I agree with everything being said here. Same opinion, different vantage points, IMO. The takeaway so far is that studios, of course, would need to think of their bottom line. That is probably the driving reason for pressing outside of Japan. If it costs them less, that’s what they’ll do to maximize their profits on their efforts. Not sure if Japanese companies are run similar to American companies, where the responsibility of the Board all the way down to the guy at the retail counter is to provide value for the shareholders. Basically, the goal is for the company to make money.
Although, I make no assumption that what goes on here and everywhere (content getting out) actually has a major impact on the studios/industry. It is going strong. Just look at the sheer number of titles released every month, and more on the way with no end in sight. It isn’t suffering because of “sharing”. I will never believe that. By the same token, I do believe what occurs is that instead of making X amount of money, without file sharing the studios would make X+ amount of money. That’s just a fact.
More on topic (don’t get me wrong, guys, this is a discussion, so you can add anything you’d like to it. The more the better!) I thought another reason the requests have gone down is because much of them go unanswered. Unless there were members who would PM answered requests instead of replying to the request proper, there are so many requests that (used to) get pushed down the thread list by other requests until they were out of sight and eventually out of mind. Especially by those who would post more than a handful of requests at the same time. True, I’ve been known to tell requesters they should have a separate request for each title they want instead of just making one request for “all titles” of a performer. But, that’s the rule, isn’t it? So, eventually things get to page 2…page 3, and are forgotten.
I used to fill as many as I could (because I happened to have what was being requested) for quite a while. But, then, truth be told,
@Inertia posted a reply to something I had said, and it kind of made me think. I’d have to hunt it down, can’t remember what discussion or when, but he was just straight forward in what he said, not rude, not mean, just matter of fact. You know, how he always is (you know you love him for it). And from then on my need to fill requests dwindled drastically. Not that I’m blaming him! He said what he said for impact, and it worked. Sure, I still post things now and then (I’m about to soon) but I don’t sift through the requests threads looking for something I have that I can post up. Ironically, around the time I read his words, I had a whole bunch of titles lined up to answer requests. But that didn’t happen.
My story aside, the point is, now that I think about after saying what I just said, I haven’t seen any other overt members answering requests. So, that may be another reason for the lack of requests. No one believes they will be answered. But, still, that’s where I point people when they post things like “Title X from Studio X came out months ago, why hasn’t it been posted yet!?” My answer/suggestion is always the same. If you want it, request it, don’t wait for it suddenly show up because it probably won’t. And to my amazement ( which was the seed originally of this topic ) very few took my suggestion. They’d rather not because they’re too lazy or don’t think it matters. So, they continue wanting and wondering, the happy fools.
