Then they’re lying about something, somewhere because they also said:
“Being a partner of our company, Nexton looked at our current sales and made the decision that the cost of the voices was unfortunately too much for them given the prospects.”
So either selling 2000 is a walk in the park, or selling 2000 is not confident prospect. Which is it? This is double speak.
Then they’re lying about something, somewhere because they also said:
“Being a partner of our company, Nexton looked at our current sales and made the decision that the cost of the voices was unfortunately too much for them given the prospects.”
So either selling 2000 is a walk in the park, or selling 2000 is not confident prospect. Which is it? This is double speak.
The latter, because the ‘walk in the park’ statement was supplied with a condition.
I would doubt that any of their current titles have sold 2000 units.
Maybe it’s only a cheap trick to raise the sales 
, however because http://www.game999.jp/ has nothing that I want right now, my debit card still has 41.28 euros if Mangagamer releases this unvoiced edition before October 6 and the next batch of ‘bargain bin’ games 
…
According to twitter posts the game won’t be out till sometime next year. Hope it doesn’t have to compete with Dragon Age 2, Batman Arkham City, and Duke Nukem Forever, cause if it does, we may not see the voice patch for a while.
That’s the sort of thing you have to say to prevent people from saying “no voice? screw that” and thus having sales be even worse. If people don’t have confidence that the milestone is achievable, it won’t motivate people, it will demotivate them.
If they were confident in selling 2000 copies, they wouldn’t have done this at all, would they? They would simply have left the VA in the game. But they didn’t do that, they stripped it out. They must believe there’s a good chance the game won’t sell 2000 copies. Their actions have already told us they don’t expect to sell 2000 copies. Which is unfortunately quite sad.
They aren’t allowed to say their sales numbers.
They won’t patch until sales reach 2,000.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this?
I think he said he didn’t have access to exact numbers, but could keep us updated as they reach milestones. (every 100? 500?)
Too bad though… I still would like to see a minute by minute amount sold towards goal
Hmmmm, if i remember correctly Kouryuu is a translator and is not related to the PR department of MG… I don’t think that he got course about any PR job since he’s a major in Japanese Language.
And it’s him who said about the twitter and Forum thing not MG PR departement.
So, excuse me, but if a translator is confident about selling 2000 copy… i’m also confident about it.
Actually if I recall correctly, at the AX panel either he or someone else said he was involved with the PR part of MG. Think about it, he is the only “face” of MG right now, which pretty much screams PR. In regards to the voice issue…really?!? I am stunned that they aren’t confident in selling 2k copies. If the market is really this pathetic then I don’t see why anyone would put ANY money into localization efforts.
…which is why publishing companies don’t tend to last long.
I don’t think fans realize how unprofitable the market is. We’re only lucky that every so often, a company (often backed by Japanese interests who know nothing about the market as opposed to North American/European businessmen) is foolish enough to give it a shot.
Did anyone really expect MangaGamer to make money? As a fan, their entrance into the market made me happy (and we’ve definitely gotten some good games out of it), but I saw it as a fool’s errand from day one. Even JAST USA would be unsustainable if J-List weren’t in the picture.
As I said when MangaGamer first started up: Every single company that has ever entered this market is dead, with one exception. Jast USA/Peach Princess. (G-Collections is only included, because after they died, they were bought by Jast/PP.) And Jast has J-List.
I try to point this out whenever questions about this come up on this board. I don’t know exact numbers (a few hints over the years have come out) but it’s VERY much lower than the Japanese side. In fact, I became a paying customer long ago when I learned exactly how bad the sales were. It’s a crying shame that a market that’s struggling so hard is actually fairly popular. B-games are one case where it’s impossible to argue that piracy isn’t hurting the market. I guarantee there will be 20K illegal copies of Koihime downloaded. It’s hard to argue that 10:1 times as many pirate copies are all from people who wouldn’t have bought the game if it wasn’t available for free.
However, it’s not ALL bad. The game is already done, so a lot of costs have already been spent, and translating / localizing a game is probably much cheaper than the cost of producing the Japanese original was. So the number of additional copies that have to be sold to recoup the original investment is a lot lower. Also, because there are fewer games available in English, they have a much longer lifespan in the market than most Japanese titles. Once the translation is done, the game will continue to move units for a long time.
Himeya still has some of their English-translated from once upon a time, on their new site. (That might just be old stock still laying around. Or it could be still in print, just very slowly. Hard to say.) The original X-Change can still be bought (download-only) from Jast USA (but oddly enough, not PP’s own site … even though it’s a PP game). However, Tokimeki Checkin! and Snow Drop are both still available in disc form! Some of the very earliest titles Peach Princess ever released, almost ten years old. A lot of the early titles (from GC and PP) are still available
I’ll repost a reply that Kouryuu made on the MangaGamer blog. He’s the translator making the official posts on the blog, and he replied to a bunch of the comments on the thread that announced this. I’m assuming (since he posted this publically) he doens’t mind the info being shared. (Kouryuu, by all means PM or reply if you want me to remove the below.)
Two things interest me about this: 1) Shuffle! is confirmed to in fact be turning a profit right now, and 2) Shuffle! (which is apparently typical) turned a profit around 1K units sold.
the demo should be out soon
I don’t think a company as small as MG has a PR department. At best, it’s just a decision maker who supplies the $$$ for the company operations… not an actual PR specialist: who typically earn $50,000 to $100,000 annually, if they’re worth the investment of having around.
I fail to see a company that’s worried about 2000 sales, going out to get a team of $75,000 experts. Nor is there really any market experts on western eroge, outside of maybe the long term employees in JAST, since they’re the oldest survivor still operating and not begging us to buy 2000 copies of Demonbane.
The way the news was framed irritates me as much as the news itself.
It’s hard to put in words how much this attitude annoys me. I feel manipulated. My reflex reaction is to lash out. Despite completely understanding where they’re coming from, they’re pushing my buttons. The same buttons that make me ignore advertisements, disregard those that speak with ulterior motives, and hold activists in disdain.
I think this is what it feels like to be offended?
In any case, I cannot in good faith recommend this game to others now. I simply can’t. Furthermore, I am now 100% behind pirates reinserting the voices by whatever means necessary. Though I’d buy the game first, I’d support a p2p share of a full cracked version of the game if that’s what it took to get the game as it was meant to be played.
Well, this shows one difference between JastUSA and MangaGamer. The former doesn’t license unvoiced games, while the latter strips voices out of games that originally had them.
It isn’t the consumer’s job to be sure they get a full game. It is as simple as that. If I weren’t boycotting their games already, I’d boycott them.
Would you rather the game not be released at all, with no chance of a future voiced release?
Well, I guess I can understand why some would think that, but isn’t that a bit ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’?
Oh, please. We all know that scores thousands people shall pirate it but probably not even one thousand would actually buy it.
Except you can’t substitute ‘we all know’ for actual fact and there’s nothing to suggest that the low sales are due to piracy. The piracy will happen no matter what, and like I’ve said countless times, it’s best to just consider it a natural force and continue trying to market your games normally rather than chasing after the ‘pirate boat’ which likely has far fewer potential sales than you think.