There’s a big difference between “exclusive wholesaler” and “exclusive distributor”. J-list is the latter, not the former.
That’s good. This partnership has some people interested on the NISA forums, which is a good sign.
A detail I hadn’t previously considered is that if J-List is choosing what titles get hard copies, we’re probably not going to see titles like Koihime Musou benefiting from this deal. JAST is firmly opposed to loli content, after all. Assuming this partnership is successful, a couple years down the road, a decision by J-List to not print a title could end up influencing what titles MG decides to translate…
Oh really? I mean, this might be true for the titles JAST chooses to localise, but if you take a quick scan down the list of import eroge JLIST sell… are they really ‘firmly opposed to loli content’? Is Koihime Musou really any worse than White? Or Kizuato, for that matter?
So the hard copy store has Higurashi Kai, but not the question arcs? Will it have the question arcs later?
Never mind, I see they’re both on the JList site.
In some respects, yes. But more importantly, English games are higher profile and probably subject to more scrutiny by J-List. Of course, I’d be delighted to be proven wrong. But I assume the same rules apply to the localized games J-List decides to distribute as to the games it decides are “safe” to localize.
They could, I assume, stock the riskier titles in Japan instead of San Diego?
new from twitter MangaGamer MangaGamer
For those who haven’t caught the it on our website yet, we’re proud to announce that the re-TL of #Edelweiss will be available on 9/2!
3 hours ago
MG staff blog mentioned that they have another title from Overdrive called Go! Go! Nippon in production line. In this game, player will follow a tourist adventure, accompanied by two Japanese girls as his guide. On the first stop, which is Tokyo, player can choose to visit some places of interest, among which are Akihabara and Shinjuku (there are six places). After that he will go to Kyoto, but it is not clear if player can choose where (s)he wish to visit there.
One interesting thing about Go! Go! Nippon is that it was specifically made for western audiences/MangaGamer. Right?
yep
10charlimit
waiting to buy edelweiss 2.0 till the harddisk come out
But the sisters aren’t twins… They failed their research. 
I’m not entirely sure that making special games for westerners is a wise move on part of Overdrive/MG. Should they really be experimenting with this considering the financial situation they’re (reportedly) in?
Just release Dear Drops (that’s a definite buy in my book) and if you’re going to release sex romps, at least acquire quality ones, not the crap you’ve been releasing so far…
Experimenting to try to find breakout hits is a GOOD thing. Provided that you are smart about it and are taking calculated risks, as opposed to blithely trying to innovate without considering things like market size and dev cost. Which I assume they’re smart enough to do. (The things like dual-language release and so on tell me that MangaGamer has thought about these kinds of things.)
The thing that concerns me about Go! Go! Nippon is the way it’s an “ecchi game” - not an h-game, but not all-ages either. I’m not sure there’s a market for such a thing. MangaGamer hoped to use the title to attract a broader audience, but I fear it may prove to be somewhat self-defeating. People who are actually interested in h-scenes will think the game’s content is weaksauce, and people who aren’t may be repelled by the cheesecake shots. So I’m not sure that making it non-H, but with cheesecake, helps them very much.
On the other hand, if they did make it non-h … well, most of their lineup is in fact h-games, so attracting a crowd of customers looking for non-H products probably isn’t the best idea either.
I guess we will see soon enough …
I’m pretty sure they’ve done this. Noticeably they’ve spoken about how the game isn’t voiced. Plus it apparently hasn’t got much in terms of images and is more about the information. Apparently it hasn’t got a theme song either (like most Overdrive games). So the 3 main areas of cost (voice, music, images) are low/null. So to make a profit they’ll need less sales.
Plus its already confirmed to be getting a hard copy version, I’m sure that’ll help sales too.
It is very weaksauce, to the point where I don’t think the latter situation you describe will be an issue.
Oh, nice! I like the weak sauce! It’s a nice change of-SMACK
Pass the hot sauce. squirtttts onto the cheesecake
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Anyways, I will probably get a hard copy; though, I’m only somewhat interested in the plot…; but the fact that they are catering for a Western audience is and could be interesting. Besides I’ve never been to the locations the game tours… why not, right?
Too bad they aren’t voiced though… It would be interesting if they had an english speaking protag, and two japanese girls speaking english (most of the time…) [or would it be the other way around…?]
For the majority of the game, all the characters speak Japanese. It would be interesting to have a native English voice actor speaking the protagonist’s (Japanese) lines, though.
Mangagamer’s boards hacked. Not cool… 
A number of places have just been attacked (and I’m noticing that a number of them, including MangaGamer, are hosted by InMotion Hosting. Hmmm) - it looks like tiger-m@te just found a new zero-day and he’s testing it out.
EDIT: Okay, the comment about InMotion Hosting was not wrong. I haven’t seen anyone else comment on this yet, but I’ve done some quick digging and found ten separate InMotion-hosted sites, ALL attacked by the same dude.