First, it’s a S-RPG and you don’t have a lot of all-ages S-RPGs. Second… well, I don’t know since I don’t play console videogames. Someone should look how the PS2 edition fared.
Another thing I’m curious about is whether this will be rated by the ESRB and sold in stores (since I think most stores will only carry games rated by the ESRB) or will it just be avaliable online?
all jast game have esrb ratings sold in stores i would guess no
Should I remind you that we are in the “English Bishoujo Game Discussions” forum? 
I believe JAST USA only attempted to get one game rated by ESRB and it came out as AO anyway. Thus, JAST USA just self-labels their games from then on as adult only.
It’s moot anyways. Any game rated with an “Adults Only” is instantly blacklisted. Certain chains - like Walmart and Target - consider themselves family friendly and refuse to carry pornography. Most malls (and some shopping centers) have an anti-porn merchandise clause in their rent contracts, making it unlikely for anchors like GameStop to carry them. Then you have local civic leagues that would torch and pitch fork a place carrying smut in their neighborhood. When it comes to selling products, AO is a bane: not a symbol for cool. AO instantly closes doors: not open them. Only place that sells AO with regularity are porn stores and online vendors. 
I seem to recall that Peter wrote somewhere that an AO rating actually made it HARDER to get into some specialty shops than there own “Adults Only” warnings…
The first couple were rated by the ESRB - and of course it came out AO! What else is the AO rating for? - but then Peter started using his own label. Probably because ESRB submission isn’t free, and considering the product volume, getting an ESRB rating cut into profits (potentially significantly). The rating was really only for purposes of self-defense against people claiming he was selling porn video games to minors; back in the early 2000’s, the issue was a lot more hot-button. (It seems to have cooled off quite a bit, as the industry in general is doing a much better job of putting out the message that plenty of adults play games.) Having the games officially rated AO would allow Peter to say he had done everything he was supposed to do to make sure people knew.
The actual value obtained from doing that is questionable. If - back in 2000 - anyone in certain parts of the media had discovered Peach Princess or Jast USA and decided to make a stink, I don’t think having an ESRB rating would have been enough to avoid the shitstorm that would have erupted.
I believe the actual list (from raw data here) is:
Snow Drop, XChange 1, Tokimeki Checkin!, and Water Closet.
I’m pretty sure the list is actually, in order, the first four games ever released by Peach Princess.
Eight years ago, back in 2003 when the original Eien no Aselia was released in Japan, this was 100% true. There weren’t a lot of S-RPGs around. Especially that had seen Western release. However, a lot has changed since then. Two things changed in the interim: One, Disgaea was a smash hit, prompting NIS to open an American branch and start releasing their games in America. Two, after a lot of people wanted to know who Roy and Marth were in Smash Bros., Nintendo decided to try risking a Fire Emblem release. They haven’t been huge hits, but they’ve done well enough that any new Fire Emblem game gets released over here.
There’s a lot more competition than there would have been even five years ago.
Now, that said, they’re still nowhere near as common as standard RPGs, or first-person-shooters. And I don’t think there have been any real S-RPG releases in the past year or so. So if the game is as good as people who’ve played it are saying that it is, then it definitely could take off.
Wait a second, didn’t fire emblem come out before super smash bros did? Urgh, Only got the 64 and GC version for SSBros.
In Japan, yes. The Fire Emblem series has been going on for a very long time. None of the games came out anywhere but Japan though until after Super Smash Bros introduced Marth and Roy. That was part of what pushed them to finally bring the series over.
We’re planning to investigate Steam and other options as development continues. I can’t say much more than that right now as it’s still early days, but there are some pretty exciting prospects if they pan out.
We haven’t decided this yet. As mentioned by Nandemonai and others there’s very little benefit in getting adult games rated by the ESRB, but potentially much more to be had for a game like this that would get a Teen or Mature rating. Broad distribution to brick and mortar outlets with very competitive shelf space seems unlikely regardless, so we’ll need to analyze the opportunities that an official rating would offer.
That’s hard to say and is largely a matter of perception and expectations. In the world of SRPGs, there is nothing that matches Eien no Aselia from a storytelling and character depth perspective. In terms of raw gameplay, though? Maybe not so much. The challenge is fairly lopsided and the difficulty curve is bizarre, going up and down throughout. On the other hand, it does draw you in quite well and manages to not be so difficult that non-gamers would be turned off it.
Huh i see coz I remember playing one of fire emblem games on gameboy advance. It was quite fun tho I liked the console versions the bestest. I only bought the Wii just for the fire emblem. Otherwise I won’t have bothered.
Also I’ve learned in this thread that ESRB demands a cut for their rating stamped on your game? What’s the point of that? They didn’t make the game, they only checked the content and how it is and stamp a rating on it. Even then, parents still buy their kids mature games anyways.
And in the light of eroges that I didn’t think will come over to usa, I would like to mention that I have interest in this. http://galgun.com/
its pretty kewl I watched few videos about it, I only remember vaguely but u shoot girls to make hearts pop out til they swoon or something.
Stupid xbox and their region locks. Its kewl new doujin game which came out a month ago I think. And I want to play it. And i’m not willing to buy a JP xbox just to bypass the stupid region lock.
Edit: also, AO rating won’t be allowed on the consoles i believe, at best u can do only is Mature rating.
No, the ESRB doesn’t take a cut of each game. What they DO do, is charge a fee to rate a game. If your game sells 100 copies, if it sells 100 million copies, the ESRB charges per game. Some fairly recent info on how much they charge can be found here. It’s actually less than I thought before; I’d expect any Jast USA game to fall under the $800 mark. (Even if dev costs of the original Japanese version are accounted for, I don’t think it’s $250K for any but the most expensive.)
The ESRB has to charge a fee because that’s where their money comes from; they have an operation they have to run, with entire teams of people to do the rating, and so on. All that costs money. If they didn’t charge publishers for the service of providing a rating, then they’d have to get funding some other way. Probably by being directly funded by game company money. This creates an obvious conflict of interest, where companies can threaten to withhold money if the ESRB doesn’t play ball.
Still, $800 is a lot of money to pay just to get the ESRB to tell you what you already knew - that the game is adults-only. I have no idea what Jast’s profit per copy sold is, but I’d expect it’s around twenty bucks at the most. $800 eats up the profit of several dozen units at that rate.
Now, if Jast wants to sell the game on (say) Steam, then an ESRB rating might be a good thing to get. (I’m not even sure if unrated games can even get onto Steam at all.)
Steam doesn’t require ESRB ratings, Recettear is unrated and it’s on Steam
ESRB is only required if you’re serious about getting your game on the shelves of “big boy” store chains: Walmart, BestBuy, Target, Sears, GameStop, etc. Walmart for example, will NOT carry a product without ESRB on it. But of course there is one rating that Walmart will not carry, even if it has ESRB (AO naturally). So the issue of if Aselia needs an ESRB, largely depends on what plans JAST has for it - i.e. if they wanna have it carried in mainstream store shelves.
One question, will the official release fix that annoying line distortment in the middle of the game screen whenever we play window mode?
I’m also a bit curious if any of those cheat programs that some players made for the patched version will work with the official release. Don’t get me wrong, I’d play the game normally, though since evryone talks about how monotnous the final boss fight is, it may make it less so after the third or fourth playthrough.
I remember the final boss fight being pretty epic. In any case, it’s just one fight of hundreds. It doesn’t take that long.
I assume he means the final mission, not final boss. And yeah, it’s pretty monotonous. Still, not THAT bad.
Snow drop isn’t ESRB rated it just has the regular 18+ label and tokimeki checkin! is the only one that has the ESRB AO rating (although it has most likely been removed from the packaging since only the discs have the rating.
Also you got the first two in the wrong places in the order plus shouldn’t little my maid be between tokimeki checkin! and water closet since they are p003, p004 and p005 respectively.