 tapes.
In other words, years ago I called bulls**t on the companies because anime being a niche product, anime is only going to move so many units, and for the most part only a few 'key' titles were going to move significant numbers BECAUSE they were dubbed. The main moving force was price. People are cheap-ass. I know I am. Volumes of Blue Seed were NEVER going to sell as many copies as Ninja Scroll or Akira or Ghost in the Shell.
Digging into old catalogs is interesting. CPM led the $10 price spread between dub and sub. ADV kept to older style pricing with $24.95 dub $29.95 sub, then eventually seemed to bow to pressure with the $20/$30 spread. AnimEigo wanted $34.95 for Crusher Joe subbed.
And I'm going to stop here because the more I go through old catalogs I see that prices were pretty much all over the place but overall, what I wrote above holds true.
Except one really funny case. ADV's release of 'Super Atragon', a rather forgettable product of the mid-'90s 'retro revival' boom, which was the trend breaking price of $29.95 Dub OR Sub. Now THAT'S confidence!
I think I lost my thread there. Ask questions so I know what to clarify.
