Sales figures

eckker · August 1, 2003, 12:10pm

Hi everyone,

A little bit bored, so I thought I’d post on the forum.

Over the recent threads I have heard a lot about how piracy affects the sales of translated bishoujo titles.

Do the new games not have the sort of copy protection main stream software has? You know to discourage the novice pirate. Is it not really cost effective given the comparitively low sales figures.

Which brings me on to my next point. Does anybody know how many copies a translated bishoujo game sell officially on average? And what would be a good sales figure for a game?

Do you think these figures are satisfying the companies in Japan?

It doesn’t look like the flow of games is gonna dry up anytime soon so I guess there’s no need to worry really.

But as always, appreciate your thoughts.

Eckker.

Doug · August 1, 2003, 12:47pm

O.K.

Considering that, in Japan, they sell tens of thousands of a copy of a game versus selling only a few thousand and at a lower price point, I think you’re intelligent enough to figure it out.

Nandemonai · August 1, 2003, 4:13pm

Eh. I wouldn’t say the flow of games isn’t going to dry up.

Jast USA’s partner (JAST, of course) recently went under, leaving Jast USA…kind of in limbo.

Peach Princess has only gotten two companies willing to deal with them.

I dunno how many companies G-collections deals with, but it’s certainly a small fraction.

We haven’t seen any big name titles because the market’s itsy bitsy teeny weeny. Not only do games sell around a third of the Japanese sales figures (for GOOD performances here), they go for half the money. That’s the real reason why we aren’t seeing Kanon or Air or To Heart. (Well, that, and the fact that most b-game companies apparently run on shoestring budgets.)

Mike_Thomas · August 1, 2003, 10:52pm

To temper something that Nandemonai said, if we couple the fact that bishoujo games in the states sell for less dollars, and, overall, at a slower rate with an even conservative estimate of 15% piracy, you can see how bishoujo translation companies are struggling to open up the English market.

For example, lets say a good, well-reviewed and received adult bishoujo game in Japan sells 25,000 units in a month (using numbers from what Himeya Soft used to tell me) at 750 yen per unit (~75 dollars per game). That comes to a total of ~1.9 million dollars. Now, this is gross.

Okay, lets say that same game is translated to English for the world market. Now, using the same numbers Himeya Soft gave me, lets say the game sells 1500 units in a month, at $45 per game. That is $67,500 gross.

So, not only are there fewer games sold, any game that is lost due to piracy really cuts into the profits that translation companies can make. If you keep with the English example, and say that 225 sales are lost due to piracy (from our conservative est. of 15%), that is a loss of some $10,000 gross potential income.

Now, if you are a Japanese bishoujo gaming company, and you are only seeing a trickle of money coming back… it is reasonable to see why they are reluctant to make a big push.

They want to see that there is a potential… and, right now, they really aren’t seeing one. Sure, we might clamor that there is a market just waiting to be tapped… but their efforts right now have shown that tapping into the market might be highly difficult.

Or, to use a different example, for as popular as Anime is suppossed to be, you only see some dozen titles offered at Blockbuster, and only about 20 offered at NetFlix. There are litterally hundreds of anime that have been translated… and two of the largest rental places in the US carry about less than 1% of the total range.

Now, yes, the numbers from Himeya Soft are from a couple of years ago… but I wouldn’t see the figures changing that much.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

[This message has been edited by Mike Thomas (edited 08-01-2003).]

Faust · August 2, 2003, 12:24am

The only thing I would mention is the fact that most games don’t get more than 2-3 months of selling before they’re almost completely forgotten about in Japan. The trickle of money over here probably lasts a little longer…

Or at least that’s what I’ve read. And the numbers still aren’t in our favor. All we can do is support it and let other people know about them.

[This message has been edited by Faust (edited 08-02-2003).]

Nandemonai · August 2, 2003, 8:35pm

quote:
Originally posted by Mike Thomas:
For example, lets say a good, well-reviewed and received adult bishoujo game in Japan sells 25,000 units in a month (using numbers from what Himeya Soft used to tell me) at 750 yen per unit (~75 dollars per game).

I nitpick here only because this is a newbie-wants-the-facts thread. I think you mean 7500 yen? I thought it was 100 yen to the dollar, unless it's changed that drastically?