Decay

The non-h version of Aselia is far and away the superior one, with an improved gameplay system and some other added content. The h-scenes in that game were quite bad, and the evil route that was removed was just awful. In Mashifony's case, I'm definitely of the mind that the added content (two entire new routes) outweighs the removed content in significance.

I've edited the post to more thoroughly address the issue. There may not be a problem if they're only worried about being able to sell it, but perception may alter to the point where they actually get less sales by having the option. They have to weigh the potential sales lost from people realizing it's a "porn game in disguise"' vs the sales gained from people who wouldn't buy a 17+ version but would buy an 18+ version. edit: I will say that I'm not exactly a moralist and my personal point of view is obviously not in line with what I'm saying here. I'd buy an 18+ version if it was the only one available, and I'd buy a 17+ version if that was the only one. I'm not sure what I'd do if there were both versions available. I'm just talking about the general gaming market. Like it or not, but part of the process of making visual novels popular in America is divorcing it from porn, at least at first. Once you get enough people okay with the idea of VNs, I think eroge will become more popular at the same time, but trying to market eroge to the masses would be a mistake.

That is a really old and outdated statement. That statement is from the pre-greenlight days, and again, things are very different now. Acceptance onto Steam is far less arbitrary. Take everything ever said prior to august 2012 about what Valve does and doesn't allow on Steam and throw it all out. There are now very few automatic denials. Pornographic content is one of them. An alternate version available elsewhere being pornographic is not one of them. I don't think such a thing has ever been tested but it's not against the steam publishing TOS and Valve is no longer able to deny a game based on their own point of view. Back in the day, they used to be really afraid to allow games with an anime art style on Steam. It was a miracle Recettear was allowed on. A game that used to be pornographic? Never in a million years. That wasn't a hard and fast rule, it was just based on Valve's own thoughts of what would and wouldn't be profitable or accepted by the PC gaming community. They were pretty narrow-minded, but that's also one of the reasons why their acceptance process was so heavily criticized. The process has changed completely since then and Valve makes no personal judgements on what is and isn't allowed. As long as a game meets its pretty loose set of publishing guidelines, and the publisher passed through Greenlight, it's allowed. Some of his points are still valid, though. The American public's perception of a company or work of fiction becomes very much tainted when pornography gets involved. This goes for gamers, as well. Going back to what I said a couple days ago, this might be why Sekai Project hasn't fully committed to releasing Grisaia on Steam despite being able to. Their version isn't pornographic, but there exists a version that is. That may be enough to taint many gamers' perception of Sekai Project. Or it may not be, nothing like this has ever been tried on Steam. It's hard to say. If they do it and it works out, expect JAST to give it a shot with Aselia at long last, I guess. That's how the American market is. Non-porn always outsells porn. Porn is just profitable because of how cheap it is to make. When it becomes exactly as expensive to release porn as non-porn, guess what a company will decide to do.

When in doubt, check VNDB. They're really comprehensive. There aren't any translations or translation projects for Noah, nor are there for Robotics;Notes, and I haven't heard of anyone planning a translation for Chaos;Child. One of the problems with R;N is that it doesn't have a PC version, and there is no announced PC version for C;C. The 360 and PS3 are not widely hacked and they can't be emulated, which would make a translation at this point a mostly meaningless effort.

Since a lot of people still seem unconvinced that they won't tone down the sexual humor, references to sex, etc, here's a screenshot of the Vita version of the game that was posted on VNDB: http://www.gamer.ne.jp/news/201307230047/image/8/ Do not click this at work. You probably should not let your kids play this game.

Your posting has jumped the shark. You post nothing but ill-informed hate with no basis in reality. Funny how much you talk about how the community is against this when most of the posters in this thread seem pretty okay with it.

It's not hard to decide, actually. Makina's route gives the deepest look into Yuuji's history, personality, and psychological disorders than any other route by far. The other routes do give you glimpses into that but the Makina route is practically the Yuuji route.

Have you lost your mind? What are you basing this post on? Is this anything other than wild speculation?

No, you're pretty much right. It's just that things used to be different. Starting in mid-2012, they adopted a new system called Greenlight where basically the community approves games, and once approved a publisher can continue putting whatever they want on Steam with very little oversight. In the next couple years, Steam is going to get even more open with even community approval being unnecessary, but that's still a ways off. Prior to 2012, publishers had to go through Valve themselves and they reviewed every applicant individually and arbitrarily passed judgement not based on a set of criteria, but... gut feeling? I imagine it was almost impossible to get any VN on Steam in that period. Anyways, Sekai Project already got World End Economica approved through greenlight so they're now able to release whatever they want whenever they want with practically no additional approval. Them not 100% committing to Grisaia being on Steam may be for a different reason. Just to make a wild guess, there has never been a VN like Grisaia on Steam before and they may be afraid of how the community might react to it. They don't want to do anything that might tarnish their reputation so maybe they're holding back, for now (note: I am not saying that would definitely happen)? I don't really know what other reasons they could have.

It has only been said that a steam release of Grisaia is "possible" but they haven't fully confirmed it. Thing is, that policy might have been from the old pre-greenlight days when there were no concrete guidelines about what could be on Steam and Valve individually reviewed every single applicant and passed judgement themselves. Nowadays the process is completely different so that may no longer apply. I could easily see the Valve of old saying no on that basis but they're no longer the ones who decide what goes on Steam anymore. I imagine if JAST went through Greenlight with Aselia, they wouldn't be denied again, since it doesn't break their current set of rules. MangaGamer has talked about doing an all-ages version of Kira Kira on Steam as if that's possible.

Because we get the point, you don't like it. The last thing we need is another Okami.

Again, I'd like to repeat, now with a link, Go Go Nippon sold 10,000 freaking copies! On Steam! That shitty game. Granted, a lot of factors went into that which may not apply to Grisaia, such as its popularity amongst some mainstream youtube LPers as a weird title to mock, but still. There are niche audiences whom you don't expect to shop on Steam, and there are people there who just want something different from the norm. As for the cut thing, yes, Steam takes a cut. Every retailer takes a cut (GOG, Desura, etc), because that's how they actually make money. Steam's cut is actually less than stores like Best Buy and Gamestop. Even if Sekai Project sells it on MangaGamer, MangaGamer will take a cut. There are no "specialists" who won't. They would barely sell any copies if they limited it exclusively to their own site, so that's a terrible option.

You couldn't possibly be further off the mark with Makina.

Food for thought: Go Go Nippon of all games sold more than 10,000 copies on Steam. Because it was weird and different from most other games on there. There is a lot of money to be had on that platform, and it's not necessarily a mistake to seek out using it. Another random thought: I disagree with saying Sekai Project is taking too many liberties. They're taking exactly zero liberties, because they're translating and releasing an official release put out by Frontwing with no modification other than its platform (PC instead of Vita)

The game throws a few h-scenes at you with flimsy justification in the early portions of the game, then there's a pretty long gap without any, then a couple for each heroine's route. It's really not much. Kamidori is full to the brim with them.

There will almost certainly be no censoring of the dialog. Again, not all-ages, it's 17+. This is why it sucks how people always refer to "no porn" as "all-ages"

Also, since it's Koestl and indirectly Grisaia related, I'll say here that it's been announced that the game Koestl is translating for MangaGamer is Ourai no Gahkthun (or Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning in english). This is the most recent entry in Liar-Soft's steampunk series (also known for Sekien no Inganock and Shikkoku no Sharnoth, which are already in English), and is the game that Koestl postponed the Grisaia no Meikyuu translation to work on. While I might have rather had Meikyuu, Gahkthun seems like a really rad game, and features Nikola Tesla as a hero battling lovecraftian beasts. The other games in the series are also pretty cool, and people who haven't checked them out should do so.

1) There are planned Vita ports of those games 2) Koestl still plans on translating the sequels whether Sekai Project is involved or not 3) There can be sex without explicit sex scenes. The official Kaijitsu release will still have plenty of references to sex and characters having sex as part of the story.

They also pay to license the game and pay Koestl for the work already done and the translation of the extra scenes and whatever polishing that's going to happen. Well, that's the difference between Moenovel and this. Moenovel wanted to make a genuine "all-ages" story while this will certainly not be that, since they're adapting the 17+ Vita version. And that the changes aren't made so haphazardly since they were made by Frontwing.

They're porting the Vita changes to PC, so this is an official edit made by the original creators. The Vita version was a Cero-D release which means 17+, not all-ages.

I think you're really heavily overestimating the routes. Each one is around 30-45 minutes in length. Even the Feris and Ruka ones. They're honestly really short and that's the biggest downside to the game. But it's still worth it.

As a big time fan of the anime, I played the VN a few months ago and really enjoyed it. Maybe give it a time if you just recently watched the anime, but it's definitely worth reading.

I'm glad this game is getting an official localization and that the excellent fan translation is being used. It's seriously the best fan translation of a visual novel ever and Koestl deserves this. Also, it seems this news has completely overshadowed the news of Planetarian getting released by Sekai Project as well. This is also pretty big news, it's the first official localization of a Key game. Perhaps we'll see other Key games get official releases as well.

Your stance is way too extreme. You reject every single possible VN with any amount of gameplay as a VN. An example is the Zero Escape series, which is probably 80-85% story, which has all of the trappings of a VN including heavy usage of novel-style narration, but you've claimed in other threads they're not VNs because you solve puzzles every now and again. That's absolutely ridiculous and you are seriously the only person I have ever seen say this. Don't try to act as an authority when you actually represent some fringe minority opinion. For me, it's basically "Does it read like a novel?" and if so, it's a VN. I mean, novel is in the genre name for a reason. There can be hybrids, like there are of many other genres. It's weird to be so strict about the gameplay thing. Eventually the ratio of gameplay to VN might make the VN parts irrelavent to the point where I wouldn't use it to describe it as a VN anymore, Sengoku Rance approaches this territory, but otherwise I just describe gameplay VNs as hybrids to others. Kamidori is a SRPG/VN, 999 is a room escape/VN, etc.