‪@jessekottonygo‬ 

YEEEEESSSSSS XDDDDDDDDDD

So play it? Commander did not begin as an official thing. one of the guys who ran my previous locals had a bucnh of 100 card all 1 ofs yugioh decks. It was pretty fun tbh

MF'ing hydralander turbo BAYBEEEEEE

This doesn't really make any sense though imo. In order to sell volume in stores, obviously Konami have to distribute to other vendors. It's not at all feasible to start making a load of stores owned by Konami on an international level. Not only is it no feasible and a bad business decision, I don't really see how this solves any problems. And yet some how your second proposal is arguably worse. Obviously not all of the cards can be cheap because lower profit margins have huge implications on the entire company. Cost of production won't change, meaning if they were to start making product cheaper, they would have to change a lot internally to accommodate for that. You argue that more affordability brings more profit, but I'd argue in the case of YGO this would not accommodate for the money lost. Why? A lot of the incentive to lower prices isn't to make the product more accessible, rather, it's to have more competitive prices. But YGO isn't really competing with anyone, not even other TCGs. Most of the target audience for new sets are people playing competitively, or at the very least, semi competitively. This means that most people in the target audience are willing to pay market price. By lowering the price and making cards cheaper to obtain, you are not really reaching much more of an audience, they are already reaching the vast majority of their target audience. Especially considering that YGO is a game that is really hard to get into to - this doesn't mean that new players aren't being introduced to the game, but it does mean that new players aren't starting by buying boosters. They are either starting on master duel, where it's f2p (at least to start), and where games are slightly simpler thanks to GY glow, options to chain built in, etc, and/or structure decks. By the time they are into the game, that is when they meet the target audience - when they are already committed. And your last suggestion is completely unhinged. You're suggesting that Konami abandon the entire physical tcg. I don't even have to explain why that's dumb. To be clear, I am probably in a similar situation to you - it's frustrating that the good cards seem so inaccessible, that you have to make a huge financial commitment to compete. But I understand why it's so expensive. These suggestions are honestly just cope. Am I against Konami's pricing being a bit cheaper? No. May be they could increase the player base a little by decreasing the intrinsic value of boxes slightly, but most of the market price is determined by demand anyway so this is hard to do without messing with rarity odds and things like that. I just think it's best to keep this business that they have, and make sure they are releasing sets that are in the balanced interests between vendors and consumers.

@@doobster3650 1) If Konami got rid of vendors, they would simply operate like TCG player or Amazon. People would order singles/packs and konami would ship them either themselves or through contract shippers like fedex/UPS. People already pay for shipping when purchasing at TCG player etc only there would be less shipping expense for the player because it all comes from 1 vendor instead of paying for shipping from multiple vendors. The appeal of getting rid of vendors is, the reason why cards are so expensive is to make sure vendors can make a profit, but it creates this eternal tension between players and the vendors because players want cheap cards. Konami needs to make players happy so they have to lower prices, which means vendors will have to stop existing. I looked up their financials and its surprising Konami has a 50% gross profit margin and about a 10 to 20% net profit margin. 2) In terms of the target market, the OCG just disproves this. My understanding is commons are available of every card in the OCG and collectors have the option of buying higher rarities. Unless you want to suggest the OCG is not profitable. 3) Going digital is the easiest way to make product cheaper for players. All Konami would need to do is buy EDOpro and charge players a monthly subscription like 9.99 per month to get access to all the cards. This could even be tiered where some people who are competitive would pay more per month for competitive features. Maybe this is how Konami makes time wizard, prog, and remote duels etc... official formats.