LOL… It’s like trying to read an ero from MG. 
I’m afraid you’ll have to take another look at the situation…
The US porn industry has lost considerable interest in “anime porn” because it fails to generate the revenue of real porn. Depending on what source you want to believe, American porn is a multi-billon dollar enterprise, but hentai in the States was less than 1% of total sales generated. Also much like the conventional anime market, hentai sales have been going down (according to distributors like AnimeNation). In fact Asian porn in general has been experiencing a bit of a down turn, thanks to the lack of charismatic actresses to keep buyers going (many of the current superstars like Asia Carrera are waaaay past their prime). Moodyz, a rather large Japanese porn company, has been experiencing major failure with getting Americans hooked on their releases. So established Japanese companies HAVE tried; they didn’t get anywhere.
Actually the anime and manga market in the US has burst, becoming a losing proposition for many investors: the largest impact being the death of Geneon USA. The combination of oversaturation, network muscling (i.e. Cartoon Network), Internet piracy, and a fluxing dollar value are to blame. Now you’re going to try to convince investors that eroge ¬ñ already something that’s not a major market in the West ¬ñ is worth taking a risky gamble that it is? The track record says otherwise: with the exception of Peach Princess, eroge companies in North America have died. The verdict on MG is still out. Even with the success of PP, it’s nowhere in the league of EA Games… or even “small” groups like Codemasters.
As an investor my interest in earning money will overlook the eroge market. There is no “perfect storm of opportunity” ¬ñ there’s only been a cataclysm of repeated failure. I have more odds of success investing in a console or PC venture, than I do with an ero venture. Why should I put my money on some “free ero” idea, when I can put my money on The SIMS 3 (which is still taking investors) or Final Fantasy 13? Those are SURE FIRE money makers. Those are the perfect storms.
And don’t forget piracy. Eroge suffers a MASSIVE issue with that. I know people always argue over the “morality of piracy” and how it really has no effect on sales. Bull. Investors care about piracy: too much of it will keep them away. The music and film industry feel that pinch everyday, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re so anal in stopping it: no investors means no productions.
The demand is for REAL PORN, not animated porn. Demographics show that “big natural tits” and “teens” generate the most sales. There’s a massive rise in gay porn as well. But the “Japanimation” stuff? Failure. Massive failure. Except for the pirate sites… which are part of the problem to begin with.
Burst is not the correct word. There is still a lot of revenue from anime being generated. Deflation is more like the term. Also other problems such as long-translation times from Japan to US, ie no simulatanius or near simultanius releases here is another signifigant factor.
In a few years it might be worth a gamble…manga industry went through a similar shakeup and is now in a lot better shape than it was before (though it doesn’t have to worry as much with simultanius release problem as video does…large portions of the population still prefer reading a book over an image on a monitor.
But your right, an investor would be foolish to invest at this moment.
True, though the music and film industry are covered in the US for any perceived loss, ie total # of times they can track a game was downloaded they can list as a “lost sale” without needing to prove very hard that such a person would have bought the item if they actually had to pay for it, which we all know 100% of them would not have been bought.
However piracy is a lot harder for online games and one of the reasons many companies are trying to get into the MMO market. You can set up a private server, but most of the games have serious problems with them and thus it limits the potential piracy aspect.
Problem with an eroge MMO is everyone would need to be at least 18 to join (or the company would have to be able to have decent way to verify you are as no age verification is foolproof). It would probably have to be for PC as well. This immediately limits a vast majority of the NA gaming population, console playing teenagers who have loads of time to spend. College gamers are still prime targets of course, but they don’t always have as much time which means possible less money.
Then you have to figure some way to keep and build a community out a small subset population because you’ll never become the next WoW.
There is the possibility of having a T/M version and an upgrade A version you could pay extra money for that could coexist on the same server, but that’s a lot more overhead for programming costs.
Since Narg didn’t, I guess I’ll attempt a short explanation. For the full details, read this.
Nexon Corporation is a Korean company involved in the online gaming market. Pretty much all of their games are technically free to play. The way they make their money is through selling in-game items, which for the most part have no gameplay value. Here is a quote from information about one of their most recent games, a FPS called Combat Arms:
Probably the game they are most well known for, however, is MapleStory, a “2D, side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game” as Wikipedia puts it.
Simplest way to describe it.
1- Price to hire a writer.
2- Price to hire an artist or group of artists.
3- Price to hire people to develop the game.
4- Price to produce and advertise the game.
5- Price to translate the game.
6- Licensing also has a price.
There is more but the idea is, like regular games, it costs money to make. Just like everything costs money to make. If it was free, Japan would be bankrupt in the eroge industry. Now you would not want that now, would you?
Do we seriously need to beat this dead horse again and again?..
No, seriously, do we?
Did someone say twincest? Because I think I heard someone say twincest!
Is this what we call “off -topic”?seems like mr.Narg just wanted to show off his picture.
It’s a pretty good one though 
.Where did you get it ?
It’s because Panzerhaust is right… we’re sorta beating a dead horse now: and Narg thinks we should make the thread happy again! 8)
Shame on you for not knowing first class twincest like this! Bad ero gamer! BAD!
Well… at least you didn’t think it was Hisui and Kohaku. Someone I know made that mistake once. :shock:
true but what we need is twincest plus badass Narg BTW nice avatar RK who can resist loli monsters ?!
Relax Nothing feels like an autumn night free of work sticking to the dear PC
Can you believe it’s already September? Time just slip…
Btw, this board seriously need a chatting thread :lol:, feels kinda boring here when nothing interesting (and have twincest, lol) is gonna come out soon.
Well someone better bust out a list of twincest soon cuz i don wanna go diggin up the old twincest 200 page thread…
You’ll learn soon enough if you stick around RozenKnight that Narg’s collection of twincest is his way of burying horses and putting out flames. While twins aren’t really my thing, I still enjoy the way he redirects the energies of the thread.
I don’t have a fetish with twincest either, doesn’t mean it put me off though
From CNN:
Basically what’s already been said in this thread before… but hey, these are the “experts” talking. Besides - it has lots of cool and interesting link references.
Back, foul necromancer! How dare ye disturb the long-dead in their restful repose? Who would dare such – oh, it’s you, Narg. The black arts are strong in you, stronger than mine own … As you were.
Video games have experts now? Where do i apply? Does it pay anything?
I think this “analyst” is full of it anyway.
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A free crappy game is still a crappy game. It might get more players than a for-pay crappy game, but at the end of the day, crappy games get played less than good games. (Important caveat: “usually”.)
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Free-to-play with cash-for-bling is a nice trick (probably even revolutionary), but unless the bling expenses / month are more than what WoW charges, your game is STILL going to need subscription numbers the size of WoW’s to make the kind of money WoW makes.
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Who’s to say Blizzard can’t move WoW to a cash-for-bling model? Or at least some kind of hybrid model, with a subscription fee AND additional costs for bling?
As I read the article, the analyst seems to be saying that you can’t catch up to Blizzard’s investment in gameplay, because making a fun MMO costs a lot of money. So instead of making a fun MMO, you should make a cash shop MMO, and compete that way. The problem is that weaksauce is weaksauce, and the advice in the article seems to be centered around how to mitigate the problem that your core product is weaksauce. Such strategies can work, but not I think in this case where network effects are already against you, and your competition is known for awesomesauce.
I’m not sure what this post has to do with the subject of the thread (other than my mentioning the Nexon business model). As for what the article says, I’d say the best strategy for dealing with WoW is to simply let it die a natural death. Honestly though, I don’t see the big appeal of these monthly subscription games. Then again, I don’t see what the big appeal of social networking sites like myspace and facebook are either.
Glad to see some actual support for my analysis from some time ago by vetted experts.
Actually read the whole article. Several have made the top 10 gross profits last year.
Nothing’s impossible. Howver it would require a massive overhaul on how things are done now.
Well I’d say the article is spot on considering that every week a many new MMO are created (on average). Since LotR came out, the last great RPG that was heralded as a “contender” for WoW hundreds of MMOs and most of them MMORPGs have been created and non of them have toppled WoW.
It had to do with my comment on making an eroge MMO or a tiered MMO with eroge/non-eroge content.