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Fortissimo FA to be "Translated" to English by SakuraGame


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1 hour ago, bakauchuujin said:

Seems like Nekonyansoft really wanted to get the title. Here is the reaction from one of the people working there on their forums.

"As big fans of the series we tried. We really did. :cryy:

Sadly we never even got a response from them."

 

Quite a pity that they ended up choosing SakuraGame rather than Nekonyan.

what´s sad is the fact companies even sell them BOTH licenses at the same time, like sakuragame is more than known to only really focus on the chinese part, churning out an crappy english pendant along the lines for whatever reason there is.

btw don´t see them getting out of buiseness anytime soon, chinese dump their bucks on ´em

Edited by SaintOfVoid
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1 minute ago, sanahtlig said:

The license rights may or may not be transferable.  If SakuraGame were to go under, their license rights could very well just vanish.  It depends on the contract.  You'd have to ask someone who's worked at multiple localization companies and been involved in licensing.

I see. Thanks for your input. I really hope they vanish as soon as possible. They seem hell-bent on ruining VNs and H-RPGs.

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10 minutes ago, SaintOfVoid said:

what´s sad is the fact companies even sell them BOTH licenses at the same time, like sakuragame is known to only really focus on the chinese part, churning out an pendant along the lines for whatever reason there is.

From a developer perspective it makes sense though. You have one agreement with one group, and your product is localised for both the Chinese and English markets without needing to do anything. Presumably, SakuraGame is much cheaper than Western localisation groups as well. 

I imagine what would be most effective is to boycott SG English releases entirely, but there will always be people that buy VNs regardless of the translation quality.

Edited by Zander
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16 minutes ago, Zander said:

I imagine what would be most effective is to boycott SG English releases entirely, but there will always be people that buy VNs regardless of the translation quality.

And that's one of the major reasons why I hate VNs on Steam. It's a breeding ground for those who buy and support SakuraGame's shitty releases.

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Seeing that Sakura Games about to released one of most requested VNs, I guess it'll be better to practice my reading skill that I got back from when I'd read Flyable Heart to read this English release lol. Although of course it would be nice though if the one who localized Fortissimo isn't Sakura Games, but I guess reality is not that nice lol.

PS - Hopefully the 18+ scenes still accessible, unlike back at Chusingura case.

Edited by littleshogun
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5 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

My favorite is this "helpful" comment in the chain linked in the OP:

Making too much of a fuss over this could actually backfire: SakuraGame will get more attention and it'll increase their sales.  For those wanting to fight this, the Japanese are sensitive to attacks on their pride and reputation: a shame campaign on the licensors could be effective.  For such shame tactics to succeed, the Japanese media and blogosphere needs to be engaged.  Japanese companies don't follow English communities, so English coverage won't reach or affect them.  And obviously, such tactics won't work on SakuraGame.  They clearly don't care about their reputation.

I wasn't trying to cause much fuss but actually, help him. Their translator has ruined many great games already and they had 0 intention of providing any updates to any translation release till this day. Chusingura was at least willing to fix their crap by listening to the community with translation errors, these guys did nothing, nor did they communicate in the forums. These ppl bring bad reputation towards the entire Chinese community, I am disgusted with them honestly

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1 hour ago, Formlose Gestalt said:

Sad news. The game looks interesting.

I guess there is hoping that the bad reputation among the VN community is hurting them. Sure a random Steam user doesn't know about their reputation, but its still a niche market.

why would they even care about english readers, like their target audience is and always been chinese, the eng? version is just some sort of cheap throw-in. 
sure any company attempting to sell machine translated stuff is rightfully damnable, but like already mentioned above the ones handing out to them its eng license, probably knowing that they won´t make proper an use of, aren´t any much better.

Edited by SaintOfVoid
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10 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

I have a question though.

Say a localizer A gets a license for VN X. Does that mean that no other localizer can ever pick up the same VN X again? Is there no way for a proper localizer to officially pick up later the same VN? I know it's a stupid question, but I really have no clue in these matters as I don't know much about legal stuff.

In the early days, a lot of Japanese companies didn't know how to write contracts.  This is how Harmony Gold still has Macross tied up.  But stories like that are why they don't negotiate contracts like that anymore.

Typically a contract will be for a limited time (meaning that the rights will eventually expire; witness MangaGamer having to stop selling Shuffle! and Soul Link) but also be an exclusive contract.  While the contract is in force, that company will be the only one with rights to release it in whatever territory the license covers.

This is because non-exclusive licenses are worthless; why spend a bunch of money translating and promoting a game when someone else can just undercut you?  So typically the localization company will demand an exclusive license.

However, SakuraGame may not bother.  They're not a real publisher.  They don't give a crap about their products, they certainly don't spend money on them, and they had games put up briefly that they didn't even have rights for.  So it's hard to say.

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Lol, this VN is a painful reminder of how terrible I used to be at delaying my Japanese studies (not so much anymore, thankfully).

Shame this is being picked up by such a terrible translation company since it was one of my earliest motivations to learn JP. I discovered it a short while after I started reading VNs due to the cool art designs and fripSide OP, lol.

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18 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

In the early days, a lot of Japanese companies didn't know how to write contracts.  This is how Harmony Gold still has Macross tied up.  But stories like that are why they don't negotiate contracts like that anymore.

I had to look that one up because I never heard of the case. Truly interesting.

19 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

Typically a contract will be for a limited time (meaning that the rights will eventually expire; witness MangaGamer having to stop selling Shuffle! and Soul Link) but also be an exclusive contract.  While the contract is in force, that company will be the only one with rights to release it in whatever territory the license covers.

I know about Shuffle and Soul Link. That was a very peculiar case when I heard about it a couple of years ago when MG pulled it off the store. I was like "why would anyone buy a license for it to only expire after like 5 years or so".

21 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

This is because non-exclusive licenses are worthless; why spend a bunch of money translating and promoting a game when someone else can just undercut you?  So typically the localization company will demand an exclusive license.

However, SakuraGame may not bother.  They're not a real publisher.  They don't give a crap about their products, they certainly don't spend money on them, and they had games put up briefly that they didn't even have rights for.  So it's hard to say.

I see. That's true. So all in all, not everything may be lost just yet. I wish we knew more about the deal they made with La'cryma. I hope SakuraGame was so lazy as to not even bother making a proper agreement, so that someone else may pick it up one day if they deem doing so.

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32 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

So all in all, not everything may be lost just yet. I wish we knew more about the deal they made with La'cryma. I hope SakuraGame was so lazy as to not even bother making a proper agreement, so that someone else may pick it up one day if they deem doing so.

The bigger question is: would any sane company be willing to license and re-translate an already-released title?  My gut response is: no.  That doesn't sound more profitable than translating a new title.

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23 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

I know about Shuffle and Soul Link. That was a very peculiar case when I heard about it a couple of years ago when MG pulled it off the store. I was like "why would anyone buy a license for it to only expire after like 5 years or so".

The thing is that this isn't a very peculiar case.  This is the standard way those deals work.  That's why anime goes out of print.  Witness the giant parade of Aniplex licenses that are slowly expiring out from under all the companies they used to do business with, since they decided 'we'll just charge Japanese prices and release these ourselves'.  This is why Muppet Babies is never getting released on DVD, and also why The Muppet Show's episodes on DVD aren't all the same length: a lot of musical numbers got cut out.  It's why stuff rolls off of streaming services like Crunchyroll and Netflix all the time.

What happens is these contracts come up for renewal on a regular basis.  Companies have very low incentive to cancel these contracts in the case of MangaGamer: they literally don't have to lift a finger, and they get more free money.  All they have to do is sign a renewal.  To date, Navel is the only company to decline to renew one of those contracts.  MangaGamer has partnered with many companies, released a few games, then never done any more games from that company (Black Lilith and Propeller, to name a few) but Navel is the only one that took games out of print.

In Navel's case, they released the new version of Shuffle! (the one that isn't the one everyone wants) shortly after the contract with MG expired.  Now, these contracts are fairly long-term.  It's difficult to say when exactly Navel decided not to renew; but I doubt the timing of Shuffle's steam release is a coincidence.  I imagine Navel wanted to move to Steam, and to do it themselves.  Note that even they couldn't do that while MangaGamer held an exclusive license.  They had to wait for it to expire.

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19 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

The bigger question is: would any sane company be willing to license and re-translate an already-released title?  My gut response is: no.  That doesn't sound more profitable than translating a new title.

That's true. But still... I don't want to consider SakuraShit's release a genuine release. Yes, I know what's on paper, but I simply don't want to look at that as an official release. I look at it as a scam, and that's what in my mind that company is - a huge scam.

22 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

What happens is these contracts come up for renewal on a regular basis.  Companies have very low incentive to cancel these contracts in the case of MangaGamer: they literally don't have to lift a finger, and they get more free money.  All they have to do is sign a renewal. 

Ah, so that's what actually happened. Thanks for the explanation. Does the same hold true for JAST then? How about those old G-Collection VNs? What's with their licenses, I don't think those go each year for a renewal considering some of those old JP companies are probably dead by now.

24 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

In Navel's case, they released the new version of Shuffle! (the one that isn't the one everyone wants) shortly after the contract with MG expired.  Now, these contracts are fairly long-term.  It's difficult to say when exactly Navel decided not to renew; but I doubt the timing of Shuffle's steam release is a coincidence.  I imagine Navel wanted to move to Steam, and to do it themselves.  Note that even they couldn't do that while MangaGamer held an exclusive license.  They had to wait for it to expire.

That explains some things. And yeah, I wish they released Essence instead. What a bummer. And after it, they hadn't released anything else on Steam. What a waste. For a company with so many titles I wanted to see in ENG, that's truly a shame.

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G-Collections was originally kind of like MangaGamer is now: wholly owned by CD-Bros.  Then CD-Bros almost completely collapsed.  GC now is a brand owned by Jast USA.  That happened because Peter Payne went to CD-Bros, and paid them for the brand name, and all the titles.  The new titles released after Sagara Family and Figures of Happiness are titles Peter licensed per the usual way.

Nocturnal Illusion and the other handful of really old releases are a strange story.  I presume those fall under "old, poorly drafted contracts" because Peter has been able to re-release Nocturnal Illusion numerous times over the years, even though the Japanese company that made the game went under years before.

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1 hour ago, sanahtlig said:

The bigger question is: would any sane company be willing to license and re-translate an already-released title?  My gut response is: no.  That doesn't sound more profitable than translating a new title.

Nowadays, titles considered too old or not profitable enough just dont get translated. 

It's one thing if a company is retranslating a game that was fan tranlated for free, but as you say I'm not sure anyone would re translate a game that already has a TL, even if it's...less than stellar.

Sad news, but unfortunately it is probably true that its just a lot cheaper to hire a hack than a proper company.

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11 minutes ago, kyrt said:

So here's the thing if a vn company in Japan is not willing to put forth effort and research into what people think of their would be translators and publishers then why should we give them the time of day?

What matters to them is sales and sakuragame has the biggest sales out of any localisation company so :chaika:

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Just now, Kiriririri said:

What matters to them is sales and sakuragame has the biggest sales out of any localisation company so :chaika:

If they can't respect their own products and potential consumers that's not a company anyone should support. They probably have the biggest sales out of any localization company because they charge hardly anything for most of their games...it gives a false impression that they are successful in sales but profit wise I'm sure it's quite different. They seem to primarily care about the chinese market...shame they can't just license a visual novel by different companies and not have an incompetent half-arsed company try and translate a game in a language they are incapable of understanding.

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Profit-wise they're making bank too. Even if they're making just a dollar off of every sale, they are routinely pulling in six-digit sale figures. Meanwhile, MangaGamer struggles greatly to reach even a tenth that, with many of their successful games only selling in the thousands. SakuraGame is most likely making way more money than any other localization company right now.

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