Bandai Entertainment Downsizing..

[Sabrac]

So it seems that Bandai Entertainment is downsizing.... and their role of publisher in North America is coming to an end as of February 2012...

Here is a link to the featured article on ANN.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/bandai_downsizing_ken_iyadomi_interview


Lets just say I am not impressed, especially with them not finishing releases of series that they have already begun to release. The only ray of hope I see is that they are going to maintain their (to-date) catalog and finish a few series before halting future publications. No idea what this means about the future of Gundam... since this downsize is going to affect the Sunrise division of Bandai as well.

Well ladies and gents, Bandai gave us 13 years of straight awesome... but looks like the gravy train is pulling into station for the last time.

Let me know what u think about this and any new information is helpful too!

[Buffalobiian]

"The pricing range for our products kept dropping in Western countries, and people tended only to buy sets with very reasonable prices, which we understand is what fans want, but it lead us to a different strategy than what Japanese licensors wanted," he remarked. "So we always had a problem [with licensors wanting something different than what consumers wanted]."

I've thought it was interesting that Japanese media discs were higher in price than their overseas versions. Guess this confirms that it's 100% intentional on the publisher's part. I'm not sure how "maintaining a premium price" on such products will impact on the company/anime image, but the Western model indicates that discs will certainly sell better if they were cheaper. It's hard to think that a 2x higher price in the Japanese market yields the best P/E for the company..

To be honest, I felt a little relieved after reading that article since at first glance I had misread "Bandai" for "Madman".. that would one have been big.

While it's definitely sad to see such companies close down (such companies as in companies that made anime and services available to the local market when it was inaccessible otherwise), I also see it as inevitable.

The recent Louis CK release commented on how much money could come back to the producer by cutting out the middleman. With increased global consumption and consumerism, there really isn't need for local distributors anymore in the bigger picture. (though there'll still be a demand for dubs to a certain degree).

Kinda like game stores giving way to online distribution, in sense.