quote:
Originally posted by ekylo:
Well, technically, it's not so obvious. There was that period where work on several of the games was suspended. And a lot could happen to a development, even one that's close to completion, like losing a license or having to have it be renegotiated or some really weird bug found in testing that could pretty much grind everything to a halt.Giving a release date would put some minds at ease, it could also piss some off if that date is missed. Even when you're almost absolutely sure you'll hit a date, things happen. I forget, but wasn't it like Transfer Student (or maybe I'm just projecting general irritation on it) that even though it had gone to gold mastering and duplication, had a further delay because of a printing problem?
Anyways, PeaPri released what information they feel comfortable releasing. But technically, they don't have to release any information, it's more to placate us, the fans. They could have just kept the message simply to the availability of Sensei 2 and the reduced prices on the other titles. It just seems to me that everyone was asking for some information on the various titles and when they did give it, people were turning around and critizing them for it.
Right, there was some sort of backlog at the pressing center and there was a delay due to that. There was ALSO a further delay when the previous delay caused them to find an evil bug they had to fix--I think they may even have had to remaster the game.
Anyway, here's what I understand to be part of the Transfer Student story. Remember this is me talking out of my ass (yes, my own little part of the collective oracle we have going here).
Transfer Student was from Jast. Jast went bankrupt recently. It therefore seems pretty safe to assume that, in fact, Jast had been declining for awhile. Remember all the talk about Pea Pri staff having to get the Japanese staff to do this, that, and the other thing? Well, Jast JPN was imploding. There probably wasn't anyone with the time for that.
And in fact, I have heard (but don't remember where or if the source was reliable) that Jast JPN told Jast USA to more or less go away. Now, Jast USA still had the rights but was getting no developer support. And Jast USA has no actual income to hire an actual programmer. This means that you have programmers they got from somewhere with basically a hobbyist's motivation (i.e. someone who liked the games and was willing to work for free). And they had to reimplement the game from scratch, possibly even without much Japanese documentation on the game.
If Transfer Student were something akin to Season of the Sakura, this would not have been as daunting a task. But Transfer Student has meters. It has hidden variables that are affected in hidden ways. This is eeeeevil to try to reverse engineer.
And so it takes them forever to do it. I'm honestly surprised this didn't result in the project being cancelled.
