quote:
Originally posted by Allarian:
1) The older Newsletters posted by Kumiko Kamiyama (Who was really a man who liked to wear a dress? Nevermind, don't want to know.) talked about a few other titles that were temporarily suspended in production. Did PeaPri bite off more than it could chew? Or are these titles just "maybe" projects that we may never see?
[This message has been edited by Allarian (edited 01-15-2003).]
As someone with a bit more experience in the business end of making a video game...I can safely say that there is A BUTTLOAD of work involved there. It is an INSANE amount of work to get things working. While it is true that it would not be a great difficulty to get things to work...getting them to work well is many times harder.
Suffice to say, a quick summary is that these games are barely making money, and that Japanese releases sell several times as many units at twice the release price. And at that, many Japanese bishoujo game makers can barely afford to stay afloat. They are also not large companies, either.
Now factor in this: the original Japanese companies are intimately involved in creating the English versions. They have to redraw the artwork to uncensor it. They have to change the game code to accomodate English-language changes. It can NOT be done by US staff effectively; comments and documentation and the like are all in Japanese, and no one can make modifications to a program he cannot read.
So in sum, the Japanese game makers are small, budget-strapped companies which have a strong short-term incentive to do only Japanese-language versions, and only a nebulous "one day there will be a large market that can double your sales" incentive to be multiregion.
This has resulted in the current situation.