J-list to sell original Japanese Visual-Novels?

SidVanHalen · February 13, 2010, 9:17am

Read this on the homepage of visual-novels.net
http://www.visual-novels.net/vn/

[JAST] J-list to sell original Japanese Visual-Novels
Written by bobmarleypeople

Friday, 12 February 2010
Visual-Novels.net has exclusive news that J-list is planning to sell original (i.e. untranslated) visual-novels through their online store. The plan is to sell popular untranslated games and games which have translation patches produced by the community.

When it comes to translation patches, there are many users who pirate the game. The most popular reasons for this are either “too difficult to find an importer” or “too expensive”. While J-list will certainly assist when it comes to the first reason, the prices of these games are yet to be determined. We will keep you posted on this news as it develops.

At Visual-Novels, we are delighted to see a commercial company embracing the fan translation community in this way. Therefore, we’d like to know which games you’d like to see sold on J-list. Post your suggestions in the comments for this news post and we’ll pass them on to J-list for consideration.

What do you guys make of this news?

Vardest · February 13, 2010, 10:04am

They first did this in May of last year viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5939
Then mid January they put up FSN and Cross Channel up and since have added a few more. If they do intend to go all out on this it would be interesting to see if this could help get new licenses. After all if the untranslated games sell well it would be easier to convince the company to get it translated to sell even more. Although somehow I can’t seem to get my hopes up in that regard.

Lancer-X · February 13, 2010, 10:19am

I’m amazed they put Subarashiki Hibi up. I mean, damn.

Ignosco · February 13, 2010, 10:27am

I can’t see it as being anything other than a good thing. Since they’ve allowed the translation patch to go ahead, the obvious game they need to add is Nitro+'s Kikokugai. The game’s in print, and yet it’s not actually stocked on Erogeshop leading people to believe that Nitro+ has stopped selling it, with obvious consequences.

Pricing - well, if Cross Channel is 6633? for a new copy on Amazon ($73.71 US or so), and $110 (not including shipping) on J-List then I’d suggest that their markup is more than a bit unreasonable. It’d be significantly cheaper to get hold of from Amazon via dankedanke (same goes for Erogeshop’s prices as well).

zalas · February 13, 2010, 2:26pm

My thoughts are in my writeup from yesterday.

Let’s see the last time I ordered a single game from Amazon…:
???-KILLER QUEEN-DEPTH EDITION- ??? ???CD??? [ [DVD-ROM] – 7652 yen (9240 MSRP)
DankeDanke Charges:
Shipping Service Charge – 1200 yen
Shipping Cost – 2040 yen
Sales Tax - 162 yen
Total Price: 11054 yen ($122.82 + applicable foreign exchange fees)
This game’s current Amazon price is 7352, so total price would’ve been $119.49 + applicable foreign exchange fees. If you subsitute in CROSS CHANNEL, instead, you get $111.50 + applicable foreign exchange fees.

Unlike ErogeShop, J-List does give you the option to go for cheaper shipping. I put CROSS CHANNEL in my shopping basket and got the following quotes for shipping:

So you pay $16.50 extra to buy from J-List compared to Amazon+DankeDanke if you want the same type of shipping. If you don’t care about shipping time, you can have it delivered much slower than the Amazon+DankeDanke method by using SAL – $6.80 extra.