Root letter apparently sold 200k copies

[Nier]

12 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Root Letter isn't strictly a VN, TBH. In fact the publisher has compared it with Ace Attorney, which is actually an adventure game (ignore everyone that says it isn't  )

I certainly don't consider Root Letter as such, especially when you compare it to full fledged visual novels such as Steins;Gate 0 (an ACTUAL visual novel).

[novurdim]

On 2/1/2017 at 10:24 AM, Decay said:

Eh, I wonder how many copies Vita VNs actually sell in the west compared to their PS4 counterparts. I always suspected the PS4 versions sold more.

Sorry for necroing a somewhat older post but the guys from PQube have finally commented on this in their recent interview.

"So is the Vita dead? Not for us, not now – I’d say it’s on the decline, but we still have Vita titles through the next year. Valkyrie Drive was our last Vita-only title, so you could only play that on Vita and that’s done extremely well for us. Visual novel content has done well – Root Letter and the original Steins;Gate has done phenomenally well. The sales on Vita have vastly outstripped the sales on PS4 with something like Root Letter. Steins;Gate was pretty much all on Vita too, then a small amount on PS3.”

Is this something to do with format, perhaps? We don’t tend to talk of genres in terms of platforms specifically, but maybe with something like a visual novel we should. It seems immediately a good fit of software and hardware. Evans calls Vita “by far my most played console, hands down. I play more on Vita than anything else."

Source: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/02/10/britsoft-focus-pqube

So, yeah, VNs on vita do sell.  

Edited February 17, 2017 by novurdim

[WinterfuryZX]

I'm starting to think that porting Himwari to PC was a stupid Idea...  Mangagamer should have partnered with Aksys, Pqube or Nisa and realease it on Vita too.

Edited February 17, 2017 by WinterfuryZX

[Darklord Rooke]

It's been my opinion for over a year now that VNs need to get on handheld devices. Pure VNs are often compared to books, you don't play them but rather read them, which means they're often targeted more at readers than gamers. Readers like portability, they don't like to be chained to their PC or their lounge to read their stuff.

VNs on mobile and handhelds sell really well. The otome market, for example, has exploded on mobile.

[poplarbrook]

Well I am not as surprised because Love Plus performed better than it. Besides Love Plus encouraged pilgrimage to several sites.

On 2017/2/17 at 9:51 PM, Darklord Rooke said:

VNs on mobile and handhelds sell really well. The otome market, for example, has exploded on mobile.

True. One otome VN producer, Voltage, generated a revenue of approximately 100 million USD per year and stated that 10% of its revenue came from English version of its games. Other non otome titles that come to my mind are just NoeSIS and some Korean mobile VNs though.

Edited February 18, 2017 by poplarbrook