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Another Day, Another Winged Cloud VN


Infernoplex

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I did a little bit of digging and they have even more VNs in development.

Sakura Nova: Isolated cities use barriers to keep monsters out. Male MC is training at an academy to become a knight. Sounds like a futuristic straight Sakura Fantasy. Apparently WC is now ripping off of their own VNs.
Sakura Adventure: According to /u/ its going to have a loooooot of H-yuri.
Sakura Dragon: Male MC trains female dragon-girls.
Sakura Demon
"Sakura Maid 2"

As long as the profit is good enough the Sakura train will never stop.

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4 hours ago, Nier said:

Fuwanovel in a nutshell: "We hate Sakura games, but we can't stop talking about them anyway. :mare:"

Ahahaha :D Seems to be the case, but it's hard to avoid mentioning them because they just keep spamming these titles like out of nowhere. I promise I will not give them anymore undeserved attention from now on :D

52 minutes ago, Silver95280 said:

I did a little bit of digging and they have even more VNs in development.

Sakura Nova: Isolated cities use barriers to keep monsters out. Male MC is training at an academy to become a knight. Sounds like a futuristic straight Sakura Fantasy. Apparently WC is now ripping off of their own VNs.
Sakura Adventure: According to /u/ its going to have a loooooot of H-yuri.
Sakura Dragon: Male MC trains female dragon-girls.
Sakura Demon
"Sakura Maid 2"

As long as the profit is good enough the Sakura train will never stop.

Man, all those titles ... And I am like:

Al_Bundy_facepalm.jpg

16 minutes ago, beerbrew said:

That's.. wow.. Ok guys, I promise you I'll give you better hentai action and tear-jerkers than this lol! These guys have some kind of lean mean production goin on?

Yes, it's exactly like that. You should try some of their VNs to see WHAT-NOT-TO-DEVELOP like, though maybe you should try it to make some cash, apparently it's profitable since Winged Cloud appears to be making some money out of this.

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They surely aren't wasting time:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=768202390

I'd spam this with "No Thanks/Not Interested" but I am afraid I'd be in a huge minority, so I ain't even gonna bother.

The description is mind-boggling though:

Quote

In Sakura Nova, join Mikage, Kaguya, and Arisa as they train together and experience life together in academy life. They all have done trials individually but when the sergeant told them to work together as a team all hell breaks loose! Will they ever become proper knights?

Good luck ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy your Sakura ^_^

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14 minutes ago, haruki said:

I wonder how many people are buying them ironically. I mean, it's impossible that this many people actually enjoy these, right?

I'd say there's a lot. The highlight is more on the moe-moe, boobies and the curves and not on the visual novel aspect of it. And when it periodically goes on sale, the numbers still go up!

But kudos to them for figuring out their own formula for the market ;)

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7 hours ago, haruki said:

I wonder how many people are buying them ironically. I mean, it's impossible that this many people actually enjoy these, right?

They cater to a very specific demographic. I have looked into the matter a little bit more and apparently the whole Sakura series VNs have cultivated a kind of a cult-type fanbase and they are an essential part of the gear machine that drives the production of these VNs. So, yeah, there are people who enjoy these type of VNs but from what I am gathering, it seems that it's considerably smaller fanbase then it used to be. Winged Cloud still sells these very well but the sales are getting smaller and smaller which is kind of natural in my opinion considering how Winged Cloud just keeps spamming these Sakura titles like on a lean-production.

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Yeah, this ship is slowly but steady sinking, taking with them all the good efforts from another OELVN developers. It's a smal industry and the money bubble is about to burst leaving us with same old numbers. 

In a couple of years we will remember this time with nostalgia and frustration, because we had a chance to build a market but we missed it. Thanks to this cult-type fanbase.

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What angers me is how they just went right back to their old, bad formula after actually producing a decently good game for once... (Sakura Dungeon.)

Their quality is pretty shoddy, but now and then their games at least have somewhat passable sequences. Sakura Dungeon was miles ahead of their previous games, but after making it, their quality just dipped again. (And now Sakura Maid had taken them to an all-time low...)

I guess that really just shows that money is the only thing they think about... It's a shame really. Their art is pretty nice, and I bet if they actually got a good writer on the team and actually put some effort into it, they could produce some pretty okay games.

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If Nier said so, I think the relation between Fuwanovel and Sakura would be like USA citizen and Donald Trump, controversial but couldn't stop talking about him (By the way, Trump also caused some flame in Indonesian forum regarding his future policy for Moslem. Very heavily divisive, and I'll stop the talk here).

About another batch of planned Sakura games, I could only said whatever and maybe giggling a little bit. And I agree with Dergonu here that Sakura Dungeon was quite decent, although they had almost same sprite for all of the girls though, which could be boring if you want to catch all of the girl there.

I think that's all for more of my elaboration here.

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3 hours ago, yorikbad said:

In a couple of years we will remember this time with nostalgia and frustration, because we had a chance to build a market but we missed it. Thanks to this cult-type fanbase.

Yup, my thoughts exactly, I think the VN market will shrink in the next 5 years due to oversaturation and bad quality VNs ... Ofcourse, we will still have new releases but it will be significantly less and many of those releases will probably be of a lower quality.

1 hour ago, Dergonu said:

What angers me is how they just went right back to their old, bad formula after actually producing a decently good game for once... (Sakura Dungeon.)

I didn't play Sakura Dungeon but I have heard it introduced some fun gameplay elements, I guess it's better than the usual Sakura stuff.

1 hour ago, Dergonu said:

I guess that really just shows that money is the only thing they think about... It's a shame really. Their art is pretty nice, and I bet if they actually got a good writer on the team and actually put some effort into it, they could produce some pretty okay games.

Weren't they always in the VN market just after the money? xD I had an impression since like the 4th Sakura VN that they are just milking the stuff into oblivion. It isn't bad the first time you play it but if it repeats itself too much then it becomes boring and monotone. Funny thing is, and I will be honest here - Sakura VNs were the first OELVN that I tried to play and the only reason I bought one of those is because I was actually in love with the art itself, rarely do I see OELVNs with decent art, this one was actually quite good looking, it's a shame for the artist though, such a waste of a potential :(

18 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

If Nier said so, I think the relation between Fuwanovel and Sakura would be like USA citizen and Donald Trump, controversial but couldn't stop talking about him (By the way, Trump also caused some flame in Indonesian forum regarding his future policy for Moslem. Very heavily divisive, and I'll stop the talk here).

Hmmm, I don't think that analogy works in this case, I don't think Sakura VNs are controversial at all, the point is that Winged Cloud doesn't bother to improve the series in any way and when they make a one step forward (Sakura Dungeon), after that they make at least three steps back (Sakura Maid) ... So it's not about controversy, it's about Winged Cloud milking the series until it goes dry like a cash cow.

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With that being said, I'm surprised more people haven't tried cashing in on the Steam meme crowd. The only two series I've seen that have really succeeded on it are Sakura and Nekopara, and at this point I'm not sure most of the people buying these games have any sense of quality and/or sanity.

Think of a fetish, put in a tsundere and a deredere, make the writing as weeby and memey as you possibly can, get "decent" art, then put on Steam for $10. That's literally their entire business strategy.

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I wonder what Sakura Nova is based on... There's a questline in Maplestory with the exact same story premise, artstyle (some of the assets and backgrounds are scarily similar), costumes, weapons & monsters and it's even called Nova, but that game also had a habit of ripping off taking inspiration from other media, so I'm genuinely curious now...

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35 minutes ago, Shota_Victory said:

With that being said, I'm surprised more people haven't tried cashing in on the Steam meme crowd. The only two series I've seen that have really succeeded on it are Sakura and Nekopara, and at this point I'm not sure most of the people buying these games have any sense of quality and/or sanity.

You make a good point. It's actually interesting why that still didn't happen. Winged Cloud essentially doesn't even have any kind of competition and that's why their ecchi VNs aren't improving in any way, they can just repeat the formula over and over again. There's nobody to compete with them. If it had a competition I believe we would be watching a totally different story. I am not going to say anything about Nekopara since I didn't play it, but if I am not mistaken, Nekopara only has 3 volumes so far and its art is way better then Sakura VN series + it has e-motion. Another thing worth mentioning is that Nekopara isn't really an OELVN. I mean it came out at the same time as the Japanese version but it isn't OELVN as far as I know. On the other hand, Winged Cloud is an English VN developer and they are just using anime-style drawings to lure the fanbase. Speaking of Nekopara, I think it outsold any Sakura title by a considerable margin. From what I have heard, it sold more than 200K copies on Steam, not counting the Denpasoft store. I don't know the exact numbers for each volume but I know Nekopara was a smash hit definitively.

35 minutes ago, Shota_Victory said:

Think of a fetish, put in a tsundere and a deredere, make the writing as weeby and memey as you possibly can, get "decent" art, then put on Steam for $10. That's literally their entire business strategy.

Pretty much that, it seems that it is working for them.

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1 hour ago, Infernoplex said:

You make a good point. It's actually interesting why that still didn't happen. Winged Cloud essentially doesn't even have any kind of competition and that's why their ecchi VNs aren't improving in any way, they can just repeat the formula over and over again. There's nobody to compete with them. If it had a competition I believe we would be watching a totally different story. I am not going to say anything about Nekopara since I didn't play it, but if I am not mistaken, Nekopara only has 3 volumes so far and its art is way better then Sakura VN series + it has e-motion. Another thing worth mentioning is that Nekopara isn't really an OELVN. I mean it came out at the same time as the Japanese version but it isn't OELVN as far as I know. On the other hand, Winged Cloud is an English VN developer and they are just using anime-style drawings to lure the fanbase. Speaking of Nekopara, I think it outsold any Sakura title by a considerable margin. From what I have heard, it sold more than 200K copies on Steam, not counting the Denpasoft store. I don't know the exact numbers for each volume but I know Nekopara was a smash hit definitively.

If SteamSpy is accurate Sakura Spirit sold ~290K, more than Nekopara vol 1 (~250K). Although the Sakura sales are falling hard compared to Nekopara (Sakura Dungeon is ~28K, Nekopara vol 2 is ~140K). That's very telling of Nekopara's quality if it's able to move that many copies admist the glut of VNs on steam. A good chunk of Sakura Spirit's sales are due to it being released in July 2014 before the VN boom. Karakara or Corona Blossom probably would had been just as popular had they been released in that timeframe.

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46 minutes ago, Silver95280 said:

If SteamSpy is accurate Sakura Spirit sold ~290K, more than Nekopara vol 1 (~250K). Although the Sakura sales are falling hard compared to Nekopara (Sakura Dungeon is ~28K, Nekopara vol 2 is ~140K). That's very telling of Nekopara's quality if it's able to move that many copies admist the glut of VNs on steam. A good chunk of Sakura Spirit's sales are due to it being released in July 2014 before the VN boom. Karakara or Corona Blossom probably would had been just as popular had they been released in that timeframe.

I will be honest here and I will say that I didn't really check the numbers for Sakura titles before my previous comment (I know, I am a bad man for speaking out statistics without even looking at them xD) ... I do check on SteamSpy from time to time and I was quite sad seeing Tokyo Babel and some other VNs having really low sales. I know SteamSpy has a margin of error but I still use it as a kind of an indicitation on how many copies did some games manage to sell. From my memory - Nekopara Vol. 1 had the most sales compared to the other two (Vol. 0 and Vol. 2). As for Sakura titles, I don't remember their stats and I didn't really look into them at the time because I wasn't interested in how good their sales were but I trust your word on it, Winged Cloud made some serious profit on Sakura franchise.

You are probably right on that statement about reasons behind Sakura Spirit's success.

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How many of you know that Winged cloud has another studio ?

 

Also I think that we will get more vn games I'm to blame for at least some of that. Like the tons of indie/doujin releases in japan we have a massive international scale in what we consider the "west" quality might be lower with less well planned out titles due to budget etc but people can make different things work out for them all over the world. For example huniepop which isn't a vn but has some of the same style and anime style characters largely featured indonesian & polish artists. I've seen Indonesian vn teams cropping up latly and Philippines etc. These teams are more likely to be able to make small releases work for them an expand cause of global economy:D

Yes some of those might be in it for the money but some might be intrested in doing more thought provoking titles but are avoiding the risk as of yet.

Incidentally I made a Kinetic Yaoi/Trap vn published by MangaGamer on a budget of $1300 total without crowdfunding. As an adult only non steam release. With the aid of one of fuwan novel semi regulars Ryechu. There is no Fuwan review because no one reviews Yaoi. Now I've got 2 new artists on top of the 1 already have and am tippling the length of my next title still its not very serious story yet. If i wanted to only make money I would of gone a safe ecchi steam and adult route but we just went adult no hands barred.

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7 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

:michiru: ??????? What are you talking about?

https://twitter.com/FoxDawn_ This is Winged Cloud's other Studio they have one F2P clicker game on greenlight and are working on something else.

A while ago Sekai Tweeted that this was Winged Cloud's new thing. & It went by largely unnoticed. If you search their tweet log hard you should be able to find it.

Apparently its mentioned here https://beltravi.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/06122016-e3-begins-sekai-project-announcements/ ctrl f fox dawn.

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Well ... I will be damned, you have brought some new wisdom upon me ...

https://techraptor.net/content/e3-2016-sekai-project-recap

Quote

Sekai Project then showed a trailer for FoxDawn’s clicker game, Clicker Guild. FoxDawn is the new brand that Winged Cloud (Creators of the Sakura series) launched to explore other types of games and art styles. In it, you will be able to hire a number of heroes and then click your way to victory against large monsters.  There are random loot drops in place that you can collect over the course of the game. Also detailed was the recent release of Sakura DungeonSakura Dungeon has been a financial success for Sekai Project so far.

This is ... rather interesting, I didn't know about this at all and this is literally the first time I am seeing this. Wow ... I don't know what to say anymore.

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1 minute ago, Infernoplex said:

Well ... I will be damned, you have brought some new wisdom upon me ...

https://techraptor.net/content/e3-2016-sekai-project-recap

This is ... rather interesting, I didn't know about this at all and this is literally the first time I am seeing this. Wow ... I don't know what to say anymore.

I don't think many people noticed this at all really and it will take a long time for most people to notice. Yes its a step outside of the field of anime content but i'm not sure if largely happened as a result of sakura clicker and a exploration of that. Some of the weird experiments we may see them do with their sakura titles might be related to what they are trying to do with their other studio and their newer brand with less stain of its reputation can stay safer meanwhile. Since they have no real big personal site or anything of that such it feels as like as much as the disconnect that we see from sekai to denpasoft really really trying to separate the brands almost. I guess they could be cashing in on their vns before making a full move to non anime style games.

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11 minutes ago, Ironstorm said:

I don't think many people noticed this at all really and it will take a long time for most people to notice. Yes its a step outside of the field of anime content but i'm not sure if largely happened as a result of sakura clicker and a exploration of that. Some of the weird experiments we may see them do with their sakura titles might be related to what they are trying to do with their other studio and their newer brand with less stain of its reputation can stay safer meanwhile. Since they have no real big personal site or anything of that such it feels as like as much as the disconnect that we see from sekai to denpasoft really really trying to separate the brands almost. I guess they could be cashing in on their vns before making a full move to non anime style games.

This is definitively an eye-opener, thank you for sharing this info. I never saw anybody on Fuwa mentioning this. I was examining the twitter account of that studio, and that game that is in development, it definitvely looks better than regular Sakura stuff. I can't say if it's really any good but I personally find indie games kind of interesting so this could be good. Now I can see why (maybe) they are lately releasing Sakura titles in such speed. This is quite something new to me.

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11 hours ago, Ironstorm said:

I don't think many people noticed this at all really and it will take a long time for most people to notice. Yes its a step outside of the field of anime content but i'm not sure if largely happened as a result of sakura clicker and a exploration of that. Some of the weird experiments we may see them do with their sakura titles might be related to what they are trying to do with their other studio and their newer brand with less stain of its reputation can stay safer meanwhile. Since they have no real big personal site or anything of that such it feels as like as much as the disconnect that we see from sekai to denpasoft really really trying to separate the brands almost. I guess they could be cashing in on their vns before making a full move to non anime style games.

That's actually really interesting. So the reason they're pumping out so many Sakura games right now could be to finance the development of a much more serious game? If that turns out to be true, kudos to them. That's a really smart way to raise money...

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27 minutes ago, haruki said:

That's actually really interesting. So the reason they're pumping out so many Sakura games right now could be to finance the development of a much more serious game? If that turns out to be true, kudos to them. That's a really smart way to raise money...

As much as I'd like to believe in that, I find there's a problem in one point ... This new studio of Winged Cloud called FoxDawn is a relatively unknown studio. I researched last night a little bit more and apparently they are known by some people on 4chan and some other places but outside of that scope, they are literally nobody as of this moment. On that twitter account they have almost 900 followers and the original Winged Cloud's twitter has 10.2K followers and on that original twitter account there's not a single tweet about Winged Cloud starting another studio, there's no mention of FoxDawn, in fact the only kind of promotion the studio got was by Sekai Project that mentioned them in one of their tweets and that's all I can find about it ... It's literally like they are trying to hide their existence! :D Why? Are they not confident in that clicker game?

Another thing is that their lead artist, animator has much more followers: https://twitter.com/y2bcrazy and he regularly posts updates on his twitter account. I also can't find any mention of FoxDawn being Winged Cloud's another studio on his twitter. It's like they are really experimenting with this and it's just like @Ironstorm said. It's like Winged Cloud doesn't want to mention that anywhere and I am thinking that maybe this whole FoxDawn idea came from one of the Winged Cloud's developers as a "testing the waters" experiment. It's quite possible that they are releasing all these Sakura games as of lately just in order to raise the money for development of this new Voxel type of game. It's even possible to say that they don't want to mention this new studio in order not to give it a bad reputation from the start. But then again, you need to promote it somehow, I don't see any kind of promotion of this new studio or its game anywhere besides the twitter accounts. Or am I not seeing something very obvious here? I don't know.

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