Well, sure. I mean I’m sure that many of us men got the situation where they walked in a mall and some store the kind of a perfume store, cosmetics store or women clothing store was distributing out either an ads, promotional goodies or freebies but didn’t give them out to us (because, you know, we’re men), save if we expressly asked for them. How many of us a fuss about it, if ever?
So, bah, making a mountain out of a molehill. I mean, really.
The difference is that MangaGamer actually refused to give out their products to females. While men are the main target audience of eroge, many females still play them.
But that wasn’t intentional, since, as Dark_Shiki posted, instructions were: “Let’s give them to females who requests them.”
So, yeah, no need to still make such a fuss about the matter now.
I’m not sure I am just reading your post incorrectly, but even females that did request products were refused them. It wasn’t just a matter of thinking guys were their target audience.
I’m not trying to get anyone to hate MangaGamer - I’m actually starting to like them more than JAST - I just wanted to point out one of the failures on their part.
I’d say a majority of people have very limited disposable income and even more limited when it comes anime/manga related merchandise and further still when it comes to eroge. Therefore to assume “because it exists” someone will buy it is a faulty logic in most cases. I mean, if you own a Wii does that mean you buy every game that comes out for the Wii?
I’m not going to throw away my money on things I don’t like. If PP and MG want to keep my business, then they need to release titles that I want to buy. I’m not paying gold prices for stinking turds. If you buy everything PP and MG releases, without concern about the quality of what they release, then they’ll think they can release anything they want because everything is profitable. Screw that. I want GOOD stuff that suit my interests. My purchases reflect that. Business is like evolution: the great products should thrive, while the crappy ones should die.
If PP and MG release an endless string of first rate stuff - they’ll make me poor. If PP and MG release an endless string of garbage - so long PP and MG, hello unofficial fanlation patches to games I already own in Japanese (not that I need them… but it’s fun to see what others do).
And the fact this took place in America, which has a long-standing tradition of throwing snits over this sort of thing.
In fact, as I mentioned when the new of this came out at first: it took all of 15 minutes or so of Google searching to find an exact citation for the exact state law (applicable in the state where AX was held - I can’t remember FL or CA, I think CA) which (to my not-a-lawyer eyes) it seemed pretty clear MangaGamer had violated with this stunt. With something so clearly out of bounds, arguing “well sure, it’s illegal and all that, but who actually cares about that?” is veeeery shaky ground to have to stand on. All it takes is one person willing to file a complaint or threaten to and/or actually sue.
Of course there’s competition between MG and Peach Princess. They’re chasing the same bucket of dollars. That bucket is not inexhaustible. They’re also chasing the same bucket of time to spend, and I have even less of that. I have yet to play a considerable number of the titles I’ve bought because of time constraints (and once it gets back into the pile it takes awhile to come out).
To a certain extent, they’re not constant-sized buckets: if there’s a lot of things I really want, then I’ll get them. If nothing they release interests me at all, I won’t buy anything. But in practice, not every title released by PP or by GC interests me sufficiently to move into “must have”. I don’t even own Kazoku Keikaku (a game I looked forward to for years) because they can’t be arsed to actually translate it. So the bucket of time and money is roughly constant over time.
So yeah: Downhill Night might be “average”, and Koihime might be “awesome”. If I haven’t got enough money to get both, then in fact, they compete: if Koihime had never come out, I’d buy Downhill Night, but since it did, I won’t. (Just an example, mind.)
Hell, game companies even compete with themselves. That’s why companies with a lot of big titles coming out tend to stagger them. If your game, which otherwise might have been fine, launches too close to another game that’s very similar, then guess what, its sales are going to be lower. This is (AFAIK) just a fact, it’s been demonstrated the sales figures.
that is the answer that I was looking for, I don’t expect people to get every eroge* that comes out. I wanted to know if a person will select one eroge over another even though s/he might have been willing to get both. (if you assume that money isn’t a problem, will a person select one eroge and decide it is enough for him/her)
yea, now that I have money to spend on anime and eroge… I don’t have the time to actually sit down and make use of them (I have a few months old anime DVDs that still have their plastic wrapper on them!).
I just imagined my hairy boss doing that… I am skipping lunch today :? 
(note, one of JAST staff got their hands on the free panties coupon… and used it in Family Project)
P.S:
- a term that I see as equal to the term “game”, there are many types of games target at different type of gamers. The same apply to eroge, that is why I didn’t make the selection as “So you won’t buy Suck my dick or die because Family Project came out?”.
I wander if this will also be a valid comparison, but if the next Final Fantasy game comes out at the same time as an eroge. Which one would you guys go for? I mean, how do anime-style games like Star Ocean, Final Fantasy and Tales of Vesperia fare with erogamers (very high in my book), and would the release of one of those games effect your decision of buying an eroge? In my case, if I am short on cash and am forced to select between an erogo or one of the games listed earlier, then I’ll let the eroge wait.
While true to some extent, I think this ignores an opposing factor. At the individual level, you might call it “hobbyist’s momentum”. The more time you spend with a hobby, the more time you want to spend doing it–conversely, if the hobby seems to be stagnating, you might lose interest entirely. At the group level, attention to one arm of an industry brings spillover attention to the entire industry. If I went to a con and heard about Mangagamer and went and played Shuffle, I might become a fan of b-games and eventually find my way to JAST, and vice versa. At this point, I think the market is so small and has achieved so little of its potential penetrance that JAST and Mangagamer have a mainly symbiotic relationship rather than a competitive one. I think MG in particular benefits quite a bit from the existence of JAST, which has an established fanbase (us) that regularly points potential customers in their direction.
Some assumptions diverge from reality too much to be useful. For some people buying these games, money is not an issue. For most it is. And besides, from an economics perspective, “do I have enough time for this?” and “do I have enough money for this?” are essentially the same question, just with different resources.
The release schedule for translated erogames is so slow and the selection within the various sub-genres so modest that for established customers, erogames don’t compete with each other for money and time so much as they compete with other forms of entertainment (and of course, RL). With a fairly modest amount of available spending money you can over time acquire pretty much every title that has been translated, especially if you’ve been a customer for several years and already have most of the older games. For instance, if a title had been released earlier this month it would have been competing for my time and money with Dragon Age: Origins, not other erogames. Erogames are generally on the short side too so if you don’t have time for a particular title, odds are you aren’t playing a different erogame but doing something else. Of course, this is from my point of view, there will always be people whose life situation makes them an exception to everything I’ve written here, but I don’t think that’s the case for the majority. For instance, a new customer to the genre would certainly have a significant catalogue of translated titles to catch up with and in that case there certainly is an element of competition between the different publishers.
if soul link is coming out monday then manga gamer hasn’t told their webmaster
I’ll probably pick up Soul Link when it comes out. I like that style of game, although I’ve heard Soul Link isn’t the best of its kind. I expect another Shuffle!: pleasing audio/visuals, an entertaining cast, and a functional yet ultimately not terribly moving story. In short I expect to be entertained, but not impressed.
They always update the site in the moment the game is released so there’s still hope… ^_~
The story in Soul Link is miles above what was in SHUFFLE!. I personally liked the first third and the last third; the middle third was some random romance plot. In Soul Link, you can actually gasp die!
And how =P If anything, it’s a little too easy to die/bad end. I was stuck on a few parts of it for a little while.
Yeah, while it’s not a particularly excellent game, it’s still Navel’s second best title (not counting the BasiL games). They basically go:
Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Soul Link > everything else
Quite entertaining and as it was one of my earlier VNs I was quite impressed. The artwork was great.
So the sci-fi plot is actually pretty good then? Alright, you guys have got my interest up a notch. How do you think it compares to Critical Point? I know there’s some fans around here that were rather fond of that.
Does someone know how long is Curtain Call ?
It will be difficult for me to wait untill March to play it. Kirakira was better than I tought and I’m a fan now.
I hope the songs are as good as the one in Kirakira.
it is around 3am monday in europe and no word from manga gamer yet
so my guess is if it is done we should here about it the morning for usa forum members