Wouldn’t it be enough to simply have a demo version only featuring the first chapter for example? 
It wouldn't do the game any justice.
Almost no branching routes in the first chapter and no H-Scenes.
The point of the game is to see different routes and endings depending on the choices you make.
In School days there is little to no variation in the first chapter, don't know about Shiny Days though.
@sanahtlig Jast USA hire professionals to sell their goods. I'm pretty sure they thought of the things u suggested already unless you're saying you know more than professionals who are getting paid to sell things to consumers. If it worked then they would've done what you suggested but they didn't because they know the outcome wouldn't be so good. Its just funny that a consumer is trying to teach a company how to sell stuff and would assume that they would easily make alot more money by doing a different method. Like, they haven't though of it before.
And honestly guys, you don't need a demo to check what the game is like. You can easily just go on youtube and theres someone who recorded an hour of the story or something. Its literally watching an anime but you get to pick choices at certain points. Do you really need a demo for an anime?
Remember that JAST doesn’t own the games, so it depends on what the companies want JAST to do. And I doubt any of those companies want the game chopped into pieces.
I doubt there is any actual professional plan behind the sales though. Sell it for as expensive as possible, and if it doesn’t sell enough, lower the price. Basic “I don’t know what to do, but I want money” plan.
The advantage of splitting a game into chapters or episodes would be that the barrier to entry is defrayed over the entire experience, rather than concentrated at the beginning. If a person got halfway through the game and got tired of it, they'd end up only paying half price.
"They can still count totals. Sakura games get away with it because it is months between their tiny games, but if anyone tried to sell a big game as 5 or so pieces at the same time, people would naturally just tally the cost and claim it is too expensive to buy it."
Maybe. I don't assume people are rational actors though. Especially when tripe like the Sakura series shows that they definitely aren't.
"If that wasn't enough, nobody would want to download all the individuall installers and install them one after another to play the whole thing. So you'd still need the normal digital version for full price. Alternatively an extra downloaded installer that installs the installers."
The bulk of the download (including game engine and probably the main installer) would be in the first episode. Naturally the episodes would not be standalone; you'd need to have purchased / installed prior episodes to purchase / install later episodes. The second episode and later could be thought of as "DLC" rather than as standalone episodes. The original installer could recognize how many episodes have been downloaded / unlocked and install them all at once. This could even be automated in the same fashion that Steam checks your account and automatically downloads and updates your games for you.
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I don't care about any of that. Just release the game already.
I tried to respond to the above posts but my posts are being filtered by the spam filter. So, uh, yeah. Guess I'll wait for the new forums until I bother writing anything worthwhile.
@John: It depends who VNs are targeting whether $40 is too much, everything is relative.
If VNs are targeting gamers, then sure $40 can be considered reasonable. Keep in mind that most gamers bemoan the lack of gameplay in VNs, though.
If VNs are targeting readers, then $40 is far, FAR too much. I can say this with certainty considering people constantly bemoan the price of paperbacks these days, and they are far cheaper. I can pick up complete TV seasons for 30 bucks in today's market. I should point out that Telltale is having much success selling their stuff in episodes, and so is Sony with Life Is Strange.
So it's about VNs figuring out their audience and pricing accordingly. I personally favour splitting VNs into chapters, but that's because I view them as a reading experience.
Lastly, considering the lack of marketing JAST produces for certain VNs, I don't have much faith in the professionals they've got on board.
2 more days, dying from excitement
It's supposed to be out tomorrow and yet complete silence.
I smell a delay at least digitally since according to their dev blog, the physical version is complete.
That or they decided to not release the digital version asap and just wait for tomorrow, despite saying they would release it asap.
they are working on a new installer with a new checksum check, and along with that comes unforeseen problems. as far as we know it has hit another problem and wont be ready for release, and that if fine as well, because if they released it without the new installer people would flip shit if their game was broken due to bad files. and the last thing they need is people complaining about needing bugs fixed that dont really exist. everybody is freaking out over the delays but what do you expect coming from something related to summer days and jastusa?
Haha just kidding jast good work, but hopefully you guys can release things like this uncut one day
i heard it was 20 rightstuf one gets released sept 30
A visit to the JAST homepage reveals:
"We'll be back.
We are currently upgrading our store. Please check back again later. Sorry for the inconvenience."
This may be the long-awaited backend update that will allow automated sending of digital codes for J-List orders. †This could be the final preparations for the release of Shiny Days...
Nothing changed. There is no e-mail from JAST in my mail box.
i can not handle another delay after what happen with persona 5
Anyone want to guess what keychain you’ll get with your pre order? Knowing my luck i’ll probably get Hikari.
My guess is that my probability of getting a particular keychain will be 1 / (total # of different keychains).
@swift talon Of course they're most likely not going to have the download ready on time. Why am I not surprised...? I'm already having doubts that there won't even be a restore patch considering they're already having soo much problems.
@John Nguyen i have no doubt the patch will be available, however my future purchases are directly linked to it being released, as there are other places i could have gotten the game for cheaper, and rightstuf being one of them (best customer service ever). however i like to believe in what has been said, which is why i preordered, i surprised myself when i ordered the game, as i have never knowingly bought any game that has been censored, hell i wont even buy bravely default that just changed 1 persons age, and a few outfits in it. in the end i hope i dont get burned so i can continue to support the industry without doubting my purchases like i do with most games nowadays. i just wish they posted stuff about the cut content on the preorder page of the various sites they are selling the game, there will be less angry fans that way.