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428: Shibuya Scramble, official Steam and PS4 english port+localization announced


WinterfuryZX

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12 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said:

Edit: I feel bad for Kenka Banchou and otomege fans (not really, ahahah LOL).

It likely has little to do with being otome, and more to do with the platforms. Vita does well in Japan, but it's fairly dead as a handheld in the West. Mobile is where it's at in the West, or 3DS. Localising a PC/PS4 game was likely a safer decision. 

EDIT: I'm not saying I agree with that line of thinking, but everywhere you go you hear jokes about Vita's 'deadness' in the West.

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4 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

It likely has little to do with being otome, and more to do with the platforms. Vita does well in Japan, but it's fairly dead as a handheld in the West. Mobile is where it's at in the West, or 3DS. Localising a PC/PS4 game was likely a safer decision. 

EDIT: I'm not saying I agree with that line of thinking, but everywhere you go you hear jokes about Vita's 'deadness' in the West.

This a port , 428 is not a native PS4/PC Game. Visual novels sells more on VITA as Root Letter demostrated.

Edited by WinterfuryZX
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5 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

That's still what I think too, but this past year everywhere you go you hear stuff about the Vita dying/dead

It's happening for, erm, at least three years already, I believe. It started around the time Killzone Mercenary came out and still pretty much untrue, but we live in the age of hatred so everyone outside the actual vita fanbase gets a kick out of bashing it, which is nothing new. It is indeed long "dead" in regards of big mainstream AAA titles but that doesn't have anything to do with us perverts who play weird weeaboo games.

And... I'm not quite sure why we are talking about KB Otome here? Japanese publishers usually go with someone like Aksys for that kind of games to print physical copies and have a decent marketing but Aksys are a bit busy with lots of other vita otomes atm. Plus it's pretty much the first try for Spike Chunsoft to publish something completely on their own in the west, it's understandable why they wouldn't use something like KBO for their debut.

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16 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said:

as Root Letter demostrated.

Source?

I know that PQube mentioned this about Steins;Gate, but I haven't heard anything about Root Letter selling better on Vita or PS4.

 

10 hours ago, novurdim said:

It's happening for, erm, at least three years already, I believe. It started around the time Killzone Mercenary came out and still pretty much untrue, but we live in the age of hatred so everyone outside the actual vita fanbase gets a kick out of bashing it, which is nothing new. It is indeed long "dead" in regards of big mainstream AAA titles but that doesn't have anything to do with us perverts who play weird weeaboo games.

And... I'm not quite sure why we are talking about KB Otome here? Japanese publishers usually go with someone like Aksys for that kind of games to print physical copies and have a decent marketing but Aksys are a bit busy with lots of other vita otomes atm. Plus it's pretty much the first try for Spike Chunsoft to publish something completely on their own in the west, it's understandable why they wouldn't use something like KBO for their debut.

Well no matter how you want to spin it, the Vita has an awful library and support outside Japan. NIS Of America is basically one of the few companies which still releases Vita titles in the West, most of the Vita exclusives have been ported to the PS4 and/or PC too, Vita has only a few exclusives left, Soul Sacrifice Delta. Freedom Wars, Shiren the Wanderer and a few others, other than that everything else went to PS4 and/or PC.

Edited by Nier
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2 hours ago, Nier said:

Source?

I know that PQube mentioned this about Steins;Gate, but I haven't heard anything about Root Letter selling better on Vita or PS4.

Novurdim linked an article in the Root Letter thread:

On 2/17/2017 at 6:50 PM, novurdim said:

"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.”

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

As this was a representative of PQube speaking, it would mean he's talking about Western sales. 

That being said, the general observations by fans are that Publishers are turning their backs on localising PSVita exclusives in the West. Root Letter is one of the few titles that bucked the norm, but not even companies like XSeed are doing Vita only in recent times. So although Root Letter indicates that there's still a market, I dunno if Publishers view the situation the same way.

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7 hours ago, Nier said:

Well no matter how you want to spin it, the Vita has an awful library and support outside Japan.

It's not like you can't have an opinion but I don't believe many people who actually have and play on vita would agree with you. Not to mention that most good games are localized nowadays so "support outside Japan" is completely dependent on Japan itself and isn't bad at all yet.

7 hours ago, Nier said:

NIS Of America is basically one of the few companies which still releases Vita titles in the West, most of the Vita exclusives have been ported to the PS4 and/or PC too, Vita has only a few exclusives left, Soul Sacrifice Delta. Freedom Wars, Shiren the Wanderer and a few others, other than that everything else went to PS4 and/or PC.

5 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

That being said, the general observations by fans are that Publishers are turning their backs on localising PSVita exclusives in the West. Root Letter is one of the few titles that bucked the norm, but not even companies like XSeed are doing Vita only in recent times. So although Root Letter indicates that there's still a market, I dunno if Publishers view the situation the same way

Literally every jap-to-eng publisher still releases vita titles in the West, not only NISA. As for exclusives, well, let's digress from vita and look at the super successful PS4. What do we see? We see that despite PS4 being the epitome of success, almost every exclusive game from the localization companies (hell, almost every game not from Sony itself) is becoming multiplatform during the localization. You can see examples from any companies: Oneechanbara, EDF, every new IFI game, every new NISA game, most Square Enix/Bamco/Tecmo games etc. They are all getting pc ports and I doubt it's because PS4 is such an unviable platform. It's just that the age of exclusives is long gone, japanese games are not "sony's thing" anymore like they've been during PS2/PS3. One of the very few exceptions from this new rule is Atlus (and by extension SEGA) and they are actually localizing a vita exclusive in the 2017 (Caligula). So it's not so much that they are turning their back on localizing vita exclusives as the companies are following the times and porting their games on as many platforms as possible to maximize the profits. Hence just as I feel that games like KBO, Net High (yes, I know XSEED won't do it), Uppers, SaGa have high chances to be translated, the chances are just as high for a PC-port down the line, it's not a bad thing and not exactly vita's fault. The fact that XSEED only localized vita/PS4 multiplats lately is barely a substantial proof too, you can look at this relatively recent comment from the XSEED official (around half a year ago), for example.

So, most of the things said about vita are a simple case of hysteria and absense of any care or marketing from Sony (they sometimes even go as far as not mentioning that vita version is localized at all to drag down its sales when compared to PS4, I'm not completely sure why they even feel the need to do so). As vita's niche is comparably small, it's not surprising that most people, who only superficially look at the situation, will make a conclusion that vita is long done and it's safe to put every sin of failure on it. In truth, it's hanging on very decently for its niche and we'll likely say that it has done well and can rest now only in 2019 when there will only be at best one game in 2-3 months by the most enthusiastic. By then Vita will be seven years old, not such a bad run for a failure.

But we probably should stop discussing vita in a topic about 428. Vita is not exactly a popularity powerhouse so the fact that SC are not making a western exclusive vita-version for their first and rather risky localization shouldn't be all that shocking. It's rather amazing they are doing this thing at all.

Edited by novurdim
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1 hour ago, novurdim said:

So, most of the things said about vita are a simple case of hysteria and absense of any care or marketing from Sony (they sometimes even go as far as not mentioning that vita version is localized at all to drag down its sales when compared to PS4, I'm not completely sure why they even feel the need to do so).

Because Sony's turned it's back on the system since about 2013. They no longer develop first party titles for the Vita, have expressed continued disappointment in its sales, and are of the belief that phones/mobile has changed the marketplace to the point where the Vita is no longer viable. 

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That the likes of XSEED can make a living putting out Vita games isn't a strong endorsement for the platform.  XSEED thrives by being small enough to be able to survive on smaller sales.  The platform's creator thinks it's dead.  That means it's dead, irregardless of how well it seems to be doing otherwise.  There won't be any attempts to make the system more viable.  There probably won't even be a follow-up.  At this point there might not even be a follow-up to the 3DS, which was far more successful than the DS.  Or at least, the 3DS's successor is the Switch (as much as Nintendo says it's not).

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2 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

There probably won't even be a follow-up. 

Sony pretty much killed that idea back in 2015:

“That’s a tough question,” he replied when asked about a successor to PlayStation Vita. “People have mobile phones and it’s so easy to play games on smartphones,” Yoshida said. “And many games on smartphones are free, or free to start.

“I myself am a huge fan of PlayStation Vita and we worked really hard on designing every aspect. Touch-based games are fun – there are many games with really good design. But having sticks and buttons make things totally different. So I hope, like many of you, that this culture of playing portable games continues but the climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming.”

http://nichegamer.com/2015/09/26/climate-is-not-healthy-for-a-playstation-vita-successor/

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1 minute ago, Nandemonai said:

That the likes of XSEED can make a living putting out Vita games isn't a strong endorsement for the platform.  XSEED thrives by being small enough to be able to survive on smaller sales.  The platform's creator thinks it's dead.  That means it's dead, irregardless of how well it seems to be doing otherwise.  There won't be any attempts to make the system more viable.  There probably won't even be a follow-up.  At this point there might not even be a follow-up to the 3DS, which was far more successful than the DS.  Or at least, the 3DS's successor is the Switch (as much as Nintendo says it's not).

We only discuss it in regards to japanese localizations and smaller games which are an actual theme of a forum like fuwanovel's. If you want to look at the big picture, then, as I said from the very beginning, tis indeed won't ever reach another million-seller and can be considered RIPed to the more mainstream audience and Sony from around the 2014. I only ever played jap games on my PSP so I'm not exactly bothered, to be honest.

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6 hours ago, Funyarinpa said:

Vita has an "awful library"? You know that's just, like, your opinion, man.

That depends were. If we are talking about Japan than the Vita library is quite good actually, not as good as the PSP of course but decent (the PSP library had many exclusives and was active in Japan all the way till 2015). But if we are talking about the West on the other hand it is abysmal, it has close to no exclusives beside a few titles that I already mentioned, only a few publishers bother releasing Vita titles and the few Vita titles that get released are just multiplatform titles that are also releasing on PS4 and/or PC. such as Root Letter, Steins;Gate 0 and the likes.

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Well, to each his own. Nier's logic obviously stems from the single idea: japanese unlocalized exclusive => good vita game; localized but now multiplatform same game => bad or non-existant vita game. If you don't play on vita or plan to, that's probably how the situation would indeed look to most.

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1 hour ago, novurdim said:

japanese unlocalized exclusive => good vita game; localized but now multiplatform same game => bad or non-existant vita game.

No this is complete nonsense, for one being an unlocalized game does not automatically make a game "good", I am not Moogy, so don't make stuff up if you don't understand what I am saying.

But it is just fact that the Vita has a decent library and good support in Japan, on the other hand Sony gave up on the Western Vita around 2015 (their last titles Oreshika and Soul Sacrifice Delta were digital-only too in the West, just goes to show how bad the support is in the West), while Japan is still receiving a good amount of titles which adds to it's already plentiful library, while the West is struggling with only a few games per year most of which are just multiplatform titles which can easily be obtained elsewhere, one has only to look and compare the release schedule:

Japan: https://www.gamefaqs.com/vita/upcoming/2-japan (only cover release schedule until early July)

The West: https://www.gamefaqs.com/vita/upcoming/3-europe (this covers the releases till the end of September)

Problem is, even if the Vita has a good library in Japan, it is of little value to us who can't speak Japanese, so we are stuck with the Western library.

 

9 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

That being said, the general observations by fans are that Publishers are turning their backs on localising PSVita exclusives in the West. Root Letter is one of the few titles that bucked the norm, but not even companies like XSeed are doing Vita only in recent times. So although Root Letter indicates that there's still a market, I dunno if Publishers view the situation the same way.

Root Letter is not a PS Vita exclusive? It's on PS4 and PS Vita.

Edited by Nier
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38 minutes ago, Nier said:

one has only to look and compare the release schedule

Which is completely useless simply because
a) almost all western localizations don't have dates until the last month and GameFaq doesn't count them
b) GF list is literally empty, it doesn't even have any indies, obviously noone updates it

It's quite clear you have no idea what games are localized and/or are actually good enough to be brought over, I don't understand why would you get into this debate. But we can discuss it of course, if you want, and I'm sorry everyone that this turned into the vita off-topic.

Firstly, let's look at the confirmed 2017 vita localizations that are not accounted for in your attempt to show the list. Some of those even have dates so GF is, again, simply not updated by anyone:
 

Spoiler

Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey
Touhou Genso Wanderer
Summon Night 6: Lost Borders
A Rose in the Twilight
Ys Origin
Stranger of Sword City Revisited
Cladun Returns: This is Sengoku!
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
Caligula
Zero Escape: The Nonary Games
Deemo: The Last Recital
Period: Cube – Shackles of Amadeus
Valkyria Revolution
Tokyo Xanadu
Fallen Legion
Accel World vs. Sword Art Online
Tokyo Tattoo Girls
Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle
Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth
Bad Apple Wars
Collar x Malice
Code: Realize Future Blessings
The Longest 5 Minutes

I probably missed a few, I don't count extremely late ports like Rabi-Ribi, Fault, WEE, Root Double etc and I don't even count KS games like Sharin and Dies Irae to be completely fair. Not to mention that this list is mostly for the first half of the year, fall/winter localizations are usually announced in april/may, and among those we already know a few that are as good as confirmed like Chaos;Child, Yu-No, Punchline and Blue Reflection.

Next let's talk japanese exclusives. Among the unlocalized exclusive vita games the only relatively decent enough games I would like to see brought over are Tales of Innocence R, Phantasy Star Nova, Net High, Yuusha Shisu, Demon Gaze II, Luminous Arc Infinity, Uppers, SaGa: Scarlet Grace, Coven and Labyrinth of Refrain, The Princess is Money-Hungry, Idol Death Game TV, Dungeon Travelers 2-2 and Death Mark.

Among those only PS Nova and ToI R don't have absolutely any chance to be localized, and chances for LA Infinity are slim. Net High/Uppers are rumored to be brought over by PQube, Yuusha/Coven/Princess are NIS games which always have good chances to be translated, DG II/Death Mark are Exp. projects most of which end up localized, SaGa has been heavily hinted by SE recently, IDG TV are on the table for XSEED as they themselves mentioned and DT 2-2 is likely to be picked up by Atlus as they were the ones to localize the DT 2. What are those mythical exclusive japanese masterpieces you talk about I have no idea, Vita library in Japan is nowhere near PSP in terms of good exclusive games. You won't even find that many great multiplatform unlocalized games, even though I'm forever sad that noone translated Time Travellers.

Edited by novurdim
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2 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Sony pretty much killed that idea back in 2015:

“That’s a tough question,” he replied when asked about a successor to PlayStation Vita. “People have mobile phones and it’s so easy to play games on smartphones,” Yoshida said. “And many games on smartphones are free, or free to start.

“I myself am a huge fan of PlayStation Vita and we worked really hard on designing every aspect. Touch-based games are fun – there are many games with really good design. But having sticks and buttons make things totally different. So I hope, like many of you, that this culture of playing portable games continues but the climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming.”

http://nichegamer.com/2015/09/26/climate-is-not-healthy-for-a-playstation-vita-successor/

Talking about mobile, Romancing Saga 2 is still mobile exclusive in the West, while it's been released for awhile on the Vita too in Japan, same thing with the Chaos Rings games, all 3 games have been translated in english, yet none of them have been released for the Vita despite the fact that these games have been released on the Vita in Japan.

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1 minute ago, Nier said:

Talking about mobile, Romancing Saga 2 is still mobile exclusive in the West, while it's been released for awhile on the Vita too in Japan

Ah, right, it is also being brought over literally right now, they encountered several technical problems.
 

 

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14 hours ago, novurdim said:

It's quite clear you have no idea what games are localized and/or are actually good enough to be brought over, I don't understand why would you get into this debate. But we can discuss it of course, if you want, and I'm sorry everyone that this turned into the vita off-topic.

No, I don't mind. In fact I find this interesting as I have no real idea about Vita's status other than "IT'S DEAD! LOL" or something alike.

And LOL, someone still clings on Gamefaqs list of upcoming games? This is funny because GF is not a reliable source as dates is always TBD until the eventual release because of delays and such. GF is only good at one thing: providing FAQs and text walkthroughs.

Edited by VLOCKUP
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