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Likelyhood of any company to go for localization/Western release


XChaosX

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I've been thinking about Mangagamer's licensing survey thing, even though it hasn't been put up yet, I had been curious about how likely it was that Youkoso! Sukebe Elf no Mori e/ ようこそ! スケベエルフの森へ https://vndb.org/v20464 could get a localization and a Western release. AFAIK, Lune hasn't partnered with Mangagamer yet.

The question I have for you guys is, how likely do you think any company that is currently not localizing or releasing in the West to go for Western releases? Feel free to make this topic a sort of list on how specific eroge companies feel about Western releases.

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Honestly? if you want my advice, then just put down games you want to play based on how much you want to play them.  Don't worry so much about feasibility.  Just don't suggest any games by bankrupt companies, and all other things being equal, suggestions from companies they already work with are more practical.  Beyond that, trying to read the tea leaves is basically a waste of time.

There are just too many unknowns to try to predict this.  There are too many reasons why a company might have never dealt with the west before, and most of those reasons are kept secret, so it's not even like you can try to make an informed guess.  Maybe they remember RapeLay and are terrified of it happening to them.  Maybe the artist doesn't want to redraw the CG.  Maybe one of the people in management dealt with Western businesses before, had a bad experience, and thinks "never again".   Maybe they think it'd be a waste of time and money.  Maybe someone who works there hates someone who works in the Japanese branch of MangaGamer.  It could even be as simple as, well, nobody ever asked.

We'll never find out those sorts of things, because all such negotiations are confidential.  So just do what you want.

Edited by Nandemonai
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4 hours ago, Asonn said:

Eroge sales are declining in Japan. so the only way to survive is to adapt and go with world wide sales. So I think all the Eroge companies will sooner or later localize their title.... 

So... we should assume that many of these eroge companies who for this or the other reason don't "adapt" will go out of bussiness sooner or later? That doesn't sound very promising, I wouldn't like to see so many eroge companies die... I hope that survival you speak of won't be dependent too much on their decision whether to go west or stay east. Though I definitively understand the problem, after all we did hear about a fair number of eroge companies going out of bussiness in the last couple of months/years (The most recent I know of was Chuable Soft but there's many more as well).

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'Japanese VN company going west' in a nutshell: :maple:

Initially, they don't give a damn about the west and even IP-block their homepage from foreign access. That stays that way until a diligent fan translator happens to translate one of their titles. Then, after some time, they get aware of it and start sending cease and desist letters to stop the fan translation to emphasize how much they hate the west.

That will usually not really work out the way they hoped for and they'll have a sudden change of mind and decide that they absolutely love the west and want to make an official release. Though instead of picking a new title to translate, which would be what everyone wants, they will then decide to pick the same title, ignore the existing translation and completely re-translate it from scratch.

Then they will decide to make a Kickstarter and also release the title on Steam. As a consequence of that, they'll just make a Steam- and Kickstarter friendly all-ages version where every H-scene will be removed even if it's a nukige.

The official translation will then take about 5 years until nobody is interested anymore, and if they finally release it, sales will be so weak that they'll immediately loose interest in further western releases.

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I thought it was obvious from my post that I wasn't entirely serious and just combined the worst cases of several ports.

Anyway, currently there's still neither an 18+ version of Sharin nor G-Senjou out yet, and the all ages version of G-Senjou was already released years ago. That's hardly how it's supposed to be going.

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"Supposed to be" going?  There's no such thing.  Nowhere will you find a rulebook that says "Thou shalt not release censored-only versions of thine games".

I hate Moenovel, SakuraGame, and Winged Cloud's market "strategies", and to me they represent everything wrong with the VN market, and I hope they crash and burn.  But that's not the same thing as saying that's not "how it's supposed to be".  Supposed to be according to whom?  From a certain point of view, what they're doing is working, isn't it?  And the only thing a business is "supposed to" do is make money, right?

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All I hope then is to let capitalism guide VN companies' minds  :sachi:

I know barely nothing about VN market. I just can't see why a company would refuse more sales only for not letting their products be sold abroad. Must be some cultural thing, but I'm just too dumb to figure it out. :amane:

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1 hour ago, Benji Price said:

I just can't see why a company would refuse more sales only for not letting their products be sold abroad. Must be some cultural thing, but I'm just too dumb to figure it out. :amane:

There's actually been a lot written about this in many articles and threads previously. A lot of it has to do with perception of the outside world and difficulty understanding it and fear of not relating with it. Dealing with a market they don't understand which has a history of being hypercritical of what media has existed in Japan is frightening to them. There is no solid reason for them to refuse expansion of their market beyond the Japanese borders but to avoid complexity the vast majority of them simply adopt the "for sale in Japan only" policy.  The fear of being prosecuted for doing something illegal outside their country is one of them; their history of being rigorous with censorship for fear of police interference within their own country makes them very sensitive to what might be considered illegal elsewhere. Let's face it, a lot of Japanese eroge is illegal in many parts of the world so in some regards they're not entirely without merit in their fears.

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Well, first they were the JRPGs. A lot of good titles remained locked in Japan during the 90s and early 2000s. Soon it was proven that there was a global market for all kinds of RPGs, which didn't seem to be the companies' opinion at first. Then everyone wanted to be the next Final Fantasy VII. I'm pretty sure there has been a bubble with JRPG. Now they don't draw as much attention anymore.

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FF7 was the game that proved RPGs had a market in the West.  I remember.  I was there.  In the Super Nintendo days, Nintendo Power tried to start up a monthly RPG column, but just didn't have enough material.  They cut down the frequency after a column on a bunch of Japanese-only series.  (I imagine I wasn't the only one who complained it just felt cruel.)  The ones I remember were Tales of Phantasia and Fire Emblem, both series that would take a decade or so to catch on over here!

But it turned out RPGs not named "Final Fantasy" had trouble moving units.  They sold enough that post-FF7 a lot more got translated, but they didn't catch on the way (say) Call of Duty did.  Disgaea was the next big one.  It sold out almost instantly, and Atlus had to reprint the game.  It led directly to NIS founding NISA and getting into the market, and it was also the game that proved the "quirky, very Japanese" subtype of JRPG could do well.  A lot more games started coming over after that.

As for why JRPGs have declined, it's because the console market in Japan has declined as well, so they all moved to portable devices.

And as for visual novels... It's really only been since the mid-2010's that really good visual novels have been released, with really good translations.  I'll point to the relaunch of MangaGamer, when they released Shuffle! and Koihime and Kara no Shoujo.  Around the same time Jast USA finally released Demonbane.  Prior to that date, there were a few gems released (Crescendo, Nocturnal Illusion, Eve Burst Error, probably some others) but almost everything was crap, even the games that weren't nukige.  That, combined with Steam Greenlight forcing Valve to allow VNs onto Steam (after which they decided there was no reason they shouldn't have been allowed there all along), is what led to where we are today.

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1 hour ago, Okarin said:

I'm pretty sure there has been a bubble with JRPG. Now they don't draw as much attention anymore.

I strongly disagree. They draw a lot of attention, sometimes even not the blockbuster ones, and set one record after another, making almost every decent JRPG a confident contender for a localization. We just have an insane amount of them now and got used to it.

Upd: ah, wait, did you mean a bubble in Japan. Then nevermind. 

Edited by novurdim
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I meant in general. Maybe some JRPG such as Bravely Default, Setsuna or FFXV (especially this one since it's more of a blockbuster) sell well, but they're far from the big hits. It's still a niche market. Compare with hits such as The Witcher 3.

Still, FF7 carved its own fame with stunning graphics (for that era, now they look ugly), long playtime with like 4 CDs, and the rest of the pack. It's reasonable that to cause such a big impact again, you need to invest heavily into such a game. And really, hardly anyone is willing to do so.

Edited by Okarin
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Why would you ever need to compare them to Witcher? They sell more than ever, they draw more attention than ever and in general they are more successful than ever. What bubble in the West are we taking about exactly? With the same logic anything is in decline if you compare it to GTA. 

Edited by novurdim
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It's true the situation has improved dramatically compared to the past. Still, you'd need to measure the actual quality of those games as well as their market success. They get to the West, but how much do they sell? At least I take comfort in that Fire Emblem is finally recognised worldwide. Now Sega, bring over those Shining games.

But we have to enjoy the fact that at least they get here.

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Again, in general their sales in the west have dramatically improved. That's exactly why everything is getting localized nowadays, something we could never dream about before. Your doom and gloom is based on either nothing or odd failures. We also don't measure the actual quality of the games right now since it's another question altogether. 

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Hmmm I think JRPG have known better times, but probably the problem originates in Japan and not the West, it's true most of the relevant ones make their way here. Still, like Nandemonai said, they're more commonly found in portable devices, and in the Vita they make up the backbone of the library, but only because everyone else isn't willing to release something on it.

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Firstly, I seriously don't get what you even mean by better times if we are still talking about the sales in the West. Those times when we only had Final Fantasy and a dozen of other most high-profile games? Ya, we still have them and FF XV, for the most obvious example, is the most succesful launch of the franchise. And FF XV isn't even a good game by any margin but you usually have to release something as god-awful as Valkyria Revolution to get a real drop in sales.

Secondly, there's absolutely nothing wrong with releasing games on portable devices and it's not indicative of anything, are you console racist or something. Not to mention that your words would make sense during the PSP age (also we ain't got no localization on the vast majority of that portable colossus library by the way, ah those great better times) but today? Not a chance, the market has shifted again. And it's coming from me, a big fan of the handhelds in general and vita in particular so please no weird assumptions or insults to its library simply because you have nothing of substance to say.

Edited by novurdim
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14 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

"Supposed to be" going?  There's no such thing.  Nowhere will you find a rulebook that says "Thou shalt not release censored-only versions of thine games".

I hate Moenovel, SakuraGame, and Winged Cloud's market "strategies", and to me they represent everything wrong with the VN market, and I hope they crash and burn.  But that's not the same thing as saying that's not "how it's supposed to be".  Supposed to be according to whom?  From a certain point of view, what they're doing is working, isn't it?  And the only thing a business is "supposed to" do is make money, right?

You contradict yourself. If the only thing a business is supposed to do is making money, then I don't know what's wrong with Moenovel and Winged Cloud, since they were without any doubt very successful in that regard.

Besides that, I don't understand why I'm supposed to be satisfied with Akabei Soft considering they made pretty much nothing out of their potential. G-Senjou was fan translated long ago and Sharin no Kuni as well. So the release of G-Senjou gave me nothing new to read even if appreciate the high res version (despite the cropping). But the original was still more complete since it had the H-scenes included. And their next title - Sharin no Kuni - is a 12 year old title which was also fan translated long ago, so it's again nothing new to read.

I think I'm not the only one who had the expectation that Akabei Soft will bring over some of their more popular untranslated titles either from themselves or from one of their subsidiaries, like Kourin no Machi, Akatsuki no Goei from AkabeiSoft3, Reminiscene from Tigre Soft or Lovesick Puppies and Soratsuku from Cosmic Cute.

And that's not even considering the close connections to the companies they spawned, like Akatsuki Works who could add Ruitomo, Hello Lady and the Lovely & Cation series through subsidiary Hibiki Works, or Applique with Tasogare Sinsemilla or Hananono.

Lots of potential and pretty much all of it completely wasted. Everything they managed to bring over since they entered the western market years ago was... G-Senjou... all ages edition. How ironic, in the time they need to port one title to the west they are able to produce about ten new titles in Japan. So if I'd have to judge their business capabilities to make money in the west, then the word 'abysmal' would be still a compliment. Just looking at the mere 10.000 sales of G-Senjou and how much they could have gotten if they would have done it the right way lets me throw my hands up in despair.

So, no flowers from me for AkabeiSoft yet. So far it wouldn't really have made a difference if they wouldn't have entered the western market at all - neither for us nor for them.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Update: There's a pretty good chance that Youkoso! Sukebe Elf no Mori e/ ようこそ! スケベエルフの森へ https://vndb.org/v20464 could get a localization and a Western release

It's clear from what I've saw that quite a lot of people want this VN localized. What's more, I took a look through Lune's Twitter and found this:

https://twitter.com/luneman_etc/status/721869236910448641

Judging from his surprise, until 4/18/2016, no one had actually asked him about localization. His response, however, seemed to be in favor of English localizations and releases. So that's a good sign for localization odds.

I suggest that anyone who wants a Youkoso! Sukebe Elf no Mori e  Western release like I do email [email protected] and ask them about it, and also to ask for this VN when Mangagamer's annual licensing survey comes up again. And SPREAD THE WORD.

Edited by XChaosX
SPREAD THE WORD.
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