Ask John: When Will the Anime Industry Adopt Blu-ray?

Question:
With the format war now decided how long before anime starts adapting its title to Blu-Ray in mass?

Answer:
Despite the high definition media format having been won by Blu-ray, I suspect that the anime industry is still not likely to fully adopt the Blu-ray format yet for a number of reasons. The consumer market for Blu-ray discs is still relatively small compared to the market for standard definition DVDs. While many American anime fans are quite astute about critiquing video quality, just as many, if not more, American anime viewers can’t see a significant difference between standard definition and high definition images. In fact, when a large number of American anime viewers seem satisfied with free anime available online in poor quality streaming Flash, there may not be a very substantial consumer demand for anime on Blu-ray.

Furthermore, consumer adoption of Blu-ray has been slow because of the high cost of entry. California based media analysis company Enderle Group has recently stated that Blu-ray players will need to drop below $200 in order to stimulate widespread consumer adoption. The cost of producing Blu-ray discs is also still prohibitively high, especially for the American anime industry, which doesn’t have the financial resources of the Hollywood movie industry. Sony Pictures, which does have tremendous financial resources, has released two anime titles on Blu-ray. Likewise, Warner Bros. is releasing Appleseed: Ex Machina on high definition disc. Adoption within the core American anime industry has been smaller, with one Blu-ray release from FUNimation and two from Bandai Visual. AD Vision has announced plans to begin Blu-ray releases as early as this spring, but that probability seems remote as wholesale and retail solicitations would have to appear now in order to actually meet spring release dates.

Although America’s anime industry has already taken its first steps into Blu-ray releasing, I don’t expect the domestic industry to aggressively support the format until it’s more affordable for both producers and consumers, and more widely adopted among consumers. That may take another year or more.