Mangagamer and Sekai Project best sellers in 2014

[Down]

Mangagamer just released their 2014 look back.

Included is their top 10 best sellers for the year:

 

 

1. Imouto Paradise
2. Ultimate Boob Wars!!
3. Demon Master Chris
4. Hypno-training My Mother and Sister 
5. Eroge! ~Sex And Games Makes Sexy Games~
6. Cho Dengeki Stryker
7. Armored Warrior Iris
8. Valkyrie Svia
9. Really? Really!
10. Cum on! Bukkake Ranch!

 A whopping eight nukige in the top 10, three of which are from last year, and not a single non-nukige in the top 5. 

Releases this year which didn't make it to the top10 include Knights of Anal Tyranny, Lapis Gunner, Space Pirate Sara, Royal Guard Melissa and Married Nurse, five nukige, and d2B vs. Deardrops and Cartagra.

 

With 10 nukige vs. 4 non-nukige released this year it's not completely surprising to see this kind of results, but it's still kinda disheartening to see the efforts MG makes at releasing quality, non-nukige titles do so poorly in the end. Let us just hope that it won't discourage them from trying to push a better quality for their releases, even though it doesn't seem to affect the sales at all.

 

That's pretty already.

 

Sekai Project also gave their top5 selling games on Steam this year:

 

1) Sakura Spirit

2) NEKOPARA Vol. 1

3) WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.01

4) planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~

5) fault milestone one

Planetarian, which was supposed to be a big thing, ended up doing less than Sakura Spirit and Nekopara. Welp.

 

Overall thoughts on these results:

 

(One positive note still: Kara no Shoujo LE topping the hard copy sales for Mangagamer. /me waiting for the unavoidable KnS/Cartagra/KnS 2 hardcopy bundle some time in 2016. Even though I already got the japanese versions.)

[Nayleen]

Not too surprised about MG's rankings, but Sekai Project's well... projects really fell short because of the missing marketing and for a straight up lack of word-of-mouth.

 

Planetarian might be "kind of a big deal" to be released but ultimately isn't, simply for the fact that a lot of people who're even interested in the medium probably have already read it (through the fan TL) and didn't bother with buying a copy, since it is quite the short, forgettable title.

 

I honestly expect sales to really pick up when the first releases of VNs hit the shelves that haven't had a translation yet, like Grisaia no Meikyuu. It's already a niche medium, and expecting sales out of something that's already been available for free seems like a silly idea. It's a sad state, and the reason VNs don't pick up any more Steam is the really sore lack of new content for enthusiasts of the medium.

 

There needs to be some serious money behind the translation and marketing of a straight-up AAA VN title for once before I'm expecting any sales, and willing to put down money myself to support whichever company is daring enough to make the first step into the, again just my opinion, right direction.

[Decay]

MangaGamer's top 10 list only includes sales from their site, not steam sales. If they counted Steam sales Go Go Nippon would be #1 and Cho Dengeki Stryker, one of their more unpopular titles, would have taken the #2 spot, which is surprising considering how it looked like it was performing at first glance. But what it actually tells you is how their games traditionally perform when sold through their own site (previously the only way to get them). This is also why they paid their translators far below the industry standards and shied away from difficult projects.

 

It's easy to look at that article and get depressed over how nukige continues to outsell their other stuff. But I tend to have a more optimistic outlook. First, MangaGamer continues to make a strong push for non-nukige titles despite them being demonstrably less profitable. It shows that they really don't consider profit to be the primary factor when choosing which titles to localize. The other big thing here, the advent of steam, is also a strong positive. I think it will actually push things away from nukige. When an average, relatively unpopular title manages to top everything but their #1 nukige just by being on steam, you begin to get the idea that all-ages steam releases could be the new nukige for MangaGamer. They'll continue to release all-ages ports on Steam, and if they perform as well or better than CDS, the company won't have to push out a crapload of cheap nukige to survive anymore. I also don't think it's bad for "normal" eroge, either, MangaGamer will continue pushing both all-ages and 18+ versions of their future releases (if viable). I can actually see this opening up a lot more doors for them.

 

Not too surprised about MG's rankings, but Sekai Project's well... projects really fell short because of the missing marketing and for a straight up lack of word-of-mouth.

 

Planetarian might be "kind of a big deal" to be released but ultimately isn't, simply for the fact that a lot of people who're even interested in the medium probably have already read it (through the fan TL) and didn't bother with buying a copy, since it is quite the short, forgettable title.

 

I honestly expect sales to really pick up when the first releases of VNs hit the shelves that haven't had a translation yet, like Grisaia no Meikyuu. It's already a niche medium, and expecting sales out of something that's already been available for free seems like a silly idea. It's a sad state, and the reason VNs don't pick up any more Steam is the really sore lack of new content for enthusiasts of the medium.

 

There needs to be some serious money behind the translation and marketing of a straight-up AAA VN title for once before I'm expecting any sales, and willing to put down money myself to support whichever company is daring enough to make the first step into the, again just my opinion, right direction.

I can guarantee you that Neko Para and Sakura Spirit both sold way more than Mangagamer's products. The two may have sold more than MG's entire catalog combined. I wouldn't consider that "falling short". I don't know how far short the rest of their stuff fell, but I really doubt it was unprofitable. I expect that Kajitsu will end up selling very well on Steam once that is released.

 

edit: And if you really want to feel down, you should recognize that it's highly likely that in its first week of release, HuniePop probably outsold everything listed in this thread.

[Lambda]

I'll note that Cartagra was 11th and that's... something, at least. But yeah, not very surprising. Nukige have been mangagamer's best (or most consistent)-selling titles for a while, and they haven't made any real steps to pull back from the story-based titles, so I wouldn't worry too too much... I'm kinda curious as to how LE/hardcopy sales affect the overall sales numbers of a title... hm...

[Deep Blue]

Cum on! Bukkake Ranch! <-------  wtf lol, so much nukige I can't take it anymore

 

Sad to see planetarian so low on the list I dont have anything against sakura spiritis but...really?

 

I blame youtube for that

[Nayleen]

I can guarantee you that Neko Para and Sakura Spirit both sold way more than Mangagamer's products. The two may have sold more than MG's entire catalog combined. I wouldn't consider that "falling short". I don't know how far short the rest of their stuff fell, but I really doubt it was unprofitable. I expect that Kajitsu will end up selling very well on Steam once that is released.

"Falling short" was in relation to Planetarian Vs. Sakura Spirit (an utter crap title, no way around it) and NEKOPARA (straight up moeblob), and I'd consider WEE and Planetarian to be the kind of VN I - and probably a lot of other people - would like to see more of. I agree with everything you said, apart from being way less optimistic about Kajitsu's sales numbers, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[Darklord Rooke]

 

The other big thing here, the advent of steam, is also a strong positive. I think it will actually push things away from nukige. 

 

Yep, I agree with you. The visual novel scene in the west has its roots in eroge so the results are not surprising, but STEAM is going to broaden the fanbase which is a good thing.

[Zakamutt]

WEE is not really that good either, so you'd kinda want modestly acclaimed Planetarian to outsell it as it's of at least similar length, also a linear VN, and iirc cost more or less the same as well. I suppose WEE might have gotten a Kickstarter publicity boost, as things do (are the graphics also prettier? damn this shallow earth.) I am happy about fault ms1 showing up despite its late release (though.. do they have that many other titles?) since I enjoyed it quite a lot.

[Ame]

This shouldn't be a surprise.

 

Unless you are already aware of what Visual Novels are, none of these products will be attractive.

For an outsider, the standard Nukige isn't different from something like planetarian for example.

 

If there is no proper marketing done, you'll keep selling to the same people over and over again. And yeah, the VN community prefers Nukige.

 

Shoudln't be suprising either. VN have overall worse writting than books, worse drawing than mangas, and disputable music (which can be good, but is overall very average), and often fail most of the time to make all the three blend together.

In the end, VN's are just the most convienient way to make "interactive" porn and justifying it with a generic story.

 

Unless there's are real effort made to seperate Nukige, Eroge and/or All Ages Visual Novels, there's no getting out of the loop.

Localisation companies have to make an effort showcasing properly what's worth being.

 

TL;DR : 1) Seperate crap from the rest 2) Marketing

[Mr. Meogii]

 

 

" And yeah, the VN community prefers Nukige."

 

 

This is something that shocks me. When I first started Reading visual novels I had no Idea Nukige's even Existed. It is a enormous shame that People Do not understand the difference between the two. 

[Mr. Meogii]

Then again I don't know many people that would be willing to pay money for Main stream visual novels. Most adults would find it hard to spend there hard earned money on Eroge. I don't blame them. It's a lifestyle choice and this choice is deemed in the eyes of many as Taboo. 

 

Hence : http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30698640

[Nosebleed]

>Sakura Spirit

>1st place

These stats are now 100% irrelevant

[Jibril]

This is way too funny. Sakurai Spirit and Nekopara selling more than WEE and Planetarian? Welp fuck this gay earth. I think the stats will be different this year though. Hopefully. Maybe...

[Zakamutt]

Do note that Sakura Spirit was fairly cheap, so actual profit would be somewhat lower than you might think.. though probably not that much.

[Kosakyun]

I can see how lewd the Earth is now.

[solidbatman]

Do note that Sakura Spirit was fairly cheap, so actual profit would be somewhat lower than you might think.. though probably not that much.

Not to mention, Sakura Spirit had youtube lets players playing through it (and making fun of it). It was a novelty game. 

[jjm152]

This shouldn't be a surprise.

 

Unless you are already aware of what Visual Novels are, none of these products will be attractive.

For an outsider, the standard Nukige isn't different from something like planetarian for example.

 

If there is no proper marketing done, you'll keep selling to the same people over and over again. And yeah, the VN community prefers Nukige.

 

Shoudln't be suprising either. VN have overall worse writting than books, worse drawing than mangas, and disputable music (which can be good, but is overall very average), and often fail most of the time to make all the three blend together.

In the end, VN's are just the most convienient way to make "interactive" porn and justifying it with a generic story.

 

Unless there's are real effort made to seperate Nukige, Eroge and/or All Ages Visual Novels, there's no getting out of the loop.

Localisation companies have to make an effort showcasing properly what's worth being.

 

TL;DR : 1) Seperate crap from the rest 2) Marketing

 

I agree with this, but also I would say that the marketing channels don't really exist for VN's. Steam is going to be the best bet right now because of the number of people it reaches (putting a VN on a steam sale will spike interest) - but there are issues right now with Steam not allowing Eroge to be listed unless you jump through some hoops (like after market patches). 

 

In my honest opinion, the year after Steam finally allows Eroge to be listed on their marketplace the overall volume of VN's sold will double or triple. 

[jjm152]

Do note that Sakura Spirit was fairly cheap, so actual profit would be somewhat lower than you might think.. though probably not that much.

 

You're sort of thinking about this the wrong way. 

 

I've done software dev for over 20 years (most recently as the GM of a software development company) and we don't look at unit sales in terms of profit per unit, instead we think about projects in terms of "return on investment." It varies a huge amount depending on what type of software product we are producing and how it will be used, but for a piece of software that you might considered "stand alone/shrink wrapped" will almost always have recovered it's development costs before any code ever gets shipped due to pre-sales and ordering. 

 

This is actually how we decide which projects to take on and how we budget for them. We look to see what we think general interest will be, then we work back from that to sales revenue and then discuss with myself and the technical team the sunk costs to bring it to market. If the stars all align (I see the costs will be significantly lower than we stand to make in revenue) then I give the green light for the project and the marketing and development teams go to work.

 

I'd imagine this is exactly how any of the companies that produce VN's will work as well. Likely they have an expectation of recouping all expenditures and generating profit sometime within a tail of 3 months of release. So with that in mind, unless your project completely stinks (you entirely misjudged the market badly, or it's a bug ridden mess) every unit you move past whatever your break even point is, is essentially pure profit.

 

If you think about it, this is why you'll see older titles being sold on steam sales for like 2 dollars when they originally went for 50. The product itself is virtual, so you can keep discounting it and hopefully keep selling it until it becomes obsolete. 

 

I'll scare you guys even more here - My business also does software reselling for various companies. Last year I sold 50 copies of Microsoft XP. Yes, people were still buying XP in 2014.

[Down]

I exaggerated my reaction purposefully to maintain my reputation of hater of fun, but in the end I'm still quite happy with the way things are going, especially for Mangagamer. In the end, if they're selling truckloads of nukige, good for them. I know they DO have the desire to also bring over other types of titles with quality translations, and it gives them the means of doing it. In the recent interviews they did with siliconera, it's evident that they've reached the point where they can start getting above the "just surviving" point and get more liberty in what they do.

 

Hell, they even mentioned recently that they sold more games in December 2014 than in the two previous years cumulated, that has to mean more people are now willing to buy their games right?

 

I'm still holding my breath for Sekai Project and Steam, considering I'm not myself a Steam user.

[sanahtlig]

I'll repeat what I've said before: market incentives are threatening to polarize the market between nukige and non-adult titles.  Story-based eroge tend to cost much more to localize yet sell the same or worse than nukige.  As long as these incentives exist, it's only a matter of time before the market adjusts to compensate.  Companies go out of business.  Leadership changes.  Priorities on the Japanese side change.  Relying on companies to fight the market and work on unprofitable projects over the long-term is foolhardy at best.

 

 

 

the VN community prefers Nukige

I suspect this isn't true.  And in fact, if you look at VNDB, the most popular titles aren't nukige.  I suspect what's actually happening is that most VN sales occur to casuals: people who don't really follow VNs.  This crowd is much more likely to go for nukige than story-driven eroge because these purchases by casuals are mostly impulse buys (the disparity of digital and hardcopy sales pretty much reinforces this point).  While there's a large and thriving VN community at this point (80k registered users on VNDB alone), the vast majority don't purchase anything.

 

Either we need to convince casuals that story-driven eroge are worth their time and money (this would take a lot of publicity), or existing fans need to support the medium.  Otherwise there's a real threat that story-driven eroge are going to fade away from the commercial scene.  Mangagamer has already shown disappointment that its moege don't sell very well.  If sales of Princess Evangile don't meet expectations, it's quite possible they'll retract from the genre save for guaranteed successes like the Shuffle series.

[mbl]

Sakura Spirit got a good amount of notoriety in the mainstream gaming community as a novelty game, which would be why it outsold everything last year. With it, NEKOPARA, and Huniepop, I think it is just more likely for novelty games to sell right now, especially with a VN presence on steam. That is still a step in the right direction over VN's being unknown outside of otaku communities. It may not happen overnight, they may be seen a weird joke for a while, but eventually VNs will have to get the place they deserve on the commercial market. Also will take some changing within the VN scene as well, as the vast majority of eroge players are pirates who will respond with things like "Fuck off MG devs" when asked to support.

[Ame]

I suspect this isn't true.  And in fact, if you look at VNDB, the most popular titles aren't nukige.  I suspect what's actually happening is that most VN sales occur to casuals: people who don't really follow VNs.  This crowd is much more likely to go for nukige than story-driven eroge because these purchases by casuals are mostly impulse buys (the disparity of digital and hardcopy sales pretty much reinforces this point).  While there's a large and thriving VN community at this point (80k registered users on VNDB alone), the vast majority don't purchase anything.

 

The amount of Nukige (meaning the numbers are relative) and the negative social image that they relay have a strong influence on their announced and displayed popularity. VNDB figure's are irrelevant in that sense. Also, the disparity between digital and hard copies is pretty standard online, and impulse buying, has nothing to do with casuality, especially when it comes to porn.

[sanahtlig]

Also, the disparity between digital and hard copies is pretty standard online, and impulse buying, has nothing to do with casuality, especially when it comes to porn.

I think you misunderstood that sentence.  By "disparity", I meant the different order of titles in the rankings.  Nukige top the digital sales, while story titles have a much stronger showing in hard copy sales.  My point is that casuals (often attracted by tie-ins with H-anime; see Imouto Paradise) are less likely to buy into story eroge, the value of which are not obvious to the casual buyer.  They're much more likely to impulse buy on porn value, which IS obvious at first glance.  Since I can't poll every MG customer, I can't prove this point (and I doubt even MG has the data to comment with authority), but simply from listening to people in the community it seems like the most hardcore "fans" are also the least likely to actually buy VNs.  In large part this is because the community scorns commercial localization efforts, and tends to espouse the belief that purchasing VNs is for those who don't know how to pirate.  The more one integrates into such a community, the less likely they are to buy the VNs they play.

 

Some have argued in the past that the low cost of nukige is responsible for their higher volume sales.  We see now with the top-ranking digital sales of Imouto Paradise, Ultimate Boob Wars, and Eroge that this isn't the case.  There really is just more customer demand for nukige vs. story-driven eroge on MG's site.  This should push MG to license higher quality nukige, much to the delight of their current customer base...

[Funyarinpa]

4. Hypno-Training My Mother And Sister

 

So I'm not the only person who was interested in this game? Wow. 

[TexasDice]

<--- *Goes nuts at the prospect of Nekopara Vol.2 being basically confirmed.* 

 

My question for the future: What will rank higher in next years edition of this list: Clannad or Grisaia? Both Kickstarters did really well, but I predict the newer look of Grisaia to be more appealing to people going into this medium blind. 

 

Assuming neither will be delayed. And really, does it matter anyway? The obvious winner of next years list is Sakura Angels, everyone had to buy that. If you have to choose, you're going to buy Sakura Angels, it's a no-brainer.