AnimEigo News

AnimEigo has announced that they are aiming for this Christmas for their release of Macross on DVD. The entire series has been remastered, and they hope to put before and after pictures online soon. They have their next project lined up, but the contract is not signed, so it will not be announced until Otakon. Staring this fall, AnimEigo will be DVD only, including sets like Macross. AnimEigo’s president Robert Woodhead’s comments on the subject were:

Several fans (OK, several dozen…) have written asking for more details on our decision to, in their words, “dump VHS and force us to buy DVD players.” As this is a fairly major decision, it’s only fair that we explain our reasoning:

Most of AnimEigo’s new titles are going to be special-editions, and most of them will be subtitled-only.

Subtitled VHS sales have died in the last 6 months. Retail outlets (the big chain stores in particular) will not buy them anymore.

Thus, our major sales outlet for subtitled VHS is direct sales to fans.

Because of packaging and mastering costs, we basically need about 500-1000 VHS unit sales in order to make it even marginally worthwhile to do a VHS edition as well as a DVD one. NOTE that this means sales of VHS tapes to people who WOULD NOT buy the DVD if that was the only option.

On Macross, for example, the voting was going 10:1 in favor of people who wanted it on DVD.

DVD has destroyed the LD market, and is making large inroads on the VHS markets, especially in the anime genre. Anime fans (and in particular the fans who buy AnimEigo products) are very quality conscious.

Finally, we have to think ahead to what the market will be in 6-12 months, not what it is today. DVD penetration in the anime market is soaring at an astonishing rate.

It was not an easy decision to make, but we feel it is one that best serves the needs of our core customers. Bottom line, done properly, DVD is so much better than VHS that it isn’t funny. And you can bet that AnimEigo will take the time to do it right.