Eroge Profitablility

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

JAST never releases data on their sale numbers, and of course that’s their 100% right to do, but it seems like MangaGamer isn’t so secretive.

Just saw this post on their forum:

http://forums.mangagamer.org/viewtopic. … 880#p19877

It concerns a series of posts requesting for the translation of Shin Koihime Musou.

Only 2000 copies? Not even 6000 copies? Wow. Brooktown High was a roaring success with sales like this. :expressionless: I don’t pay much attention to the English side of the market, because it’s time consuming enough to track the Japanese side… but that is way more pathetic than I assumed.

Maybe I’m just reading it out of context? God I hope so… that’s terrible…

Now I wanna comb the MG board for more sale topics.

#2

I can save you some of the trouble.
They’ve only released sales details for Koihime Musou, Shuffle, KiraKira and Kara No Shoujo.
[]Koihime Musou crossed the 1000 sales threshold but not the 1250 threshold. JAST made up the remaining thousand sales and got voices. So JAST must have covered the fees for about 1000 sales.
[]Shuffle was confirmed on twitter as being over the break-even margin however was still second best selling to Koihime Musou. This was before JAST got them voices, so Shuffle sold 1000 or less copies. Furthermore every other title had sold under 1000 copies that means.
[]KiraKira was confirmed as being profitable however the odd comment was made that it was only profitable ‘as a whole’. The all ages digital version had apparently sold so little that you could count them on your hands. However based on their comment, I think the 18+ version, the hard copy and the Iphone version have sold more then enough to counteract the sales of the all ages digital version.
[]Kara No Shoujo apparently did…horrible. In its first month it only sold 1/2 the number needed to make a profit, and that was without voices.

They haven’t released sales details for their Nukige titles other then the odd comment here and there, but they don’t really define if it was profitable or not. For example ‘We Love Master’ apparently really well but whether it was profitable or not we haven’t been told. Theirs a rumor that ‘Hinatabokko’ was their worst selling title but that hasn’t been confirmed or denied. Since they licensed 5 Nukige in a row I’d assume they’re pulling in some form of a profit, though that’s just an assumption.

Mangagamer doesn’t do themselves any justice with their fandom though. After a Yaoi support thread spiraled into a Yaoi-hate thread many Yaoi fans (Aarinfantasy had a hate thread for Mangagamer for a while there) and some otome fans blacklisted the company. That happened right before Kara No Shoujo came out, and is one of the reasons I think it didn’t do so crash hot. While not as big a fandom as others, 1 sale, 10 sales, heck 100 sales are a big thing at the moment.

#3

Yeah, the numbers they’ve given have suggested multiple times that they’re making fewer sales than those of us in the English indie market. (Although we sell for lower prices.)

However, i would assume that Jast’s numbers are a lot better, due to long-term recognition, some statements that all of their games have been profitable, and the ability to order large numbers of box copies like that. :slight_smile:

#4

Also, once they re-added the voices to Kohime, its sales - as measured by the ‘weekly ranking’ anyway - seem to have shot up significantly. And I doubt that reflects the boxed copy sales. Koihime was their biggest seller before all that happened. Now that J-List can sell the game, and it can be sold at conventions … MangaGamer may find they have sold a few thousand copies in (say) two years’ time.

Another thing I noticed? On their Twitter account someone mentioned ‘OpSnowfall’ which was some kind of facebook page dedicated to promoting visual novels. They mentioned Kara no Shoujo, and its sales went up - it hit #2, then went back down.

MangaGamer really needs more publicity. And they need their games to be available via some way other than just going to their site.

#5

I would guess that if they sold hard copies of the games, they would do much better. Why would someone pay to DL a game when they can DL it for free? But if you get a box and disc to collect…

#6

Depends on the customer base you’ve built. My hard copy sales are only a tiny tiny tiny tiny dot compared to my download sales.

#7

Yep, I believe I’m in the minority here, but I very much prefer download editions. I’ve got enough crap lying around as it is, I don’t need more crap. Not to mention the shipping costs and the time it takes to reach me from abroad. Would I put up with all that just to get a booklet and a shiny CD/DVD? Hell no.

#8

I agree. Packaged versions usually cost more (especially new) and now you’ve got stuff to keep around. No thanks.

I haven’t actually added up but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more on DL sales eroge than package eroge.

#9

My fundamental objections to downloadable games hasn’t changed, and they’re twofold. First, my eternal enemy, my backlog. It is legion, many many good games and books and TV shows and the like in it. I will very often buy something then not play it for YEARS. Downloadable games pose a particular risk for this style of consumption.

Second, I do go back and replay really good games. Not as often as I had thought that I would, but it does happen. And I also buy a fair number of books that are out of print; sometimes I won’t even discover an author until after they are dead (Avram Davidson, for instance) or their early work will be out of print, or whatever. I can do that with a book. I can be sure that games on CD will (at least, in theory) still be around in a few decades’ time. But mangagamer? Unless their sales increase from where they’re at now (and they already are), in ten years they’re dust. What then of their library? We’re in the very early days of downloadable games, and every other time in the past this situation came up (radio, tv, movies in their formative years) large swathes of work just … disappeared. Gone forever.

I decided to shift a little bit for a few reasons. One, Steam is a juggernaut, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I have full faith and confidence that anything I buy on Steam will not disappear because Steam implodes, or is bought. Two, too many things that I want, and were developed by companies I’d like to see succeed, are downloadable-only.

#10

With JAST DLs, this is not much of a problem (due to lack of DRM). I imagine that keeping a backup digital copy (or two, or even three) on a tiny USB drive is even easier and not a whole lot more “dangerous” (in terms of possible data corruption) than storing a physical copy. With MangaGamer, however, this is a very valid point, since their DRM only allows three activations (if I recall correctly) per activation key, and activation itself is web-based. If they go bust, so does the chance to renew the activation key.

As someone who pays for his games but has a very relaxed view on piracy, I won’t be in a pinch if I want to replay some of the MangaGamer stuff I paid for in case they go under. Those who will deny themselves this opportunity due to stricter personal views on the matter are definitely at risk.

#11

Yeah, I hate limited activations and DRM in general, which is why I own almost nothing from either mangagamer or steam and sell my own titles in ways that won’t break if I drop dead. On the other hand, people who care about this stuff enough to actually adjust their sales patterns because of it are… a minority so small that nobody cares about us. Alas.

Sadly, DRM rendering games unplayable is not a downloadable-only issue. Downloads can be sold DRM-free, and CDs are sold that require a webserver activation in order to play at all.

#12

I don’t even bother downloading my games from JAST/Mangagamer. I just buy them, then go download them from some torrent tracker. It’s faster.

#13

MG probably released those stats to curb the perceptual problem that crops itself up every now and then thanks to guys like me. If you look at the titles they announced for 2013 at AX, it sends all sorts of red flags to me about the state of MG’s financial situation. All of their new titles are (according to them) low risk, low cost, and (relatively) high return. All of them are nukige titles.

To me, it looks like there’s a profitable market to be had for these sex-crazed games-but the minute you increase the intelligence standard of the title, it suddenly becomes a huge risk with low reward. I don’t understand it, are people saying one thing but doing something completely different? Over the past 5 years it seems to me that English consumers of Japanese product (games, VN, anime, or whatever) are mostly talk and little money.

If these companies are to be believed anyhow.

#14

Oh, people don’t always actually want what they say they want. It’s not lying, exactly; people will often truthfully say they want something then when it actually is available, not buy it. Someone who specializes in this area (and they exist) could say more exactly why. But if you go only by what your customers are telling you they want, you can easily be led down the wrong path.

In the particular case of these games, there are some easy explanations for why the nukige do better. It’s easier for people to admit to liking a game with a great story and some sex, than to admit to liking (say) Magical Teacher or whatever it’s called from Score. So story-based game fans are much more likely than, well, porn fans to be active on these boards, etc. People are, yes, also likely to say they like story more than they actually do simply because they feel social pressure from the other story people. (People taking political opinion polls have to be very careful not to imply they’d like to hear one or the other answer, or it skews the results, for the same reason).

And finally, well, sex sells. Sex is a major selling point for these games and an easy way to get people’s attention. So the more sex a game has, the easier it is for word to get out about it, and the more it sells.

#15

I would disagree with that statement somewhat since Mangagamer has said their nukige don’t sell all that well. More like “low cost, low return” titles, i.e., low risk. It makes sense after they’ve had a major title like Kara no Shoujo bust. A few more busts like that and that may be it for them.

#16

Can you link to a recent statement (past year) where MG stated their Nukiges generally don’t sell well?

If that’s true, how do you suppose they stay afloat? Like, if nothing makes money…generally speaking, businesses tend to close shop. MangaGamer’s still here after 4 years.

#17

Besides, the sales data we do have access to doesn’t support that. Their “top 5” consistently has nukige in it. Some of their nukige are obviously doing much more poorly than the rest - Shera My Witch is never ever ever in it, but Harem Party is in it quite a bit and near the top.

The top 5 has actually been fairly consistent for months now: Whatever came out recently, then some mixture of Conquering the Queen; Koihime; Shuffle; and Harem Party. Occasionally some random thing will break into #5 (like today, Hinata Bokko was there for some reason).

#18

On slow days, buying one copy seems to be enough to push something into the top 5.

#19

I remember reading an article on a porn news site (can’t find the link), with an industry producer stating this very fact. He cited that people always whine that porn has no plot or cheap looking sets. Then mentioned how several attempts at making plot driven, expensive set pornography has been produced, but barely break even at best. “Porn with plot” was the standard during the 1970’s and somewhat in the early 1980’s, but it was just easier to not have plot at all. Thus the standard today. It also occurred to people, that plot porn has less sex because it wastes so much time on plot. Who wants 30 minutes of sex in a 2 hour video, when you can just have 2 hours of pure sex? Very few people it seems. Plus it takes time and money to find actors and actress with actual… well… acting talent who’d film pornography. Cheaper to just find “any random girl” willing to do a fuck for $1500 per scene. Then there’s the whole issue with actor guilds if people started to seriously consider porn had acting in them…

Especially since you can get it for free, with very little effort. Not saying everyone pirates, just that the temptation and risk-to-reward ratio makes it a no brainer to achieve. People want to have everything, but people don’t want to pay for everything. Greed and self entitlement are survival mechanisms after all. True, a hardcore pirate was never going to pay for it in the first place, but casual and newbie pirates don’t have to either. Not unless he or she is REALLY loyal, and evidently, there’s less than 6000 of 'em. I know more than 6000 people have played these games… and one can confirm torrent activity having more than 6000 downloads.

Capitalism 101: it doesn’t matter how many people want or have played a product, it matters how many pay for it. :expressionless:

#20

Pfft, I’ll believe that when a nukige beats (in terms of sales) an AUGUST game. Not going to happen though =P