It was untested and a gamble because they hadn't spent so much money on the series before. They needed to test out many things, such as how much money they needed to raise to justify making the thing. They weren't going to sit back and remaster the whole thing just to later find out that they couldn't make a decent profit out of it.Kuwabara wrote:[spoiler][/spoiler]TheGreatness25 wrote: You make it seem like the overwhelming cost that caused Funimation to stop producing the Level Sets, was the packaging. That's not the case. The restoration process itself was the expensive part, as they hired a team of professionals to sit there and frame-by-frame correct the series. That cost them money. It's not about putting out enough episodes per disc. They were testing the waters if they should continue or not. Very smart people calculated how many episodes they needed per disc, probably putting it up against the sales of the orange bricks and other releases, to determine how many sets they'd need and at what cost, to make any sort of profit that's worth making. And apparently, the experiment failed. So, how do you figure that they went wrong by releasing it too early on with not enough episodes per set?
So according to your plan, they should have spent a ton of money to have the entire series restored on a pure gamble that they might or might not make their money back in an untested market, then put more episodes out per set, which meant less sets and thus, less opportunity to make back the money.
It isn't an untested market at all and not a gamble, I have no idea what you're talking about. If the Levels were released more like the current Blu-ray sets in terms of episode count and price, people would have bought them regardless because it's Dragon Ball Z, just like people would have still bought the Orange Bricks in droves if they were 4:3. It's Dragon Ball Z and at an affordable price. You also make it sound as if Funimation has nothing else going on in their portfolio to make them money. They're sitting on their current DVD sets of Dragon Ball, Z, and GT, which consistently make them money, on top of hundreds of other anime series they've licensed and released, which they can then (and often will) re-release in bigger, cheaper sets to make more money.
Next, you think that people would have bought them "regardless," but the question is, are you sure that enough people would have bought them to justify the price they were paying to do this remastering process? That's the entire point.
Next, your comment about how they have other properties (and DB releases) to make them money. Come on. So because they are a successful company, they should take a gamble and release something that might not give them a justifiable profit, because they have other properties that make them money? Well, Disney is a thriving business, why don't they sell Disney World tickets for $5 for a month? Because that's not how business works. Maybe it's because they made smart -- smart to them, not necessarily great for us -- business decisions that they are in the successful position they're in.
Finally, they did release bigger, cheaper sets that sell great and cost them a lot less; they are called the Season Set Blu-rays. Thus, even if the Level Sets sold as much as the Season Sets, they still make a lot more money on the Season Sets because the production cost was a lot less. It's pretty simple math, really. They found a cheaper, more efficient way for them to remaster it and sell it in the bundle like you're referring to. So, mission accomplished for them.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Yes, they released three episodes per disc. It was a total nightmare, sure. But that's how it used to be done, but don't think they weren't smart to the game back then. I don't know how many people bought individual volumes of the DVDs when they were selling saga boxed-sets. And also, might I kindly remind you, that the boxed-sets at the time with three discs averaged about $35, which meant $35 for a maximum 16 episodes. Sounds more like the Level Sets than the Season Set Blu-rays. I collected them back in that day, so I know the price. The "Fusion Saga," which has 22 episodes altogether, sold for $79.99. I remember that clearly. So I still don't know the point you're making because it sounds like the orange bricks spoiled fans by giving them over 35 episodes for a cheap price, so now some fans think that every release should be that cheap. People are kind of forgetting that it was cheap because the entire project was so cheap. If you complain about how cheap the project is, then you should feel compelled to pay more for a less cheap project, no? Had the orange bricks not existed, it would be completely normal in Dragon Ball territory, to pay $35 for 17 episodes, like the Level Sets offered. Seriously, gonna complain about 17 episodes and want more out of them? For Blu-ray? Well, you got your wish, and we're still complaining.And what about when Funimation released most of Z and all of GT in 3 episode volumes? They produced so many of these, per volume, that you can still readily find most of them for reasonably cheap, brand new. For such long series, that had to have been expensive, and a logistical nightmare, but they did it. So, you seriously think they couldn't have finished the Levels restoration if they would have just taken their time?
So you're saying that the finance, sales, and marketing people hired at Funimation -- a company that has made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of profit -- are not "very smart people?" Really? Firstly, nobody said that they had poor performance; their performance was not good enough. Huge difference. So you think that these "not very smart people" should have been "smarter" and just thrown the company's money at a remastering process that they had no idea if it would work or not? Don't you get that the Level Sets being released the way they were, was a test on if they'd sell? The mistake was striking too early, when they were just coming off of two consecutive full releases of Dragon Ball Z.And no, I don't think "very smart people" calculated much of anything regarding the Levels, that should be obvious due to its poor performance sales-wise. Like the Ultimate Uncuts, it was more an issue of market oversaturation/timing, and poor marketing. The entire release strategy was a complete fumble every step of the way, though I partly blame fans for not buying them when the first two volumes were stellar releases. We had a close to perfect release that assailed everything we complained about with the Orange Bricks, and not enough people put their money where their mouth is.
For the last time, Funimation is a business. It has become successful because whether it makes sense to you or not, they've made good decisions. They have an excellent finance, sales, marketing, and production team. They make excellent decisions because the proof is in the pudding when they're an extremely successful company. And the bottom line for a company is profit. No justifiable profit, no reason to enter a particular business venture. If they can give fans what they want and make a satisfactory profit doing so, that's the ideal project. However, they're not going to give the fans everything and not get a return that they're happy with. They do not exist to stroke the fans non-stop. They have a product, fans want to pay for it. If fans don't want to pay for it, they're not going to supply the product. It's simple business. I don't know why some fans think that Funimation should be bending over backwards to give fans what they want just because. It costs roughly $250 to produce an iPhone, but will you ever catch Apple selling them for that price? Not in your wettest dreams. Know why? Because of the same reason that you didn't get Level Sets at 35+ episodes per set for $40 in 2011.
