Originally posted by: Raul2106
All you have to do is look at George Lucas's past marketing history for Star Wars and you already have your answer. Read between the lines. This is a limited edition release because next years release is going to outdo it. It will be digitally remastered and anamorphic. Thus it will not be the original with all the scratches, dirt and grime on the print. My theory was correct in the begining but nobody wants to listen to me because they think I am defending the fact that this is not an anamorphic digitally remastered transfer. IT's a MARKETING GAME... Thats all it is. This "limited edition" is funding next years clean pristine perfectly anamorphic transfer. Lucasfilm did this because fans want the original unaltered trilogy. Next year we will also see the final craptacular versions too. The digital tinkering all ends with the 2007 "The Circle is now Complete" DVD boxset.
All you have to do is look at George Lucas's past marketing history for Star Wars and you already have your answer. Read between the lines. This is a limited edition release because next years release is going to outdo it. It will be digitally remastered and anamorphic. Thus it will not be the original with all the scratches, dirt and grime on the print. My theory was correct in the begining but nobody wants to listen to me because they think I am defending the fact that this is not an anamorphic digitally remastered transfer. IT's a MARKETING GAME... Thats all it is. This "limited edition" is funding next years clean pristine perfectly anamorphic transfer. Lucasfilm did this because fans want the original unaltered trilogy. Next year we will also see the final craptacular versions too. The digital tinkering all ends with the 2007 "The Circle is now Complete" DVD boxset.
I agree. For a very brief second, I bought into the whole "First and Only time" crap, and I made my feelings known in this thread., saying that I thought it was a play on words and we will see it again, just not on DVD and on the next format. Now I think we WILL see it again on DVD, and this is another perfect example of LFL's makerting games. So why would Lucas do this? Well because of what Raul2106 said for one. But I also think because of the following reasons:
1. If Lucas put the OUT into next years' uber-release, people would definitely be up in arms and screaming about the fact that Lucas "forced" people to buy an expensive release and one with all of the movies in it, which they may not want, just to get the OUT. Lucas is nipping that in the bud now by giving people the option to buy just the OUTs. Yes, the SEs are in it too, but that is a double benefit for him (see #2).
Fans: "But we have to now buy the boxed set to get the OUT, anamorphic and cleaned up!"
Lucas: "Hey wait a minute, you don't 'have to' buy anything! I gave the OUT to you last year...for many people, this was more than good enough."
Again, MARKETING GAMES! LFL has said numerous times that this is for the "casual fan". Many people said they didn't understand that statement because people who want the OUT are typically far from the casual fan. So where's the trick? In the fact that they know darn well that the serious fans are 9 times out of 10 also tech heads and want the best technology they can have. So they didn't lie, this release really WAS for the causual fans! And they win yet again, because now they just turned a whole group of people on to the OUT and they will probably want future versions too.
2. He is giving people the option to buy these individually now, and like I said many times before, it is also clearing SE stock. Once next year hits and the SE comes out w/ even more changes, these discs will be usless and Lucas wouldn't have been able to do a thing with them.
I'm sorry, but with each passing day, I find it harder and harder to believe that they included (created?) a new [old] SW opening crawl, transferred the OUT to DVD, show anamorphic seens in EOD, etc., just to toss all of that work aside and never use it again.