You know I’ve been thinking about the money issue raised earlier in this thread and I’ve come to a few conclusions:
A) The US is not Japan, whatever they do make in Japan should have no effect on what they make in the US (money wise that is). The issue should be on how much they may be able to make if they created a market for their product that they currently don’t. Of course like everyone else in modern coprorations they want as much for as little as possible, and this is the biggest reason they don’t port to the US…
B) What portion of games created in Japan make it to a release in the US, bishoujo or non-Bishoujo? I’m almost certain it’s less than 10% since I work at a store that sells games and part of my job is keeping up on games soon to be released or on the market. I see tons of japanese created games, but few if any ever arrive in the US as a offical release… So if we already see this trend why does anyone think Bishoujo games should be different? I think it’s just a lack of desire on the part of the japanese developers to translate and then market their games outside Japan…
C) I’ve done some research to double check and yes it seems like alot of these games do sell for ~$70-80 USD… To this my reply is… WTF is wrong with these insane people? Both on the pricing end and on the buying end… Not a single game (refering to just software) in the US these days retails for more than $49.99, yet this style of game sells for almost twice that… I think of myself as having a typical income for my age and sociopolitical background here in the US and I treat myself to buying a game at most once a month because even at $49.99 or below I can only afford so many games… But at the price these sell at in japan I would have to fork up 1/6th (roughly) what I make in two weeks for a single title… I don’t spend that much on food in two weeks and I’m going to spend it on a single game…?
If Japanese designers won’t to play in this market they have to adopt this markets pricing as well… Otherwise the market is going to be handicaped even more, but it won’t be because people don’t want to buy the product… This is one of the reson I like Peach Princess and some of the other companies I’ve come to rely on for this type of game, but even so I see a greater market for intro titles (aka ‘budget’ titles) which draw in more people because they can test what a game (or genre) is like before starting to dish out serious cash… Hence why in the console world Sony, Nintendo, and MS all have ‘value’ lines of software and PC game publishers support ‘gem case’ value software editiosn of their older games… Maybe not to suprisingly these are all in the $9.99 to $19.99 range… Or roughly the cost of a meal or two for most people…
That pricing issue is probably my biggest current complaint about Bishoujo games in the mass market more so then overwhelming quality… Games like XC2 have a style that appeals to people (or at least I think it does) and so do some other titles, but few people want to buy in to expensive products without experiencing one without quite the risk… When I bought XC1 (the first Bishoujo title I ever bought) it was due to wanting to try this type of game and the fact that the price was somewhat lower than average…
How do we fix these things though…? That I’m not sure and I think I’ll leave to someone else…