My English disc didn’t work and i went to exchange it (hey i want to at least see how the English VAs compare even if i play it only in Japanese) and the Gamestop only had 1 PS2 title and that was a used copy. The worker seemed surprised that they had that one copy.
Can anyone tell me how the dub is? I basically want to know which is better the English or Japanese version as it IS possible for the dub to be better, that and when I looked up the VAs for the cast, I recognized most of the english cast whilst in the case of the Japanese cast, I only recognized a few.
Yea… Gamestop is treating this game like it was infected with something dire… and that’s not good. The only way to fix that, is for people to buy the game. If those “one copies” get bought, Gamestop will restock them. If they keep getting bought, Gamestop will increase the restock quanity… maybe 3… then 5… and so on.
It’s really solid. This shows off some of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYhBvvUhvXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRH7DUj_o5c
The acting is good… it’s just the accents for a few. Some people hate it. Others love it. All in all though: I think it’s quality work.
They just tried a little too hard maybe. The Texan is too Texan…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnQaJq0vdpc
… but you get used to it. 
Joy oh joy… learned that not all Best Buys are carrying this game either. Check out if you’re a region or not:
Best Buy Store Locations for SW5
At my previous US address, 2 out of 6 locations have it.
Compare this to… oh… I don’t know… Monopoly on Wii, and see the difference (all 6 locations for me).
On the other hand, that’s better than WalMart. Someone told me, they’re not carrying it at all. Haven’t confirmed that yet… but I have no reason to doubt the source.
Week 2 sales released:
8,013 on PS2 and 2,795 on Wii.
For whatever the reasons might be: Wii sales are officially a failure.
Looked around for it in the gamestop I was in the other day… no joy
(of course I couldn’t find any of these japanese-translated DS RPGs I was looking for either…)
I have both. PS2 version is Collector’s Edition. Wii is regular edition. I think that owners prefer to buy Collector’s Edition because they might sell Collector’s Edition for more money.
If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that the game is going to have sold poorly with the English-language-only versions, period. I wonder what the “special edition PS2” versus “English-only PS2” sales figures look like …
Hmmm… might not be as bleak as I thought. Did some more digging.
Amazon rates it as the 4th best RPG (currently, not all time) on Wii:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/vi … g_1_3_last
Ranked #9 on PS2 (currently, not all time):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/vi … g_1_3_last
Take note however, that Wii sales aren’t exactly great for RPG’s. Rune Factory: Frontier is third place, but according to XSEED’s lack of wanting to do more RF releases (they quickly passed on RF3 for DS), they lost money on the venture.
I’m gathering for a secondary data source, but NPD results won’t be released until next month. Although they typically exclude WalMart, WalMart isn’t carrying SW5 as I understand it anyways.
Trying to shift my schedule so I can attend E3 and get direct info… but at present, I’m not able to… Atlus investor reports won’t be until later in the year, which would be 100% accurate, but largely too late to be of interest (except those who invest with Atlus).
Here’s link about Collector’s Edition and Regular Edition resale values-
http://blog.videogamepricecharts.com/20 … -deal.html
I am not sure if XSeed may not release PS2’s Sakura Wars regular edition.
Amazon prices for the PS2 edition are now $60. I might go pick up a couple more copies then at Gamestop this weekend.
And what’s worse is that GAME which is one of the UK’s major video game retailers (although they do own the other major video game retailer) isn’t even stocking this in their stores (and us in Europe only got the Wii version since Tecmo Koei who released the game in Europe is not releasing any more games on the PS2) although they were pretty slow on the uptake on their online store as other major online retailers had the game in stock over a week before it’s actual release in Europe.
Considering the fact that Gamestop and Best Buy aren’t getting many copies of this game to begin with, I’m pretty sure what NISA is doing is they’re limiting their overall production run–It’s not really anything unusual for a niche title such as this. This isn’t the first NISA game that has had a release like this, either. In fact, almost every non-Disgaea game has seen low print runs with little retail distribution, and even the retail distribution for their Disgaea games still tended to be relatively small/short. Atlus, another company that produces niche titles like NISA, is also well known for having low print runs for most of their games.
Whatever copies NISA/Atlus does produce are predominately sold online rather than in retailers–You’re better off just ordering a copy from a place like Amazon or the Rosenqueen site.
I managed to buy a new copy of the Wii version at a gamestop. It was actually the last one they had.
Counterargument to that, if this is the case, they’re running themselves out of business. The company is in the red: they’ve lost 299 million yen in 2009… 97% of their entire company:
http://kotaku.com/5464948/nippon-ichi-s … nt-be-good
They can not afford to lose profit, as some high profile investors have abandoned the company. Rumor has it, the only reason NIS has not gone bankrupt, is because they’ve pleaded for the remaining investors to not default. Come Hell or High Water, they will need to pay the bills sooner or later… and it’s looking doubtful they can do that.
My bad… >.<
NIS… NIS might not release PS2 regular edition… yet.
NIS America is a subsidiary of Atlus? Why would stats for an NISA game be in Atlus’ annual report?
Are you sure you read that right? You may want to look again. It says their operating profit dropped 97% in 2009. I think this is the link that mentions the 299 million yen loss. But I think that’s just a year-over-year number: Their expected profit this year is 299 million yen less this year than last year. That’s very different than a 300-million yen deficit. As far as I know, they’re not actually in the red - they just didn’t make hardly any actual profit, so basically they lost a year treading water.
Certainly, that’s very bad (and their stock tanked shortly after the announcement) but even barely-no-profit-at-all is a much better position to be in than losing a couple million dollars. I don’t think they COULD go broke: they still have money left over after all expenses (which I assume includes debt payments made on time). Of course, if they don’t have enough money to pay their expenses until the next batch releases, they have to borrow money: but if they’re not delinquent on any bills, and even turned a profit, that shouldn’t be that hard. Should it?
Further, I believe they already issued statements to the effect that they were releasing too many games of dubious quality and so they were going to regroup.
I meant NIS¬Ö not sure why I suddenly mentioned Atlus.
Aye. Will explain further.
NIS operates on what I like to call a “portfolio” business plan. Let’s say company releases six titles a year. Four bomb, one breaks even, and one becomes a mega hit. The title that became a mega hit is what fuels the company’s growth. The four failures are dropped, and the one that breaks even, might get retooled so it’s potential to become a mega hit, can be tapped next time around. The mega hit obviously gets a sequel. Four new titles are developed from scratch to do the six title deal again, with hope two or more become mega hits this time around.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s approximate that the value of your stock, represents a corporation’s credit score for borrowing and attracting investors.
Console gaming is expensive, because the costs always multiply. Gamers want more bling-bling. Gamers want more gameplay. Gamers want more features. Gamers want better music. Gamers want better graphics. Gamers just want more of everything. However gamers don’t want to pay more (usually can get away with a 10% increase… but not much more). Nothing wrong with that: gamers deserve that. Now this means the cost of the next game, is more expensive than the last game. Usually it’s twice as much. More so in extreme cases (Final Fantasy as an example).
For NIS to make their next generation of games better, then need to spend more money. Breaking even in this model, is not good. NIS operation costs for the next fiscal year, are already going to be higher. You are correct: their posted profits are after investments and loans have been paid. However the situation stands, that NIS must borrow more money than they did last year, thanks to higher production costs. Their personal savings are the same as last year, but their future costs are twice as large. Now consider that NIS’s stock drop has hit their “credit value” ¬ñ so investors and lenders will be harder to find and/or charge more for their money. Furthermore, NIS still has games in development that they are paying to be made, which aren’t included in the 2009 report (because they fall into the 2010 reports).
NIS is in the red. Hence all the foreboding predictions.
Remember when I mentioned how NIS made their profit via a portfolio strategy? This means they might be looking to abandon that. Is that good or bad? Can’t say… the portfolio strategy works: look at Nintendo or EA Games. Can NIS perform well, without releasing a group of titles, and hoping one sells awesome? No idea. Guess we’re going to see. However NIS making this decision, reveals they are cutting and chopping. Fewer people. Fewer contracts. Fewer licensing. Fewer games. That could work. That could also fail. While NIS will be lowering the overall amount of money they need to function, they also lower the overall amount they can earn. NIS doesn’t release multimillion selling titles. Then again, maybe that’s the battle plan they want to pursue. However if that’s the case, they will need to spend multimillion dollars into making such a title. Top twenty titles in the video game industry make 90% of the profit. Of those top twenty, ten will generally represent 50% of the development costs spent that entire year.
I don’t see them doing that though: the company’s MO just doesn’t fit that. If they do, that means Disgaea 4 or Disgaea 5 will be “mainstream” - yea… you can hear all the hardcore purists lament, since “casualfags” ruin everything. :roll:
If they’re not in the red - they’ve cut so far to remain buoyant (which I doubt, given the investor plight) - they’re now small fish again. And small fish with popular IP properties are eaten by the big sharks. Square-Enix has been gobbling small fries for the last three years¬Ö and it looks like NIS could eventually be on that plate, if things don’t charge.
Using the six title example from before: if NIS released six titles last year; they’re going to release three titles this year (factoring their budget and growing development costs). Considering they had four duds out of six, that does not exactly boost their odds of success here… More so if NIS is intentionally making it hard to buy their games at retail stores - though I don’t think that is the case… and if it were, it’s not going to be anymore (because it’s failing). Note this last part is just an example… I haven’t sat down to research and calculate how many titles NIS released, how many dud, and how many broke even… since they clearly had no mega hit.
This news came well before this game was even released, and it pretty much affirms why their production/distribution run is low. If you’re selling a niche game that probably doesn’t have that much sales potential, and your business resources are very limited, it wouldn’t make any sense to produce a huge amount of copies to begin with. It however, doesn’t necessarily mean that the copies that have been distributed aren’t being sold.–You can’t just give the sales figures and say that sales were poor if you’re not provided information about how many copies were released. The only way you can definitively say that their sales firgures of 26000 copies of the PS2 version is poor is if they produced and distributed around 60000 or 70000 copies.