with the decline of Hobibox how many b-game companies are actually left ?
i know of
Peach Princess and G-collections just not sure of any other ones that are producing games atm
I think that Jast USA also can be counted as one to an extent, but I’m not sure.
Here’s the deal as I understand it on Jast USA. Don’t expect them to ever come out with anything new from Jast. JAST Japan went under. In fact, their last game - Transfer Student - has been problematic for Jast USA in the extreme, taking several times as long as most development cycles, dwarfing even Brave Soul. This happened because (again, this is hearsay) Jast Japan basically told Jast USA “OK, here’s the game script, here’s the graphics files. Go away. We’re not helping you after this.” I don’t know if it’s because JAST Japan was desperate even at that time, or if there was a falling out of sorts. I’m not in a position to know, if I were I couldn’t talk about it.
So JAST USA had to reprogram the game from scratch, which they did.
Now, getting rights to new titles would be very difficult. In a bankrupcy, what happens is that the company is dismantled and the property is disposed of, to pay off debts. This includes the intellectual property. I don’t know about the rights to the Jast USA name. Unless Jast USA participated in this bankrupcy process and acquired property rights to titles they wanted, they would now need to find the current rights owner and negotiate with them. This is effectively impossible.
Since JAST USA only ever had a relationship with JAST Japan, Jast USA is now in a bit of a bind. They continue to exist as a brand, selling the doujin CDs and the back title libraries from other companies that went under. Now it appears they may have a chance at getting titles from Hobibox Japan.
So Jast USA still exists, and sells the titles they have already got … but I don’t know what they could announce in the way of new games.
blink Well, as far as I know, the rights to the “Jast USA” name is currently held by Payne-sama. Remember, JastUSA is pretty much J-List’s American offices. I don’t know the history of the company that well, so I can’t say much other than the fact that I know the address is more or less the same from the old boxes I have. Hmm, actually, this would be pretty good thread for Payne-sama to chime in a bit on anyways…
Well so far as adult content goes I belive PP and g-coll are the only US ones left. Hirameki is doing all age releases.
quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:
*blink* Well, as far as I know, the rights to the "Jast USA" name is currently held by Payne-sama. Remember, JastUSA is pretty much J-List's American offices. I don't know the history of the company that well, so I can't say much other than the fact that I know the address is more or less the same from the old boxes I have. Hmm, actually, this would be pretty good thread for Payne-sama to chime in a bit on anyways...
Yes, I know it is the name of the company. I am saying that I don't know what the rights situation to that name is. "Jast USA" is obviously derived from the JAST company, and as such the Jast Japan folks had to sign over the right to name a company "Jast USA". I think. When the company went into bankrupcy, I don't know what happened to that contract - and when that contract expires, and Jast USA needs to renew it, who do they negotiate with?
I simply meant that bankrupcy is such a weird and unusual event, that even the future name of Jast USA is uncertain.
shrug That’s why I was saying this would be a good thread for Payne-sama to chime in on. I don’t think the JAST company necessarily would have had the sign over the rights to name a company “Jast USA”, depends on if their name was considered a registered trademark within the United States. I’d probably have to ask my friend how trademarks work between the countries. I don’t know if they’re automatically recognized or if they need to be registered. (Maybe I should lookup how “Daiei” is setup over here…)
Well if Jast japan didn’t trademark it here in the States then Peter shouldn’t have had a problem getting jast usa. Course it easily could have just been peter asking Jast if he could use Jast USA and they saying yes.
We are still here, and going strong (JAST USA). Part of the problem with the bishoujo game market is that unlike in Japan, where there are several strong companies that distribute titles to shops, there is no help for us to get our products to the customers, except for Diamond. We decided that we would strive first and foremost to fill that role, and that’s why we work so hard to carry every game by every other company. We still have titles in development, although we’ve learned not to announce things before we have something working in alpha at least.
So we still will have some new games from JASTUSA in the future?! That’s really good news! Thanks!!
I wish to you good luck. And i hope we will have news about your future releases soon.
By the way, now we have three companies translating bishojo games. I hope someday Himeya soft will give to us good news, too.
quote:
Originally posted by Peter Gilis:
I hope someday Himeya soft will give to us good news, too.
Errrr, where did that come from?
I think I heard quite the opposite: C'sWare was at least close to bankrupt and even stopped developing new games for the japanese market.
quote:
Originally posted by Unicorn:
Errrr, where did that come from?I think I heard quite the opposite: C'sWare was at least close to bankrupt and even stopped developing new games for the japanese market.
Hey, i can dream, can't i?! [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
Anyway, i'm not talking about Himeya-soft to translate ONLY CS'ware games. What i mean is: why can't Himeya to translate ANY game from ANY company other than CS'ware?
For now Himeya are just reselling original, japanese bishojo games from many different companies. But if i remember right, G-Collections started in the same way.
Why can't they give a try and search other japanese companies willing to have your games translated to english?
[This message has been edited by Peter Gilis (edited 03-08-2004).]
quote:
Originally posted by Peter Payne:
We are still here, and going strong (JAST USA). Part of the problem with the bishoujo game market is that unlike in Japan, where there are several strong companies that distribute titles to shops, there is no help for us to get our products to the customers, except for Diamond. We decided that we would strive first and foremost to fill that role, and that's why we work so hard to carry every game by every other company. We still have titles in development, although we've learned not to announce things before we have something working in alpha at least.
Oh come on you know you loved it when we were grilling you with "when's the release date" questions [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img] It's good to know you have a few more games up your sleeves after LMM, Gunshield, and Gibo [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img] Now time for us to speculate what those games are [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
quote:
Originally posted by Unicorn:
Errrr, where did that come from?I think I heard quite the opposite: C'sWare was at least close to bankrupt and even stopped developing new games for the japanese market.
Really, ouch that kinda sucks, guess there goes my hopes for one day C's ware finally going back to release the rest of EVE [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img]