The Mangagamer Website opened July 1st 2008 ( Official opening was July 10th but it could be accessed since the 1st ), which is 21 days away.
They have almost turned 1 year old, so how do you think they have gone for their first year?
I believe they have gone well for their first year. Now that they have titles available, they should use the money made to improve the quality of their future translations. Quality over Quantity.
I really REALLY hope they’re doing well. I doubt it though… I think it’s unlikely Peter would be buying them off, if they go down, given their distribution model, so I’m crossing my fingers that they somehow manage to make ends meet or else I won’t be able to legally purchase their games anymore 
I’m very content with their newest game Suika A.S+. I hope for more games with good stories, instead of the usual sex romps on english market.
Whatever sells best and, IIRC from what Peter said, sex romps sell better in the English market.
That’s unexpected. And makes me happy. :lol: But, I’d think that that kind of info must be outdated. I can hardly believe for example that PW sold less than anything available to the non-japanese speaking audience.
It has been a rocky road for them I can imagine. Between having their first few games badly translated and the delays. But all that you can learn from and Improve. Hopefully they are learning from their early mistakes to keep a foothold in this market. They most likely had a rough year with sales considering few people are going to buy DRM based games and the rumors of translation quality added fuel to the inferno. This year should be big because I am sure anything is better then last year.
About sales until a company comes out and states how much they sale, we have limited guesses from older interviews and post. I think both about sale the same it just that sex romp are cheaper to license and there are more of them from the companies they license from.
One way to judge an Internet company’s customer base is the activity of their message board. And that metric suggests they’re in trouble, as their board is completely silent. Think about it: how exactly are they getting the message out that they even exist? I don’t see their advertising anywhere. Their board is dead. A company selling games directly over the Internet only with no advertising + no word of mouth = a company existing in a bubble. Ironically, the ones spreading the word the most are probably the pirates.
Compare this state to Peach Princess. As part of the JList empire, they have advertising all over the Internet. I see their banners on all kinds of ero-related sites. Their message board is very active with a dedicated fanbase that generates discussion about the games and spreads the word to blogs and other message boards. They have deals with 3rd party distributors, which sell PP games alongside other types of merchandise.
Couple their poor marketing with overall poor management and a rocky start, and I can only imagine that Mangagamer is feeling the heat right now.
I hope they do then what a other companies do…translate cash cows to make the profits and bring over other games to get at the more niche audiences and hope one of them sells big. Unless your Atlus or Nipon Ichi and then except for SMT all your products are low print runs anyway.
You can look at the lack of ad’s two ways. In one way it’s bad I mean your not telling people about your product. But in another way it’s good just in case you fuck up and release it completely in engrish. If they had started with ad’s no one would be buying their games after Edelweiss. Really their success depends on their leadership how long are they willing to stay in the English market and develop it. I don’t think they came to this market with delusions of grandeur the other companies have. I believe they have some idea of how small this market is which is why they are doing the games via digital distribution.
They need a new website badly and they need to get more of what ever game they sold the most of so far.
I think its also why they have their variable pricing scheme.
Well, I’ve supported them by buying a couple of their products. So far, they’ve hit a range from poorly translated to close to Peach Princess, so as long as they keep up with QUALITY translations, I think they’ll will do well.
Frankly, my biggest complaint with their products is not the DRM, it is that they all actively try to prevent you from getting a screencap. I like taking the occasional screencap of a game, as a “trophy” of playing that game. They are stopping my some of my fun, doing that. I’ve seen one of the techniques they use to actually CONSTANTLY clear the clipboard— that was VERY irritating, but when I’m playing a game, I’ll often window it and make notes to make it easier for me to get 100% CG and scenes— but with that game, no cut & pasting whileit was running.
As for advertisement— they got a ton of advertising from word of mouth. And anytime they do a “popular” title like Da Capo, the English eroge and blogs lit up. And let’s face it— we don’t have a lot of choice about getting English translated eroge games. Peach Princess has REALLY spoiled us, with their high level of quality products. I do want Manga Gamer to reach and stay at the bar that Peach Princess has set, but I don’t really expect it from a company that is nothing more then the THIRD task for a few Japanese companies workers (statements of that sort made on their forums). But— that does give us a LOT of hope that there will be more. Since the source companies are only expending some minor time on the translation projects, it doesn’t cost them much to continue to do so. And once those games are created in English, it only cost them a bit of bandwidth to DELIVER them. That means it is almost pure cash in the bank after that (minus a bit of overhead for the server and the what seems like SOLITARY guy (hinted at in the forums) minding the website and answering customer emails).
How many 49.99 euro games do you have to sell in a week to cover 1 web guy? Or how many 29.99 euro games? Remember, the guys at the companies are ALREADY getting paid, so the only lost money that they are working on the English translated version is time away from new projects— and the way that has been reported, that’s being done in “downtime” between other projects.
So, I will take an optimistic point of view, and figure that they are doing well, and will continue to do so for another year or two— you know, while the expectations are still low from the original companies.
Now that you mention it, yeah that was really annoying. Didn’t really stop me from taking screenshots, since I was running it inside VMWare Fusion on a Mac.
The problem here is that I don’t think they’re reaching a good chunk of their potential market this way. Now, it’s not nearly as bad if you consider the people likely to pay and download games are generally going to be on the Internet a lot, but I still believe that in a market like this, you NEED advertising, and lots of it.