TV's Frink wrote: I'd be interested in if it's a reaction to all the one-star reviews, or simple price matching of other vendors.
or all part of the marketing strategy. The more units you sell the greater the savings during production.
Alien Anthology is 6 discs for $69.99 [$11.66/disc] (originally $99.99 @ $16.66/disc), a 1 year old set.
Star Wars is 9 discs at $79.99 [$8.88/disc] (originally $139.99 @ $15.55/disc). That's a decent sign of economic popularity. I'd guess they can probably drop these sets to under $50, they'll sell that many units.
Here's a manufacturer: http://www.newcyberian.com/blu-ray.html
Quantity Unit Price (US$) Total Price (US$) 1,000 $ 5.20 $ 5,200.00 2,000 $ 4.10 $ 8,200.00 3,000 $ 3.98 $ 11,940.00 4,000 $ 3.70 $ 14,800.00 5,000 $ 3.15 $ 15,750.00 6,000 $ 2.99 $ 17,940.00 7,000 $ 2.85 $ 19,950.00 8,000 $ 2.79 $ 22,320.00 9,000 $ 2.70 $ 24,300.00 10,000 $ 2.60 $ 26,000.00 25,000 $ 2.40 $ 60,000.00 50,000 $ 2.30 $ 115,000.00 100,000 $ 2.20 $ 220,000.00
SW is talking hundreds of thousands maybe millions, so it might be safe to say, 2 bucks a disc. There's some flip over point where it's worth dropping the price to 'X' to get that next level of unit production. (but LFL is probably much more cautious after TPM era) And for 2 million units, there might be another drop. The advertising costs are probably greater then the discs themselves.
...and the round of articles over the last week saved LFL money, as they didn't need to do general promotion, the blogosphere and newspapers told the unsuspecting world the set was coming.