[quote="Midori (post: 1454047)"]It may be more expensive, but all of your money (I believe]
That might be an over-simplification actually. Far more than just the animation studio is involved on an anime production committee, and I'm sure each of those companies wants their own slice of the pie. I have absolutely no clue as to what percentage of profits actually reach the studio, but given the dismal work conditions Japanese animators are apparently in, I suspect they aren't number one on the list.
I know very little about this though, so I could be mistaken.
Buying the anime directly is all fine and good, but people (as in Western fans) generally aren't going to want to pay something like $80 for 2 or 3 episode discs each even with fancy packaging and extras. You really need to have a collector's mentality for that sort of thing.