Clannad release imminent - You hyped?

[Mkilbride]

It's the original art. They didn't remake or re-draw any of it. It was scaled down to 640x480 for the original release. These are the original art assets.

 

 

Also, it's a Key VN. The art itself is throwing a ton of people off. When you see those shitty Sakura games, though new, have better art, it does make people raise an eyebrow.  The price may have been fine back then, but these days? The art was passable when released, and in 2015, almost 2016, it's laughable. Slice of life story too.

 

There's many factors. It doesn't matter if it had 10 hours or 1000 hours of content if it doesn't look appealing, and Clannad doesn't. Key VNs never do. I really liked One ~ To a Radiant Season myself though. Being popular as an anime does not translate being popular as a VN.  Yes I know the anime was made cause the VN was popular...in Japan. It had never been officially brought to the West 'til now.    Key VNs are also not ones you replay...so all the fans of it who already read it with the fan patch aren't buying it. Especially not @ 50$.  As for the sales estimate above about 126,000$, you have to take into account many of those were sold on Kickstarter. 1500~ or so.

 

We'll know by the end of the week what the real sales numbers look like. I'd be really surprised if it broke 5,000. That news story saying it outsold Call of Duty Black Ops helped push sales, good marketing.  The problem is with people not knowing that Steam updates it's Best Selling list every few hours, and it puts them there based on revenue.

 

BO3 released almost a month ago. So obviously it's not selling hundreds or even thousands of copies per hour. Hence why it made it to the Best Selling list. It's not that important of al ist in the first place because of this, because any game can make it to the top selling list - some have and sold under 1000 copies.

[Yuuko]

The art was passable when released, and in 2015, almost 2016, it's laughable. Slice of life story too.

Well that's just your opinion. 

I like the art and I see no problem with slice of life story.

[Pabloc]

@Mkilbride

Art is a subjective thing, just like the fact it's a slice-of-life story. I'm not a big fan of Itaru's artstyle myself, but I'd place it slightly above that shiny, plastic skin from Sakura series. Besides, it's mainly a novel, art is just an addition (Higurashi and Umineko originally had 100x worse art, but they became very popular anyway). Also, Clannad stays among top 10 most popular and highest rated titles on VNDB for years, it isn't popular exclusively in Japan.

As for the original assets, their resolution doesn't affect the expenses of the Western publisher - they have to pay license costs all the same. The point is that you are getting a version that is far superior than the original release from 11 years ago.

This doesn't change the fact that similarly improved physical copy of Clannad in Japan costs less than 50$. Their prices are always a little bloated, so when the same VN on the West is more expensive, something is wrong.

[CeruleanGamer]

Import/export fees and domestic/international product fees have to be considered so it's not surprising that the same vn in Japan costs more here in the west. If a product came from Japan, the rest of the world have no choice but to pay more unless it's a product/commodity thats not exclusive to that country like lumber or rice then the fees are more lenient.

Edited November 26, 2015 by CeruleanGamer

[Darklord Rooke]

I should point out that one of the things which make SteamSpy unreliable for items which move only a few copies is the high margin of error. For example, let's trek over to the Clannad page:

3,154 owners, plus or minus 1,344.

So basically that means somewhere between 1,810 and 4,498... approximately. Which means the margin of error is almost as large as the number of units they've estimated to have moved. That's pretty high. 

[Pabloc]

Import/export fees and domestic/international product fees have to be considered so it's not surprising that the same vn in Japan costs more here in the west. If a product came from Japan, the rest of the world have no choice but to pay more unless it's a product/commodity thats not exclusive to that country like lumber or rice then the fees are more lenient.

J-List or other shops that import physical stuff from Japan do have to cover all those fees you mentioned, hence prices there are naturally higher than for example on Amazon.jp. Western publishers, like SP, aren't "importing" anything - they are licensing and releasing VNs themselves. Their products no longer "come from Japan". The only import/shipping fees to speak of, are between the publisher and the client - and those are not included in the price. Of course, this Clannad is a digital release, so it doesn't have any shipping costs to begin with.

Western releases of VNs are (were?) almost always much cheaper than Japanese equivalents, because almost all Western publishers know that Japanese prices are simply too high for a typical Western customer.

[CeruleanGamer]

Well I never bought anything from Sekai Project or Mangagamer, only J-List so I thought it worked the same. Thanks for the information though, Pabloc.

[Marcus]

I'm posting this here since I feel you folks would be the most knowledgeable. I've put about 10 hours into Clannad so far and saw a few typos here and there and that's something expected with so much text. However, in Yukine's route there was suddenly a huge increase in the same exact kind of typo:

As such, I'm inclined to believe that the "c" (which appears randomly at the end of sentences or attached to the ends of words) is meant to be some sort of marker character when working on the script... and that they just accidentally left them in. From the last hour of her route I counted 24 of these c's. Anyone have a better explanation? 

Edited November 27, 2015 by Marcus

[Narcosis]

This is why I almost never buy freshly released games.

I'd wait for a patch.

[RikiSanic]

I'd recommend sending an email to [email protected] like they suggest on the Steam forums so they can fix it.

[Mkilbride]

 

The eyes of a man with nothing to lose.

[Canicheslayer]

[Mkilbride]

Hey, so...

 

I was just looking through the options...something alarming came up. Is there no Skip Previously read button?

[Flutterz]

Haven't tried this release myself but generally if there's a button on the UI that says "Skip" it only skips what you've read and if you hold down ctrl it skips everything.

Alternatively there might be an option to switch between skipping everything and previously read. If neither of those work then that's kinda a problem.

[Decay]

Hey, so...

 

I was just looking through the options...something alarming came up. Is there no Skip Previously read button?

There is. It's the bottom right button on the main interface. 

[Mkilbride]

Ah, it was on right click. Usually the options screen mentions it, not the drop down menu lol. Missed it.  Man, I would give up on the game right here and now.

 

I've played a VN or two without the "Skip previously read" button..it's not humane.

 

*

 

Tch, two minutes after posting this, I guess I got a dead end! I guess my choices lead to a dead end. I chose how I myself would choose to do stuff...damn.  I didn't want to use a guide until I got my first route, but I guess it's easy to get a dead end.

Edited November 27, 2015 by Mkilbride

[CeruleanGamer]

Ah, it was on right click. Usually the options screen mentions it, not the drop down menu lol. Missed it.  Man, I would give up on the game right here and now.

 

I've played a VN or two without the "Skip previously read" button..it's not humane.

 

*

 

Tch, two minutes after posting this, I guess I got a dead end! I guess my choices lead to a dead end. I chose how I myself would choose to do stuff...damn.  I didn't want to use a guide until I got my first route, but I guess it's easy to get a dead end.

If this was a yaoi vn, you are definitely on the true ending route. 

[VirginSmasher]

Ah, it was on right click. Usually the options screen mentions it, not the drop down menu lol. Missed it.  Man, I would give up on the game right here and now.

 

I've played a VN or two without the "Skip previously read" button..it's not humane.

 

*

 

Tch, two minutes after posting this, I guess I got a dead end! I guess my choices lead to a dead end. I chose how I myself would choose to do stuff...damn.  I didn't want to use a guide until I got my first route, but I guess it's easy to get a dead end.

If this was a yaoi vn, you are definitely on the true ending route. 

I'm far from a yaoi fan, but I'd love to see a bromance route between Tomoya and Sunohara.

[Decay]

Steamspy's numbers are up to 6,210 ± 1,894. Again, though, this is very inaccurate so take it with a grain of salt. Their tend to fluctuate up and down. Still, this is closer to what I was expecting after I saw what position it was in, based on how the games above and below it were also selling at the time.

To put this into perspective, I doubt Kara no Shoujo 2 has broken 1000 sales yet. That is what the VN market has traditionally been like. To see a $40+ VN sell thousands of copies within the first week is pretty absurd and nobody would have believed it a year ago. It will probably have a pretty decent tail, especially if they plan to discount it aggressively during major sale events. Good on SP, I guess. I hope they put this money to good use. Maybe spend a few bucks on the Denpasoft side of things...

Key fans should probably be pretty happy. I bet Visual Arts can't wait to get Little Busters and Rewrite out there, and to start work on Angel Beats. Too bad for SP that they're being cut out of the picture now. I'm not sure how Dovac managed to lose control of this money tree.

[Dergonu]

Steamspy's numbers are up to 6,210 ± 1,894. Again, though, this is very inaccurate so take it with a grain of salt. Their tend to fluctuate up and down. Still, this is closer to what I was expecting after I saw what position it was in, based on how the games above and below it were also selling at the time.

To put this into perspective, I doubt Kara no Shoujo 2 has broken 1000 sales yet. That is what the VN market has traditionally been like. To see a $40+ VN sell thousands of copies within the first week is pretty absurd and nobody would have believed it a year ago. It will probably have a pretty decent tail, especially if they plan to discount it aggressively during major sale events. Good on SP, I guess. I hope they put this money to good use. Maybe spend a few bucks on the Denpasoft side of things...

Key fans should probably be pretty happy. I bet Visual Arts can't wait to get Little Busters and Rewrite out there, and to start work on Angel Beats. Too bad for SP that they're being cut out of the picture now. I'm not sure how Dovac managed to lose control of this money tree.

Ah yeah, that would be swell. On a kinda unrelated note, is it just me or is SP really lazy with their website? Like, they almost never post any updates on it, and under their portfolio, Clannad is still listed as "release date: TBA". Seems kinda sloppy.

[Canicheslayer]

Just finished Tomoyo's Route. More than words, my new avatar will tell you how I appreciate her ;p

Her end was too sudden (and a bit predictable)...but she'so so lovely And the trio Tomoyo - Tomoya - Blondie Sunohara was epic hilarious, unforgettable

Edited November 28, 2015 by Canicheslayer

[Tyr]

To put this into perspective, I doubt Kara no Shoujo 2 has broken 1000 sales yet. That is what the VN market has traditionally been like. To see a $40+ VN sell thousands of copies within the first week is pretty absurd and nobody would have believed it a year ago.

I don't think most people are buying a "VN" here. They buy "Clannad", the animu game to their favorite animu.

 

Too bad for SP that they're being cut out of the picture now. I'm not sure how Dovac managed to lose control of this money tree.

I guess by being Dovac... 

[Canicheslayer]

Another case of bullying

[The Striker]

Well i really like the anime

so much

but i don't know if i am hyped for the visual novel........

[MercyZombie]

On a kinda unrelated note, is it just me or is SP really lazy with their website? Like, they almost never post any updates on it, and under their portfolio, Clannad is still listed as "release date: TBA". Seems kinda sloppy.

Their front page also still says G-senjou no Maou is "coming soon" despite it having been out for twenty-three days now. You think a company which makes all of its sales online would work a bit more on their presentation. And that is not mentioning Denpasoft which is just lazily presented all around in a "we really don't want to do this but we have to" kind of way.

Derailing aside I'm really enjoying Clannad so far. The art is a bit off but that is nothing new. I am oddly annoyed that I can find no option to make the dialogue stop cutting itself off when you skip ahead (because I read faster than they can say their lines) but I doubt the demand for such a option is that huge despite it being very common today.