Major manga publisher Shogakukan have launched “Shonen Sunday for iPhone,” but cripplingly restrictive DRM, a meagre selection of ancient titles and prices higher than the actual paper volumes are leading many to suspect the scheme is already doomed to fail.
Only four ancient titles are available at launch – Urusei Yatsura, Conan, Ushio to Tora and MAJOR. Volumes 1-5 of each are set to be released at launch with further volumes for each to be added at the rate of 2 a week.
The reader application itself is free, but digital volumes cost ¥450 each (for comparison, a brand new paper copy of volume 1 of Conan costs ¥400).
An iPad version is also said to be under preparation.
The comics bought cannot be backed up or transferred off the iPhone, and needless to say they cannot be shared or resold either. Buyers are however allowed to freely redownload “their” manga should they delete and resinstall the app, or change iPhones, a most generous concession indeed.
Reviewers report the quality of the images to be very poor, with small text barely legible, and complain of the DRM restrictions, price and lack of any new titles.
If this follows the familiar pattern from other digital media, any failure of the platform will be blamed on rampant piracy and used as justification for even harsher DRM, whilst success will be used to underline the importance of draconian DRM.
And of course there is the issue of Apple’s abject refusal to allow any risque content on its platforms – it seems unlikely Apple would even allow an ultra-mainstream title like Shonen Jump, thanks to what is, by manga standards, very mild sexual content.
Shonen Sunday itself is noted for being in a death spiral – circulation has decreased from 2 million a week in 2000 to a mere 770,000 in 2009, possibly the reason the publisher is starting to consider the necessity of change.
Using a DRM laden and heavily censored Apple-only platform with a tiny screen to deliver digital manga priced higher than its ancient paper version, and all this in competition with illicit online distribution – observers could be forgiven for thinking Shogakukan wants the project to fail, so it can justify avoiding any further troubling efforts at innovation.
Restrictive DRM is the best way to make people pirate a medium.
Also the iphone/ipad is the worst possible platform for this type of content distribution partly because Apple is ran by a bunch of prudes.
It seems they want online sales to fail.
Can corporate execs get any dumber ? Seriously …
iWhatever ?
DRM ?
price for digital version > price for paper one ?
crappy quality ?
How fucking dumb is that …. I think its stupidity on equal level with [overinterpretating of] JPC’s article #175. Hey, wait ….
Is it that hard to provide decent scans without any retarded DRM on the publisher’s website (using english language and compatible with browsers other than IE), with accompanying paypal/bank info ?
90% of iphone apps including are things someone can whip up in a weekend.
So the development cost would be squat even if they used American programmers.
As for licensing DRM yes this can be expensive because most companies that develop it such as macro-vision are greedy scum.
But the iphone’s built in DRM costs next to nothing to use though it’s simple and easy to break.
It costs money to develop iPhone apps – if only in manpower to some.
It costs money to license DRM.
Costs get passed on to the consumer.
Consumers don’t want expensive proprietary inflexible outdated crippled manga. Imagine that!
And Shogakukan will see that people aren’t buying this s♥♥t and assume that there isn’t a market for digital and then go about really cracking down on scanlations until it’s all gone and then have no excuse for the fact that THEIR BUSINESS MODEL SUCKS.
Really sounds like a project intended to fail by design.
“See? we tried digital distribution and it didn’t work out, so lets forget the whole idea for a few more years ‘kay.”