Sakura Taisen 5 on March 23rd

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#61

While PS2 disc production is not as certain (and note I said Wii sales are a failure), the fun thing about Wii, is that only Nintendo produces the discs. Doesn’t matter which software company: they all get pressed by Nintendo. Naturally, Nintendo gets a cut for this service being provided. Nintendo licenses pressing in blocks of 20,000 discs. At a minimum, there are 20K discs of any given game. That’s how Nintendo get’s their licensing cut. It’s not profitable for them otherwise.

Also there was no such thing as SW5 for Wii, until NIS paid for it to be made. Idea Factory was hired to pull the task.

Now let’s say only 20K discs were pressed (seriously doubt it was that low). Let’s say all 20K are sold: 20,000 * $30 = $600000. Now of that, let’s say NIS gets 15% of it (average number): $90,000

That covers the costs of voice acting, translators, and reprogramming the game for a new system? Plus packaging, advertising, licensing the IP, etc? On average, a random Wii title SHOULD sell over 20K in the first two weeks. I’m going to bet that NIS pressed more than 20K discs - most shitty, cheaply thrown together DS games have a price tag of around $50K to produce. And Idea Factory is not one of those cheap IT deals from India.

If they did produce the minimum number of discs, I can see why NIS is going to run themselves out of business. They can’t be that dumb… it doesn’t make sense for them to be doing that. What does make more sense - and there’s a lot of proof of it happening - is that several major game retailers - like GameStop, Best Buy, and WalMart - are either carrying low numbers or not carrying it at all.

When the NPD releases their figures for Sakura Wars, we’ll know for dead certain (more than one public statistic source)…

#62

How about PSP games? I’m asking mainly because Sakura Wars 1 and 2 are avaialable for PSP, and since I’ve noticed NIS has released alot more handheld games than console games I’m curious as to the chances we have of getting those.

#63

Talked with my local Gamestop manager. He had 5 SW5 PS2 copies (new) in and the company ordered him to ship 4/5 to other stores that had none. I don’t know what this says except it seems that GS is wanting to keep at least 1 copy in stores for the moment for PS2 titles unlike the Wii.

Wii sales are a bomb though. I saw one copy one time. I do not know if there is a paticular reason the games are not being sold.

#64

There was a long discussion about this on a chat I was on. To make it short:

#1: PS2 was a bgame console. Many people interested in SW5 already owned a PS2 for that purpose.

#2: NIS caters to a distinct and loyal PS2/PS3 crowd. Many will by an NIS game, simply to support NIS.

#3: Collector’s version is on PS2 only. Ebay scalpers go wild over that stuff.

#4: GameStop is being a dick about carrying the Wii version, and has been from the start. So it was set up to fail.

#5: SW5 caters to a very distinct niche selection. Those gamers typically don’t own a Wii. On the flipside: the casual mainstreamers who own a Wii, don’t like RPG’s and Strategy games. Note that Wii is weak in the RPG and Strategy market… not from lack of trying either: Rune Factory Frontier and Tales of Symphonia 2, failed to make the expected impact.

#6: Though not all Wii gamers are kids, a large majority are. Parents see the Teen rating for: Fantasy Violence, Language, and Sexual Themes. Big emphasis on Sexual Themes. The huge RapeLay hoopla could also have some parents paranoid about anime looking games involving “sexual themes”.

#7: Nintendo gave the game an odd review in Nintendo Power, for being niche and different… which of course it is… but doing so is poisoning the well. Why get Sakura Wars, when you can save up for the next Mario Brothers? That’s pretty much how NP puts it, in so many words.

#8: NIS didn’t have the extra money, to bribe retailers for front shelf priority. You have to pay extra, if you want the spotlight… and NIS doesn’t have the kind of money to throw that around at the moment.

#9: Will version has bugs. Not sure if they’re major or minor (I haven’t ran across any… knock on wood)… but it was mentioned by more than one person.

#65

If you compare the game manuals, the PS2 version (at least the special edition one) is more attractive in design then the Wii’s manual

#66

PS2 version has a few bugs with text passages being too long, but nothing major. Still, for as much as they spent on this and being a professional studio, you’d think they’d fix those bugs.

The unanswered question is whether the sales data spells doom for more of these (and other) type games or not. It’s clear there won’t be more Wii games, but the PS2 sales were not the complete abysmal levels that I believe Sony feared, but nor were they spectacular ones either.

#67

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means :slight_smile:

[duck]

#68

I would be willing to be that the death knell is for not including the Japanese language track in releases of this type. If you wanted the Japanese track, you had to buy a specific PS2 edition. For a series as niche as this, the number of people who want the Japanese track is going to be a much larger than normal percentage of the potential buyers.

On the plus side, if they do PS3 instead of PS2 for further localizations in the Sakura Taisen franchise (one big if, predicated on another a big if) they can eliminate entirely the need for multiple discs. One BluRay can easily hold two seperate versions of the game, code and all, if they really need to do it that way. And that means they don’t have to have the more expensive 2-disc set in order to do bilingual voice.

#69

Doubt they would move to PS3. I don’t think VNs would, with present levels of items used, get much out of PS3 technology other than HD quality sound/video at the cost of expontential production costs with little added sales increase.

#70

DOH!!! :oops:

Nor do I think the SCEA would approve it. For them, the PS3 is all about pushing the limits of graphics, and out doing the other systems. Knowing their history, they’d reject it on the grounds of not being bling-bling enough…

#71

Poor NISA. Even some of their most ardent supporters keep mixing them up with their competitor, who’s currently kicking their ass. (Mainly because MegaTen has finally caught on outside Japan.)

#72

I noticed no bugs of this type in the main adventure portions. I only noticed one occurrence: In battle, when you go to the … crap, not Information - I think Situation - the one that takes you to the zoomed-out tactical overview where the CO gives you a rundown of the situation. In one of the early chapters (I think Ch 1) the first line of what the CO says came out as “Line too long”.

As a developer myself, I know for a fact this is the kind of detail that can get missed even if you DO try to exhaustively check every line. You forget to check the sub-file.

So yeah, ideally, they should have caught it. In FF6, the Dark status effect does nothing - they should have caught that too :slight_smile: In my book, it’s a minor issue, and NISA even gets points for defensively programming the game engine to detect “line too long” and print a “An error has occurred” message instead of crashing the game (like Ar Tonelico 2).

#73

As of this writing, I’m about 17 hours into Sakura Wars 5 (PS2), and starting the first boss in chapter seven. I’ve found most of the major combat sequences challenging so far – and I’m trying to make sure the entire party doesn’t get wiped out. Some of the challenge could be because I’m not very good at discerning distance in the 3D battles…

As for the strategy RPG style gameplay, I’ve liked it despite not always understanding it. But I haven’t yet felt it was closely connected with character frienship ratings. Compared to Persona 4 – in which building friendships gives the player more Personas, more chances to recover from enemy attacks, and better party abilities – Sakura Wars 5’s gameplay currently seems more like oil and water.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed the visual novel segments. But there’s an awful lot of quick time events – every now and then, I start thinking, “No, I’m not sure if I want to press a bunch of buttons just so Shinjiro can dodge this attack / eat this sandwich / do some other random thing.”

I knew from the beginning that this story would be about an alternate 1928 with steam powered mechs. I didn’t think it would be quite so silly. Many of the events seem to be humorous, while others seem unintentionally humorous – they’d only make sense if they happened in Japan.

I noticed pretty early on that even with my PS2 disc with original Japanese dialogue, the translation seemed more like what was written for the dub than anything else. Unfortunately, I began to notice some typos and inconsistencies as the story went on. The “Over the Rainbow” video sequence wasn’t subtitled, which was a real disappointment.

I honestly didn’t expect that at the beginning of chapter seven, Shinjiro would begin pairing with the girl of his choice. I’d been assuming that the series was more about team dynamics, friendship, and justice, and wouldn’t involve picking a girl from a harem.

Red Entertainment is currently working on a reverse harem game called Scarred (Scared?) Rider Xechs. But it would be nice to have a few more games in English which resemble, or respond to Sakura Wars.

#74

It’s in multiple locations. I’ve spotted 3. Of course they are with extra stuff, not main plot conversation.

#75

Fantastic news: Best Buy and Walmart are now carrying Sakura Wars 5 for Wii at $30, and stocking them at a minimum of 5 copies per store that has high turnouts for video games. This is a massive breakthrough - and however it came to pass - means the game has access to mainstream buyers. The game is to be placed on “front shelves” for immediate consumer exposure (as opposed to be thrown in a bargain bin or behind newer titles) - in other words, it will sit next to games like Super Mario Galaxy 2!!!

I’m told this change occurred just before last week, so you should be seeing the game in your local stores. :o

#76

And the PS2 version?

What happened to get this sudden change (it is a sudden to go back from nothing to 5 copies)? I suppose this might push it over the 1million mark.

#77

Best Buy and Walmart don’t seem interested in the PS2 version… just the Wii version. :frowning:

Wish I knew, but the memo doesn’t say anything… just that Sakura Wars gets “priority” stocking. I have read that Amazon was selling the game quite well - even went out of stock for them on two occasions - so maybe they saw a chance to make money.

I think you mean 100,000 copies (was 70,000 the last time NPD kept track), but yea… those two stocking copies should push it towards the magic number. Now if only GameStop would join the bandwagon. Maybe we could get Sakura Wars 3 ported after all… :slight_smile:

#78

What about the first 2? Isn’t there a PSP and DS version for them?

#79

Seems like they are getting into things kind of late and considering the PS2 sales have outsold the Wii i don’t know why they wouldn’t pick up the PS2 title then unless they’ve been mostly bought and there not doing another print run (which would seem unlikely if walmart and bestbuy asked them to with offers of buying enough to cover at least 1 more printrun).

But then again, most people that shop at walmart are looking for cheap stuff and most people at best buy are looking for the new consoles.

That’s what i meant. It’s a bit late, but its still within the first 90 days of the release (June 29th I think is when that rolls over). Even if they miss that deadline the fact that for many consumers, those that don’t go to Gamestops and Amazon, it will look like a more recent release might be a good reason to look at sales beyond the first 90 days in this case.

Yea, I would expect the remakes to be ported if anything starting from the first, but I don’t know. I can say this is just good news.

#80

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/06/29/ni … velopment/

Key sentences:

How did that do? Did it exceed, perform to or was it not as good as your expectations?
Not as good as our expectations.

What’s the fate of Sakura Wars in North America then?
Another publisher tried to get approval from Sony for Sakura Wars 1+2 for PSP, but it was rejected. Once a title is rejected by SCEA there is almost no chance to release the title.

What about as a digital download?
That’s Sony’s decision. Sony said this is not a game.