Why are most Anime game so expensive?

[King in Yellow]

I've noticed this several times, whether they're from big publishers like NIS or smaller ones, the prices are invariably around 50-60 bucks (not counting the plethora of DLC they all seem to also have).

Any reason for that? Is it because it's expensive to publish a game outside of Asia?

Really not hating or anything, I'm just genuinely curious.

[DarkChaplain]

Price expectations in Japan are rather different for these than in the West. A lot of visual novels especially go for ludicrous prices in the AAA ballpark, while in the west, people balk at the idea of paying even 30 bucks. Perceived value is much lower overseas, whereas most entertainment products in Japan have pretty high pricetags. Blurays costing 80 bucks are no rarity, for example.

Japanese titles are also often entangled in many different licensing agreements for voice acting, music and such; it's prevented western releases in the past, or required new VA recordings. The industry over there is pretty different in a lot of ways from the US, where voice actors are treated like dirt in many cases.

Now, the question is whether to lower prices in the west and potentially devalue your own product's perceived value in your domestic market, which is especially bad close to launch, or to wing it and maybe have deeper sales later on, counting on hardcore customers to make up for the lower amount of launch purchases by buying high.

....and then you could also be Koei Tecmo and do jack all in terms of sales, never lower your prices and still try selling 5-8 year old games at a full 60€ and maybe generously discount it to 40 during a major sale. Yuck.

[Ogami]

At least they have good regional pricing for this title.
Its only 10 bucks for our Argentinian friends for example.
Koei Tecmo just goes full price everywhere, no matter if people in that region can afford those prices.

[Shylaar]

Originally posted by DarkChaplain:

Blurays costing 80 bucks are no rarity, for example.

And with only 2 episodes at that.

[King in Yellow]

Originally posted by DarkChaplain:

Now, the question is whether to lower prices in the west and potentially devalue your own product's perceived value in your domestic market, which is especially bad close to launch, or to wing it and maybe have deeper sales later on, counting on hardcore customers to make up for the lower amount of launch purchases by buying high.

That's a sound argument, especially considering this is still somewhat of a niche genre.

[Red]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

Originally posted by DarkChaplain:

Blurays costing 80 bucks are no rarity, for example.

And with only 2 episodes at that.

They're supposed to be really high quality collector's editions, with the episodes encoded in the best quality possible, but yeah... The pricing is still way too high. Even when they launch for $30-$40 it's still very expensive for a collector's edition of two episodes.

[Sheige]

Originally posted by Shylaar:

Originally posted by DarkChaplain:

Blurays costing 80 bucks are no rarity, for example.

And with only 2 episodes at that.

Meanwhile books and manga are dirt cheap to the point where some of them used only cost 1 Yen.
I really wonder why there's such a huge difference in price.

[Yang]

it cost like $16 in indo

[EVIL HORSE]

have 1.5k game and own many triple A game and yet still sat anime game expensive. go buy ps4 version sure cost double

[Sleekie]

Originally posted by Sheige:

Originally posted by Shylaar:

And with only 2 episodes at that.

Meanwhile books and manga are dirt cheap to the point where some of them used only cost 1 Yen.
I really wonder why there's such a huge difference in price.

Because it doesn't cost a million bucks to produce manga. Anime is 'overpriced' because it's expensive to make, you then have to pay more to actually air it, and the audience just isn't big enough to support the industry without that pricetag. Halving the price wouldn't double their sales.

[𓂀𓂏𓂀]

Originally posted by DarkChaplain:

....and then you could also be Koei Tecmo and do jack all in terms of sales, never lower your prices and still try selling 5-8 year old games at a full 60€ and maybe generously discount it to 40 during a major sale. Yuck.

and also sell DLC that adds almost nothing for like $30 a pop, cumulatively around $1000

[Bogan]

Originally posted by King in Yellow:

I've noticed this several times, whether they're from big publishers like NIS or smaller ones, the prices are invariably around 50-60 bucks (not counting the plethora of DLC they all seem to also have).

Any reason for that? Is it because it's expensive to publish a game outside of Asia?

Really not hating or anything, I'm just genuinely curious.

Wait for sales man I picked this up for 25 bucks AUD which is a really good price in my opinion