novurdim

Completely unplanned day-one-buy due to the low price here too. Low-priced quality releases banzai!

A-a-and after looking at the final update, the project can basically be considered abandoned.

RIP, luckily it's not like we have a shortage of eroge these days.

I'm probably a bit late to the party but I've just noticed that Ouka Sabaki, the novel I kept requesting in surveys, is now available on Steam by the courtecy of some new folks called ShiraVN. If Doddler is to be believed, the TL should be more or less fine so it would be great if they gained a bit more support, poor Magistrate seems to be doing pretty bad for the assumed Ace Attorney: The Eroge right now. I also remember seeing that ShiraVN have close ties to DMM Games so Magistrate's success (or, well, not a complete failure) just might open up the possibility for a decent official TL of the stuff like Iwaihime, Ryuusei World Actor or, say, DiGination titles. Though currently it feels more like we are drifting away from those possibilities. Ah, right, there's also a very weird release format and they pushed it out as the Early Access game. Quoting VNDB page Sure doesn't look like a wise decision in hindsight. Even though I bought it, even I'm not going to read it in a "three chapters beta" form yet. Oh well, maybe more people will buy a complete version next year (?), who knows, I still have some hope that this will trigger a new player on the market with an actual access to some of the more demanded VNs.

Even Fruitbat's numbers were too high of a hurdle, it seems.

I had a silly argument about it on this forum a few years back and I still believe this to be the least transparent pseudo-fundraiser imaginable. Maybe not everything I had said that day was sensible but shady-ish is still probably the best word I can come up with to describe it. In a few quotes from back then (when even the second episode was yet to be funded, jan 2017)

50 000 is a very... optimistic base goal, I'd say. I expected them to perform around the Fruitbat's level (i.e. 25-35k) but what do I know, maybe Lemnisca have a good plan of how to incite the masses.

Honestly hard to imagine it being anything but a somewhat too late and too pointless Supipara ch. 3 announcement as the minori's swan song. Anything else would just be too weird and out-of-place, consindering the situation and the fact that they STILL didn't officially cancel that shady fundraiser.

No, I have pretty much said the opposite thing...? Hence why I'm afraid that 2020 will be flooded with those and we won't get many eroge announcements from MG next year. Not that it helped this year, we got only one interesting announcement anyway.

But where's Rance 03? We shall riot! MG actually announced something interesting, will the hell freeze over? It was fairly often requested and a Moonstone title so I'm sure everyone expected them to announce SnM Dreamers sooner or later, but great to see it relatively soon-ish. The rest is the usual rubbish but 1 out of 3 is a crazy good ratio for MG tbh. Also, it's weird how we didn't get a single BL/yuri/otome announcement from MG this year (and despite that we still got like only 1 interesting eroge, haha...), I have a bad feeling about 2020... Oh well, it's one good announcement more than I expected today so let's celebrate!

It's not like JAST are selling their games on other storefronts (exc. steam) so I don't see why MG who basically have the same stance would. Unless the whole payment processors issue becomes unbearably huge.

Damn, it's like you have peeked right into the future.

Mosaics is such an unimportant element to me that it's honestly even hard to say whether I prefer to have them or not.

As always with MG, I'm keeping my expectations as low as possible. Lol. But no. All three announcements are from the old partners.

Yes, but marketing and visibility for the 18+ is extremely bad. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they also sell light novels there?

"that´s...... very said"* But I don't think it's all that bad, you know. Like, Sorcery Jokers got into the top 10 sellers of the MG site while in 2016 Tokyo Babel & Gahkthun got into the top 10 steam sellers. Those obviously didn't sell as well as Bigtits and AliceSoft, but I highly doubt that all plotge were utter failures for MG. What are talking about, Da Capo 3 was in a top 3 sellers of its year. Plus the fact that they assigned Kouryuu (who translates anything as a side job and always drags out the process for years, I pity his next game after maggots) on it likely means exactly the opposite: they didn't put much money and effort in it.

Well, yeah, isn't it what I've been saying here for the last week? MG announcements during the last 2 years are super-understandable from the business perspective but their focus has shifted and those aren't aimed at people like me anymore plus they decided not to take up any gambles for now. It's not a question of being able to explain the announcements, there's nothing easier, look up my post about their top sellers on steam or MG blog with year's sales and any doubts will be cleared with simple cold numbers.

I shall allow it. Supipara, Tokyo Babel, Himawari, Fata Morgana FD, SukiSuki, Dal Segno, Hapymaher, Sorcery Jokers, Sona-Nyl, Trinoline, Damekoi and even Myth are all either plot-oriented VNs or fairly high profile and well-received galge. These VNs will obviously end up being of differing quality but you wouldn't know that during the announcement just as obviously there are people who only like moege and hate chuunige but they are all still part of the fairly consistent direction of the MG years prior to 2018 that catered to, dare I say, a somewhat different side of their customers. Not that they didn't have quite a few gameplay nukige in the past but oldish fans of those are probably ecstatic from all the AliceSoft games and can be excluded from the "complainers". What reveals of this kind we got during the last two years? Probably only Byakko and only because it was acquired way back then together with SukiSuki while MG waited for a few years to reveal it due to the sudden Chuable bankruptcy situation (from their own words). I clearly don't profess the absolute truth, some would rip their vests and claim that Bigtit Fan is a bigger plotge than all of the above together could muster. Just as I don't even dislike AliceSoft games (or, well, to be specific I don't dislike Rance and Evenicle), their complete dominance is just a bit exhausting to see. But at least this is the way I see the bigger picture and why I seem to have been so consistently disappointed in MG panels during the past two years, I do feel like MG had a fairly sharp turn in their licensing policies. Hopefully they won't completely abandon those old partners in the future, they should at least license some of the bigger Moonstone, 3rd Eye and Liar-Soft VNs, right? Right...?

Bigtit Fantasy was never in the top survey results though and I'm pretty sure even the voters had enough Rance for now. Maybe they are stuck because they think they have already announced too many titles, maybe they are stuck because they have budget problems and can't really gamble or acquire anything relatively "big", we can only guess. Balance and practicability could probably be the answer to the first dilemma, I'm really not sure what was the need to buy up all Rance licenses when in three years since the first reveal they have only released 1 game bundled 1 weird short thingy. But again, who knows, maybe they didn't have a choice and AliceSoft for some reason forced them to acquire all of the series at once. Too many unknowns as always, blah. And the only other things they have announced when they are not in a bigtit rance craze are the laughable attempt to cash in on the catgirl trend with fake catgirls/doggyrls, two nukiges and Ciconia with a horrifying art from the great Ryukishi07 himself. Combine it with the last year announcements that went under the banner of yuri, otome & BL, and it's easy too see why most of their longer time customers might be disappointed if they expected for things to stay the same as they were in 2015-2017. When you consider that aforementioned games are also the ones that actually consistently sell, you can confidently expect MG to continue with this policy while throwing a rare bone in one-two years for people like me. This year Ciconia can probably be considered that bone but I'm not sure if I'll even be able to bear the art...

Really? I can swear I've heard that info about 4 episodes several times (I've certainly seen micchi to mention it at least) and I'm not even sure where they would find enough heroines for >5 eps. Reuse Miyako for the final?

Nay, there's one more. The first episode was really good for a prologue so I def recommend reading it when all 4 eps are out.

Their announcements are so boring (to some) because their acquisitions are boring. They could have been translating something else all this time, couldn't they? And if three of the remaining five secret projects really are Rance and co. then we only have two left for the Otakon. I suppose Rance 03 is a given and... do they have any Funbag Fantasy titles left?

It always feels a bit jarring to me when people try to make fun of Sekai while comparing them to MG. Sekai may have huge issues of their own too but man, at least compare them to Nekonyan or smth. They have released Chrono Clock in about 1.5 y. after the announcement and in general MG aren't any faster. Like MG have worked on Hapymaher for 2 years between the announcement and release lol I prefer to be optimistic and expect Amatsutsumi closer to the end of Q4 2020.

Duh, if you open steam's official MG publisher page, you'll see that even the "current" top sellers list consists of: When you exclude "unique" games like Fata Morgana and KnS, pretty much all MG announcements of the last 2 years are basically built around this list. They may have abandoned fans of plotge but it's not like their announcements don't make almost too much sense if you look at them from the business perspective, they are straightforwardly acquiring only the things that should certainly sell. It doesn't make me like MG more but it's hard to blame them when you consider the status of our poor poor industry. Maybe someday they'll try to license something like Ouka Sabaki or Shinsou Noise which could fall into the KnS territory and do well on steam...

Dunno, I'd say most everyone votes for Dei Gratia, Amatsutsumi and Robotics;Notes, at least on forums. And then the silent majority comes out and buys up all copies of kuroinu and bigtit fantasy, further sending MG on a downwards spiral If we use Winterfury's scale, I'd say that Amatsutsumi is a "sure purchase at launch" while NG (bought Death Mark on vita but still didn't play so I'm not sure of the general quality), Dei Gratia (looks a bit too doujin-y and short for my liking, I've seen people on vndb say that it can be completed in 6 hours and that there are no CGs or voiceover so it's like a... base higurashi chapter experience of sorts?), Robotics;Notes (anime was honestly underwhelming) and maybe Windmill's HHG and Witch are under the "moderate interest". So yeah, it's probably the weakest AX in my memory.