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Do you prefer new VN titles announced early or when it's really close to releasing?


Do you prefer new VN titles announced early or when it's really close to releasing?  

21 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you prefer new VN titles announced early or when it's really close to releasing?

    • Early, with (potential) updates
      7
    • When it's very close to releasing
      14


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For visual novels, which of these new title announcement styles do you prefer?

A) Announce it early to garner hype, with % updates. Risk of going dark for long periods of time.

B) Announce with less than 1 month of a hard release date. No long waits, but less advertising/hype.

I'm not sure which I prefer Ive seen some of both styles both do well and done disappointingly

Edited by NowItsAngeTime
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From a marketing standpoint (A) is probably always better. But from my perspective as a consumer, I always prefer (B). It respects consumers more by being straight to the point, where as (A) is focused more on creating hype above all else (just look at the gap between the expectations movie trailers create, and then the actual movies themselves). (B) also allows more creative freedom, since you can change your work as many times as you want until you release it. But with (A), especially if you raised money via Kickstarter, you have to commit to the originally advertised mission. Else you risk pissing off your backers and followers. 

Overall, (A) seems more corporate, restrictive, and sometimes even fake. Whereas (B) feels more personal, honest, and open to creativity since it's not as focused on winning over the crowd. 

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Well, in my case... I just losing interest in game so fast, when the time between announcement of localization and actual release is too long.

 

It's like... When you first see announcement...

*Wow! Wah, so great, I have waited for this! I will buy at 1st day release!!!*

 

And then, months later... Or even more... Game finally releases.

*Ah... Oh... Maybe... Someday, when I will have a free time (because other interesting VNs released or announced already)*

Seriously, even if VN market is so niche... There are still SO MANY GAMES releasing every, every month, announcements for localization every time, and you just have 24 hours in day!!! I have so, so little time every day for playing because ton of IRL work, geez! Ah...

Sometimes I am really envious of people who have ton of free time... Guys, please, treasure this... You won't have it someday.

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Depends on what you mean by early. If its going to be released in 2 years no please dont announce it 

 

Nekonyan learnt that the hard way when they announced too many things too early and there's still I think 2 titles in 2018 they announced thats yet to be released. They dont announce that early anymore. More companies should follow that example (mainly the likes of Sekai and JAST)

On 6/24/2021 at 2:19 PM, ittaku said:

Early announcement may help avoid embarrassment in the case of fan translation conflict too.

They can just message the fantlers though
 

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20 hours ago, Freestyle80 said:

They can just message the fantlers though

Unless they have claim to all the works from one studio, that's as good as giving away that they're working on the title, so the same is achieved by announcing early without sneaking around. They can reserve early announcements for when there's a fantl.

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  • 2 weeks later...

First Nekonyan announcements is not that bad though, because at least they still manage to get two of their big title at that time (Sanoba and Fureraba) released on schedule and sometimes it should be enough to make the impact for most of the people (I'm content with it by the way). For the rest of the three, HGB was released at January 2019, Sukiren was released at May 2019, and Melty Moment still unreleased until today thanks to the complication behind the translation progress. Nowadays they didn't announced the exact (Or hard) release date until they're really ready, and when they do that it mean that the VN in question is really ready for the release.

Anyway as for the topic I prefer second method in that the company should announce the new title when it's almost ready for the release, and you can see on how JAST did improve after they did that method recently with their recent title is a big one (Muramasa) instead of announcing the title early (It help though that they decided to produce the hard copy later and release the download version first so that we didn't need to wait for JAST to produce the hard copy as well). That said while the method is good for us, the company should absolutely make sure that they can deliver the release on time before decided to do this or otherwise they'll be like Sol Press in which turned out they didn't have enough resources to release the VNs on time after announced several new title with exact release date in the near future.

While I prefer second method, Nekonyan and Mangagamer here did use the first method in that they announce the new title first in order to build the hype and then working on it (Both companies so far are quite reliable when it come to releases). Of course it also carry some risk in that it will lessen the hype if the translation progress is taking too much time, but as long as the pacing at work is good enough it shouldn't be much trouble for them to release their VNs in reasonable time frame. So in the end while I prefer what JAST did recently, the first method should be good to use seeing that it mean the companies can make sure that they have enough resources to work on the VNs, although obviously preferably the company shouldn't took too much licenses so much that it became too much to handle like Sekai.

Edited by littleshogun
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  • 2 weeks later...

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