Steins;Gate Discussion Thread

JAST Games Game Discussions
#21

btw - Rice Digital (UK) has the Limited Edition and Standard Editions of the console versions for Steins;gate live on their site now:

http://www.ricedigital.co.uk/store/steins-gate-el-psy-kongroo-edition-ps-vita

Not much worthwhile to get the LE if you already have the LE JAST USA released (besides the Metal Upa of questionable quality), so if you already have the Steins;gate LE from JAST, I’d personally just pick up the standard edition if you want to play it on the go (VITA) or on your TV (PS3).

#22

@Oniros - Don’t get too discouraged. The market is very much weak compared to the Japanese market right now, but that’s not a reason to throw in the towel and despair of it ever happening. After all, Steins;Gate itself was released in 2014, years after Jast started working with the fan translation folks. Cartagra was released in 2014, years after Kara no Shoujo (its sequel) had to be released with no voice because the VA outfit demanded too much money (which made it very unlikely that more IG games would be picked up).

Yeah, it looks bad for the short term. But never say never. The long term outlook is very uncertain because things are in a lot of flux right now. It could easily turn around in one of two ways:

1) If Steins;Gate is successful on PS3/Vita, it might convince Mages that it’s worth releasing the others the same way. And there’s a good chance S;G is much more successful there than the way Jast is selling it now.

2) Just give Steam a few years to convince the Japanese companies (who right now have very little experience with it) that games on Steam will sell several times as many copies as those sold elsewhere, and Mages might decide to put S;G on Steam. Where it would - hopefully - promptly sell a bazillion copies.

#23

We hope the game is successful, even though we're not involved in the release, if it's not clear. A lot of Japanese companies are in decline and are looking to the West to make things better. The fact that they think it's appropriate to spend $100,000 to translate a game (which I've seen in the past) for a market this fragile is an indication that some of the companies aren't smart boot-strappers like the existing H-game licensors and may not find business success, though I hope I'm wrong.


#24

So if you liked Steins;Gate, you might want to check out this book - I got a very similar vibe (I’m pretty sure Okabe and Penelope would get along real well) even if the plot’s very different.

#25

†

I've always been wondering how long that market mode would sustain itself -- dedicated, hardcore supporters with insanely high willingness-to-pay.


Unfortunately, the road from that to broadly mainstream popularity at lower price points is probably a rather bumpy one.† That said, fortunately for VNs, they do have a lot of potential room to grow, given how niche they are in the west.† Low-price distribution (including, admittedly, piracy) has the potential to reap wonders if awareness is the limiting factor -- I've heard that that's how the western K-pop fandom took off in the past year or so.


I mean, I totally admit that I'm only here because the Groupees VN1 bundle was a thing, and I happened to have heard of Aselia thanks to its little anime "series" (if the two-episode fragment can even be called such) so I was interested and jumped on board.† Then again, I'm probably pretty atypical for VN fans since I'm not interested in adult-content stuff...