Mangagamer has posted a hint about an upcoming game.
The quote at the bottom is from Dante but I have no idea about what game it might be referencing. Maybe something from Innocent Grey considering they claimed to have a detective game coming soon.
Yes, the quote is about the Limbo (not sure if there’s an english translation of anything). And “Many decades ago, the world was still recovering from its darkest time.” right at the beginning probably refers to World War II.
Talking about Innocent Grey games, it’s not Cartagra and not Caucasus. I haven’t played Pianissimo, so don’t know about that. It may be Kara no Shoujo - actually, it makes even sense with that post.
Yeah that was the only one that seemed like it might fit, but seeing as I never actually played it I couldn’t be certain.
The latest update to the hint pretty much confirms it to be Kara no Shoujo:
Everyone probably knows by now but Kara no Shoujo was confirmed
PROS:
- It’s cheap! Nearly half the price of the same game available for download sales from DLsite and under a third of the price of the original game
CONS:
- No voices
Are voices worth 2000?? Well, maybe.
Liek voices removed?
Cuz that is bloody unfortunate. Although, its only 35USD.
Well, since I have the “original” game disc, I shall buy it and play it with the likely voice patch.
Ditto
Kara no Shoujo without voices kinda sucks. The game had great voice acting, losing it it’s an hard blow.
I hope that’s a misprint; if not, MangaGamer is setting a very, very bad precedent.
I’m very much opposed to the idea of removing content when licensing a title for a foreign audience, whatever the reason. MangaGamer’s target audience is niche enough as-is, and their clinging to that niche’s exclusionary translation preferences isn’t helping that audience expand any (quite the opposite, actually). Alienating existing customers by offering products demonstrably inferior to their Japanese counterparts only serves to shrink that audience, which just hurts their bottom line in the end.
It’s reassuring to know that fan patches will inevitably be produced to restore the removed content. Unfortunately, as long as MangaGamer continues its practice of removing content, I don’t have much choice but to continue my boycott of such releases. If I have the choice between a nerfed MangaGamer release or an untouched JAST title, I’ll natural go with JAST (of course, I won’t be buying nerfed JAST games either, so no Family Project or Xchange 3 for me).
This time there wasn’t even mention of “if it sells X copies we’ll add them back in” unless I missed it.
Mystery aspect and the character designs had made me interested. Good games are generally good even if you mute them. Given what it is, would it suck because sometimes you should hear a voiced scream and instead nothing will signal the sequence?
From the mangagamer blog:
Guess we’ll just have to wait for the official announcement to see what the deal is. But yeah, this sucks.
You’re of course free to do as you wish, but I think such an attitude is ultimately self-defeating.
I know you run a fan translation outfit, and I mean no offense by this - but I don’t want to play awesome games like Koi Hime, or Kara no Shoujo, or Kanon, or [dozens more omitted] using unofficial fan translation patches. I would prefer to do business with an official translation outfit. Even buying a Japanese copy of the game and using the patch on it isn’t as good as buying an officially localized version. Because if a sustainable business can be created in the foreign markets, many more games will see official release, than will ever be successfully fan-translated.
As mentioned elsewhere - on 4/11, Koi Hime reached 750 copies - then on 5/4 it reached 800 copies. And this is their quickest selling game ever. MangaGamer cannot continue this way indefinitely. (They aren’t; their sales have been steadily increasing over time, but not nearly fast enough.)
If MangaGamer isn’t more successful in the long term, they will go under. History is not on MG’s side. Every single company that has ever gotten into this business has died, with two exceptions ** If they go under, we will be back to Jast going it alone. Jast can release a few games a year. We need companies that release as frequently as MangaGamer. Hell, we need several more ManagGamer-type operations just to get a significant fraction of the good games that come out in Japan. If MangaGamer is unsuccessful, it will be a long time before another such alliance is formed, and the market will basically be a failure.
** - Kitty Media, who has only ever released a few games, and mostly releases h-anime; and the Jast empire, who also runs J-List. The only companies who haven’t died are not solely dependent on h-games for income.
Bamboo, the president of OVERDRIVE, has actually made a few comments on this topic over on the MangaGamer forums, and is looking to discuss these matters further with western fans.
“This is not a matter of “You will get voices after # sales”. There will be no voices.”
Edited -
Was steamed, basically I don’t go to MG forums and he posted and I see now. In the blog entry, I read through the entry and didn’t see anything on that front - I didn’t read the comments if it was mentioned there.
Nandemonai, believe me, it kills me inside to have to boycott these titles. However, I also think that an outfit that doesn’t have the resources, be it time, money, or manpower, to do the original work justice should not be trying to publish the work in the first place (this is one reason my translation group closed up shop for six years). Not to play favorites here, but I’m confident that, had Kara no Shoujo been licensed by JAST, the voicework would still be intact. MangaGamer should be using the limited resources it has to build itself with less demanding quality titles before attempting a title for which the original creators have such high demands and expectations.
If you’ll forgive the morbid analogy: if you try to climb Mount Everest when you have a hard time making it up the Rocky Mountains, odds are pretty high that you’ll get yourself and your entire party killed. I’ve said it on their blog, and I’ll say it again: MangaGamer needs to expand its fanbase beyond hardcore otaku if it doesn’t want to share the same fate as Hirameki International, Otaku Publishing, Himeya Soft USA, or the original incarnations of G-Collections and Peach Princess; the current fanbase is simply incapable of supporting the company to the extent that it currently expects (just look at the Great Anime Crash that occurred a few years back). Once a stable fanbase has been established, MangaGamer will be able to afford the risks surrounding more expensive licenses and be able to expect consistent returns on their investments. In short, MangaGamer just isn’t ready to tackle Kara no Shoujo yet; the fact that the company has reported that they will not ever be releasing a voice patch confirms that they feel the same to at least some extent.
To that end, I believe Clannad would be a milestone release for MangaGamer should they decide to take the immense financial risk and license it. I’m well aware that the Clannad license fees are exorbitant, but, as the saying goes, no pain, no gain. Clannad has mainstream appeal, a strong narrative and plenty of character depth, and it could easily help MangaGamer make a name for itself beyond the weeaboo audience. The success of the anime and its many accolades and awards means that a good chunk of the English speaking world already has a positive impression of its story. If the translation is handled correctly, the game could very well gain mainstream exposure along the lines of Harry Potter or Twilight (because, let’s face it, Clannad’s story is more insightful, relatable, and heartfelt than either of the two and speaks directly to the concerns of teenagers and young adults).
I should note that I’ll still be supporting MangaGamer’s efforts (pics or it didn’t happen – note that I just received Da Capo, so it’s not pictured); I just won’t be supporting releases containing changes that I cannot in good conscience defend (ie: I’d love to buy Castle Shikigami 2, but I’ll never purchase XS Games’ releases). Remember the expression, “vote with your dollars”; if I reward MangaGamer for making a foolish decision, it will only beget more of the same, which is a great disservice to the original work, its authors, and all those who might potentially be touched by that work.
The bottom line: MangaGamer needs to realize its current business model isn’t working, and if they continue to limit themselves to the niche-within-a-niche that the current otaku scene consists of, their long-term financial prospects do not look good. I’ve spoken with many people who are interested in visual novels, anime, and manga, but refuse to touch them because the works to not contain any semblance of normal, coherent English. A lonely romantic nerd who clings to what he knows and refuses to take risks and change himself will never earn the happy life he yearns for. MangaGamer is that nerd, and giving them charity will only maintain the status quo rather than force a change for the better. That is the way business, and life, work, whether we like it or not. JAST seems to recognize this as well, hence why they licensed the version of Aselia the Eternal that they did (their April Fool’s Joke might very well have been the real deal if they were negotiating the release of Aselia on Steam).
Kouryuu, I sincerely hope you and your staff take my words to heart; you have no idea how much it would pain me to see you share the same fate as Hirameki.
Edit: Damn… According to Bamboo, the president of Visual Art’s isn’t interested in an overseas release Clannad. I’d be hard-pressed to find another visual novel will a deep, relatable storyline and mainstream appeal that could be a “killer app” for MangaGamer. I’m sure there are a few out there that fit these criteria, but I highly doubt that any have the same degree of recognition or acclaim as Clannad aside from other Visual Art’s titles…
I’m not so sure. People on the MG forums are saying that the people who hold the rights to the voices (the recording studio) have decided that the voices are worth tens of thousands of dollars. Jast USA would of course balk at that price; it’s simply out of the question. Even if Jast could expect to sell ten thousand units, that would be too much money.
If this is in fact true (a very big if), then it would be impossible for anyone to license the voice.
However, KoiHime got the whole “we will get voice if it sells enough” caveat. This was done even though BaseSon believed the decision was necessary for financial reasons, and they didn’t think (unfortunately, probably correctly, as it happens) that the target would be met. Even so, the promise was made.
This game did not. I have no doubt MangaGamer would have gone for a similar deal if it appeared to be even a remote possibility. That tells me that the price demanded for the voices is so exorbitant there is no chance of it being worth doing.
If this is in fact true, then it would seem to me that your position is that the game should never see the light of day in translated form. And I don’t find this outcome desirable.
Irrelevant nitpick: Peach Princess is the same as it always was: a Peter Payne visual novel brand. It was the successor brand to Jast USA for a few years, when Jast Japan died. All Peter’s stuff was under Peach Princess for a good 8 or so years; this very board used to be the Peach Princess official board. Even the board admins are still around.
Peach Princess was never an independent company that got bought up by Peter when it went under. It was (and even still is, but it’s been pretty quiet lately) Peter’s brand for Crowd and Will titles. In fact, after G-Collections folded, their library was folded into the Peach Princess site for awhile.
I wouldn’t say it’s that quiet. JAST are using Peach Princess as the label for the Downhill Night games and the Rolling/Shining Star games as well as for the only upcoming Will game they’ve got in the pipeline. Really, it’s just as active as any other JAST brand. G-Collections is probably dead since CD Bros is probably dead.
Yikes. I’ve heard of opportunism, but… Since when did Japanese recording studios become price gougers…?
I’ll admit that I wasn’t up-to-speed on the reasons for the Kara no Shoujo voices situation. I’m not a regular at the MangaGamer forums, so I was unaware of what was going on behind-the-scenes (nothing of the sort was mentioned in the comments of the license announcement at the time, but I did jump the gun by assuming the circumstances were the same as with Koihime Musou). If what you posted is indeed true, I’ll take back what I said about boycotting Kara no Shoujo and about it being in better hands with JAST; in this case, the issue was inevitable.
In any event, the rest of my comments regarding MangaGamer’s need to create a stable fanbase beyond the nerd-and-geek niche still apply (pre-emptively: I’m a geek and proud of it, so please don’t take offense to that phrasing).
I was under the impression that Peach Princess was taken under the JAST umbrella when the bubble burst; I didn’t follow the visual novel scene until around 2004, and even then, I only knew about fan translations and Hirameki International until I learned about Kana and Crescendo two or three years later. I appreciate the history lesson.
On that note, if I make another honest mistake like that, don’t hesitate to call me on it like you just did.