Hirameki quits?

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#21

They did at the onset but adopted a new policy when new staff members entered and basically revived things in 2006. But for what it’s worth only three titles were changed by themm I believe: Amusement Park, Koiyoubi -Day of Love-, and Animamundi: Dark Alchemist. Tea Society of a Witch was a port of the all-ages DC version, Phantom of Inferno was a new all-ages version the developer made, Exodus Guilty was ported from PS1 or DC (I forget), and Hourglass of Summer was similarly a port of the PS2 version (which was all ages to begin with). And of those, only Animamundi wasn’t a launch title, basically. So it’s not like Hirameki was stubborn in their practices and refused to listen to feedback.

[ 01-07-2008, 02:34 AM: Message edited by: Mockingbird ]

#22

Oh, man. I will miss them. :frowning:

I was hoping they could translate someday more NITRO+ games or more good non-ero games, just like Ever17.

#23

I can’t say I’m suprised. They did earn a bad reputation amongst fans for censoring content (even Animamundi had its violence censored by erasing blood, which I think it didn’t have any H-content), and porting what should have been a PC game into a DVD format that’s a pain to use with a remote.

I wouldn’t put Hirameki’s withdraw on the same level as Geneon if I were you. Small players localizing anime/manga material such as Hirameki have habit of going in and out of business. Not a lot of them survive to become a big player.

It’s nice that they tried to test the waters with releasing visual novels, but they kept screwing it up and driving fans away. Even with their release of Ever 17, their bad rep probably made it to where it was too late for them, despite their “revival”. Heck, even I was hesitant to buy Ever 17 from them at first. Their attempts were admirable, but I don’t think they were the right company to introduce visual novels here. How about having a company like Nippon Ichi Soft America or Atlus picking up where they left off?

Also, what’s this I hear with the Galaxy Angel games? Did Broccoli say they were going to localize it or something?

[ 01-07-2008, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: B173 M3 ]

#24

I’m sad to hear this news. They released some wonderful titles imo. I also didn’t find the DVD format THAT bad.

Guess the chance for Princess Nightmare in English is non existing now…the chance for English translated otome games in general…-cries-

RIP Hirameki. I loved the titles. Thank you for giving me some wonderful gems.

#25

Well it’s not a good sign of the industry when a major company closes it doors. The fact that Hirameki did at a similar time reinforces the downward trend in anime sales and these games rely on a similar market.

Broccoli has stated they want to port Galaxy Angel game as it is what they believe the US market wants, anime games based off of existing anime series.

[ 01-07-2008, 04:43 PM: Message edited by: Jinnai ]

#26

I recevied a letter from Hirameki today and just to clear things up, Hirameki is not out of business. They have stepped out of the visual novel market to pursue something else. Hope to have more soon.

[ 01-07-2008, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: Mockingbird ]

#27

That’s nice to hear. :slight_smile:

But as an eroge fan, not making VN’s is totally not what I want. I mean Hirameki could become the first company to invent FTL engines… still wouldn’t do anything for my twincest needs.

Unless there’s sexy humanoid alien twincest out there. :wink:

#28

Sad news. :frowning:

#29

They could be focusing on localizing eroge titles… :stuck_out_tongue:

An uncut re-release of Tea Society and Hourglass of Summer would be nice.

[ 01-07-2008, 07:45 PM: Message edited by: B173 M3 ]

#30

Um, Hourglass was ALREADY uncut, it was origionally a PS2 game. A PC version, that adds Ero-scenes, was released later, so the Hirameki release was an uncut version of the original.

The PC version sucks, anyway, they use completely different voices, and the Ero content is very generic, and, in many cases, forced and out of place…

#31

Actually just got some news on Geneon though our conventions Advertising Chair. It seems they haven’t totally quit. They just quit store distribution, so like Hirameki they aren’t out-of-business.

#32

So what did Geneon USA say they were doing?

[b]

Well in that case, I would still like it if they were to re-release uncut versions of Tea Society and other H-games they initially censored… Or at least, sell them to someone like PeaPri or G-Collections for a license rescue…

[ 01-07-2008, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: B173 M3 ]

#33

As it was written in this very thread:

So, heck, the “censorship” of “Tea Society of a Witch” and the other titles aren’t their fact; they just acquired the rights to the console editions. You people should learn your facts before complaining.

#34

The way it was explained to me, everything they did before that didn’t involve store distribution…don’t know if that included online stores.

[ 01-07-2008, 11:12 PM: Message edited by: Jinnai ]

#35

I still would like to see a the ero version of Tea Society of a Witch translated.

#36

Most of the regulars on this board got their start hoisting the Jolly Roger. Rather, I should say, most of the old regulars; can’t say for sure about all the new guys. We all at some point converted to paying customers, for one reason or another; the fact that the US market is so small, for something that should be large, is a big factor.

I had been big into hcg; eventually it occurred to me that it was strange, the way the CG seemed related to one another, and that not all characters would be drawn in all ways – I eventually guessed they were part of … well, I didn’t know what – that had been ripped. (This is like 10 years ago.)

Then I found copies of many of the games that were out there at the time (this is a few years later). The only ones that really stuck in my mind were Seasons of the Sakura and Nocturnal Illusion.

I converted into a paying customer around the time Peach Princess rose from Jast USA’s ashes, and once I started coming round the board I found out how poorly sales really are; that clinched it for me.

#37

There’s also the rather bizarre issue of someone pretending to be doing a fan translation of the game with Broccoli’s approval – yes, they claimed Broccoli had OK’ed them fan translating the game and releasing it as a patch to be applied to the Japanese version.

Needless to say, they said they were just about ready to release a patch when Broccoli – when asked for comment – said ‘huh? WTF? OK – no – we have never heard of these guys’. Their promised date came and went. Nada.

Lately someone found a trailer for one of the games on a DVD, and that has (apparently) been a reliable past indicator of impending localization.

#38

I’m sorry, but – that doesn’t make any sense at all. The lion’s share of sales come from these sources, and they cut marketing (which will really hurt the rest of it). So basically Geneon is saying they’re going to run a business, except for the part that brings in revenue? I just can’t see how this would actually work.

#39

Querries reguarding marketing and advertisement is directed to RightStuf…my guess is Geneon will disappear as a distributor and outsource marketing to another company and continue translations and licensing on their own…similar to what was annouced, and later canceled, with ADV.

#40

I remember that…and yea i could tell the patch seemed kinda fishy.

However, Takaaki Kidani, president of Broccoli, has stated he wants to bring the game over for the reasons stated above. He feels their is a vaccum in the market atm and in addition that these games would help sell more of their type overall and that failures for the released games in the market are because they don’t have the anime or manga reference with it.

[ 01-08-2008, 01:51 AM: Message edited by: Jinnai ]