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More officially translated VNs come out and Nitro+'s online store is opening -- promising?


ken2260

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Tenco's has prepared to release its  EiyuuSenki(英雄*戦姫) in English (translated ver.), which is deprived of H-scenes and will be released on PS3 instead of PC. 

 

Meanwhile, Nitro+ is going to open its online store on the next Wed dedicated to serve international customers.

 

Do you think more and more Japanese VN makers are responding to the international market? 

 

I think if Nitro+ have succeeded in earning a handsome amount of money by the online store, more producers will just follow the way. And a solid international market can then be formed.

 

Do you think this is too optimistic? I am always worried about the H-scenes would have stigmatized the whole industry and thus being unwelcome to foreign countries...

 

I surely hope Nitro+ can bring more hope to us...

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Nitro+ will certainly have an influence on other companies as far as expanding their market beyond japan boundaries.

 

However I don't believe this will really increase the vn market itself. It'll definitely make vns more easier to buy and obtain online but only people who are interested will try to find them. If they don't advertise then the market itself won't grow significantly. 

But it is a nice step and I hope more companies start doing it. I'm sure if that happens then there will be more attention.

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One of the reasons Nitroplus was willing to take the risk is because their sales have been falling rapidly outside of the Science series (starting with Chaos;Head) in Japan since Muramasa was released, but they still had a lot more liquid assets than the average VN company, because of the explosive sales of Jingai Makyou, Muramasa, and a few of their other early games upon their initial release.  The Sumaga team consistently makes games that don't appeal to their original fanbase, and as a result, they lost a lot of their core fans.  Sumaga and the other games by that team do appeal to people who like extremely weird stories with whacked out elements that are absurd (if not amusing).  However, that is a group even more niche than the horror/dark/fantasy/violence/utsuge fans that liked the stuff done by the original team.  Currently, the Japanese division of the company is only afloat due to the sales of Steins;Gate in particular and the rest of the Science series in general. 

 

And yes, I do know that the Science series is a joint project with 5pb.

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This won't impact almost anything at all. Jast is just one of many major studios and to be honest, they haven't been doing that well since a longer while. I bet - just as Clephas mentioned - that Science series make most of their current income and that makes them stay afloat with enough spare cash to experiment beyond that. Tenco is currently raiding on a wave of "decent" sales from Eiyuu Senki (which is preety much surprising). I don't even know why are they taking the risk, more over when LittleWitch failed in the past; either they are very shortsighted, or things are perhaps even worse than we are aware of - the current market oversaturation and lack of any decent views on the future is forcing them to seek a larger audience outside Japan. Unfortunately, they are doing it wrong as usual, since they should simply release the 18+ version along with an all ages version both for PC and consoles, not the other way around. PS3 isn't that popular on the west and games like Eiyuu Senki won't find much of an interest besides hardcore otakus; it basically shows their complete lack of market knowledge outside their country, since everything here is reversed and PC gaming makes the majority of gaming community in EU/NA.

 

I couldn't care less about Fruitbat Factory, since it's a mediocre company ran by frenchies (no offense) and they should stick to releasing dojin games. I don't even know why Oyari decided to establish partnership exactly with them, but I guess it was propably because of some of the recognition FBF got, along with the fact there's not much of actual publishing studios available and interested in releasing japanese games on the west; either that, or Tenco is just desperate.

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Regarding Eiyuu Senki, Herki (vn and fansub editor) claims that another localization company licensed the PC version a while ago and that's still on the books, h-scenes and all. That's all he said about it. I don't really see the PS3 version pushing too many units. Its gameplay and story aren't much to write home about, I hear. 

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I'd wish Herkz would rather have solid proof for that kind of a claim; without it, he's just spreading rumours around.

 

Eiyuu Senki is a fun game to play, but nothing special, to be honest. The writing is indeed rather poor and the whole premise in overall is nothing I'd expect from the former LW members, who made such excellent titles like Girlish Grimoire, Rondo Leaflet or Quartett!. The best part of the game is actually the art and designs from Oyari Ashito and to a lesser extent, gameplay reminiscent of Rance series. I am dissapointed with Tenco and already lost faith in Oyari as well; it seems the best days are already long gone and his own style and art quality actually dwindled down into typical, modern moeblob. Sad.

 

I already wrote about my concerns regarding the Eiyuu Senki port in another thread.

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One of the reasons Nitroplus was willing to take the risk is because their sales have been falling rapidly outside of the Science series (starting with Chaos;Head) in Japan since Muramasa was released, but they still had a lot more liquid assets than the average VN company, because of the explosive sales of Jingai Makyou, Muramasa, and a few of their other early games upon their initial release.  The Sumaga team consistently makes games that don't appeal to their original fanbase, and as a result, they lost a lot of their core fans.  Sumaga and the other games by that team do appeal to people who like extremely weird stories with whacked out elements that are absurd (if not amusing).  However, that is a group even more niche than the horror/dark/fantasy/violence/utsuge fans that liked the stuff done by the original team.  Currently, the Japanese division of the company is only afloat due to the sales of Steins;Gate in particular and the rest of the Science series in general. 

 

And yes, I do know that the Science series is a joint project with 5pb.

Yes, I know the VN selling condition is not booming. But do you think the online store will be mainly focus on selling "goods" like super sonico figures, character goods and other stuff besides VNs? I think they may use this to directly collect customer information and possibly organize some events or campaigns later.

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I'd wish Herkz would rather have solid proof for that kind of a claim; without it, he's just spreading rumours around.

 

Eiyuu Senki is a fun game to play, but nothing special, to be honest. The writing is indeed rather poor and the whole premise in overall is nothing I'd expect from the former LW members, who made such excellent titles like Girlish Grimoire, Rondo Leaflet or Quartett!. The best part of the game is actually the art and designs from Oyari Ashito and to a lesser extent, gameplay reminiscent of Rance series. I am dissapointed with Tenco and already lost faith in Oyari as well; it seems the best days are already long gone and his own style and art quality actually dwindled down into typical, modern moeblob. Sad.

 

I already wrote about my concerns regarding the Eiyuu Senki port in another thread.

Thanks a lot for the explanation. I really don't know so much about Tenco before. :)

 

I do agree Eiyuu Senki cannot attract audience outside the fan-based groups. I cannot image IGN or Gamespot will be giving much serious attention to it (they would probably just laugh at how Japanese put "dating-simulation elements" with strategy gameplay). The game is fun, but the enjoyment fades out easily after, say, playing 10 hours -- and the scenes and story-telling in between battles are also poorly handled -- too loose and mostly unrelated to the battles.

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I'd wish Herkz would rather have solid proof for that kind of a claim; without it, he's just spreading rumours around.

Well that's never going to happen. If he's for real and not spreading bullshit, then posting evidence would get him in serious trouble. He works with these companies from time to time, you know. So either you take him for his word or not, but why would he lie about something as dumb as Eiyuu Senki of all things? I think worst case scenario is that it was licensed but the localization went nowhere. It would make sense why all of a sudden this other company is doing an entirely separate translation for the PS3 version.

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I do agree Eiyuu Senki cannot attract audience outside the fan-based groups. I cannot image IGN or Gamespot will be giving much serious attention to it (they would probably just laugh at how Japanese put "dating-simulation elements" with strategy gameplay). The game is fun, but the enjoyment fades out easily after, say, playing 10 hours -- and the scenes and story-telling in between battles are also poorly handled -- too loose and mostly unrelated to the battles.

Eiyuu Senki lacks substance. Game doesn't take anything seriously enough to actually justify the history/strategy fans into buying it and at the same time, presence of the rather dull srpg elements will propably put off quite a bit people as well. In the end, you actually don't know who's the actual target audience.

It is a joke of a game, to be honest, in all it's aspects.

You can imagine, things would be completely different when they would really base the game on actual historical events, infuse those well designed characters with real personalities, make the gameplay more open and rebuild the srpg content to be much more difficult. But it's the japanese vn devs were talking about and they rarely do the research.

If he's for real and not spreading bullshit, then posting evidence would get him in serious trouble. He works with these companies from time to time, you know.

It's better to remain silent in that case. I don't care if he's working with companies, or not. If that would be the case, the more silent he should remain. Claims without any sort of evidence are just rumours.
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Prices are an important factor indeed, but people are also too used to treat games as goods of first necessity; Steam is much responsible for this kind of attitude with it's constant marketing schemes. A lot of people often own hundreds of titles of which they  played a very small portion of. In case of visual novels, japanese market is also becoming heavily oversaturated, which makes it more difficult for developers to stay afloat and make a living.

 

It seems we're drifting more and more towards the "consumptionist" kind of society where people are simply fixed on consuming as much goods as possible, because it's something you're supposed to do.

 

Just like with indie games, I find the japanese dojin scene a possible savior, since they aren't as restricted as official devs; they have more possibilities to actually self-publish their own titles on the west or even focus on making multilingual titles right from the start. I kind of want to become a part of it in the near future, as well.

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