Strictly speaking, Visual Novels aren't so much becoming popular as getting closer to mainstream media in the eyes of readers and gamers, rather than just being the smallest portion of the otaku market. This is mostly because of the release in recent years of a disproportionately large number of non-ero VNs, which lowered the hurdle for playing them for a lot of people.
However, on the other side of things, that also means that VNs will never be much more popular than they are now...
They seem to be trying to kill that perception with Maitetsu, if they're actually going to go ahead and release an uncut 18+ version. What better way to get rid of the negative perception of "SP hates h and won't give us any" than by providing an uncut English TL of a lolige? This is assuming that they are going to go ahead and release the 18+ version of it, though, like they've been hinting. If what they're saying about Akabei is also true, then they really don't hate h that much, it's just that their silence on why there was no 18+ version of G-senjou up until now didn't really help that suspicion.
I really hope they continue to be relatively vocal on matters like this, all it does when they keep quiet is ruin their image with traditional fans of VNs and irritate people that actually want information. I get that there's a fine line between being open and pissing off the partners you're working with by sharing too much, but I don't believe that it's impossible to provide something other than, "Maybe. Wait and see," or "Wait for more info".
Let's start with, where does the english title comes from?
Let's continue with, why the hell is "OPENING" (DEMO MOVIE?) not translated? It's probably because they don't have capable translators of doing so. As we all know most openings are quite hard to translate. Key did their job though. It might also suggest that they want to minimalize costs if kickstarter fail, they can abort the mission without losing much money.
And now, it looks like they're quite sceptical, by quite I mean QUITE towards core VN fanbase, and the crowd which is gonna try to fund this project. Project which is planning to edit existing superb translation, and make it top tier level. Yeah... Nope.
I heard that Sharin no Kuni h-scenes are bad or something, but... I think most people still want uncut version. I wonder what these "..." mean... Figure it out for yourselves.
You thought that Root Double devs were mad with shikishi pricing? Well, there you go! They're running for top tier spot with this price. I think they should add something like: Only for 4,000$!!
Let's look at the cost breakdown now:
Localization costs of Grisaia SERIES - 64,000$ (Frontwing + SP) (50h+/10h+/10h+ = 70h+)
Localization costs of Clannad - 56,000$ (Key + SP) (50h+)
Localization costs of Muv-Luv TRILOGY - 57,500$ (Age + Degica) (30h+/50h+ = 80h+)
Localization costs of Root Double - 36,450$ (Regista + Lemnisca/SP) (50h+)
Localization costs of Sharin no Kuni - 49,000$ (Frontwing) (10h+)
Sharin no Kuni isn't a monstrous sized visual novel, it doesn't have 100,000 lines of text, yet looks like editing of a translation is quite costly, especially such high quality editing that this VN will probably receive.
Let's move further. Development costs 35,000$ I really do wonder where it goes? This visual novel was already translated, engine is old and well-known, because of this there shouldn't be much to do to make it run on english language Windows? Let's also add 7,000$ to that for creating a kickstarter page, and... yeah. There we have 140,000$, it's totally reasonable amount.
That should be all for now from my side... I'm disappointed. Can't wait to see their interaction with "fans" if there will be any.
