Dies Irae Steam Confirmed (Prefundia Up Now)

[ChaosRaven]

Even if they make a Kickstarter, I think Dies is one of the rare titles that could still get a lot of money from it.

It's so hyped, it would certainly get a strong campaign start and many casuals would then just jump on the wagon.

[Chronopolis]

5 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Maybe the "announcement" is aimed at other Japanese companies rather than English users?  Sort of like bragging about your career aspirations to your coworkers?

Get hyped, brethren.

[Narcosis]

6 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Maybe the "announcement" is aimed at other Japanese companies rather than English users?  Sort of like bragging about your career aspirations to your coworkers?

That's one of the few japanese studios, I'd really like to see taking such course of action. They'd definately find a large audience on the west with works they create.

[Mkilbride]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dies-irae#/

 

Lol, found this.  Also like 4-5 other Kickstarters for games called Dieas Irae. Going to get confusing.

[Suzu Fanatic]

Someone should warn Light that Steam isn't the magical money machine some think it is~

Oh well, I can't say I'm not looking forward to it. I just question if hype will = sales. People like to talk big, but sometimes that's all it is - talk.

[sanahtlig]

12 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

I'm sure it'll sell well among people like us that have already heard the hype and are interested in reading it, but I have my doubts about it breaking into the Steam VN scene.

I don't know, 'Megalomaniac Nazis with superpowers, a pseudo-intellectual tale' seems like meme material to me.  Savvy marketers could work this angle to increase the chance it sticks.

[sanahtlig]

38 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

"Super atheist that dates angels and demons" sounds pretty amusing as well, but look at the results.

But did MangaGamer actually use that angle to pitch it?  Did they try to emphasize the wackiness and submit the game to the sorts of places likely to pan the game and generate attention?  MangaGamer doesn't have professional marketers on staff, unlike Nutaku.  Last I checked they were struggling to implement well-established conventional marketing tactics, much less try bold new-age meme tactics which could be hit-or-miss.

Companies like to blame the market when sales are poor: "the demand wasn't there".  I've seen it over and over again.  They don't like to admit that their own marketing failures could be to blame.  I've seen quality games do poorly and poor games do well.  Some of it is luck, but many of the factors are manipulable or at least influenceable.  LewdGamer is absolutely convinced they can make a mediocre game that can do better than more deserving titles simply because they understand their audience and how to market to them.  I believe them.  Effective marketing is much more important than the quality of the product you're selling.  Nutaku wouldn't be where it is otherwise.

[WinterfuryZX]

they could put some of tbose flaming uramanjis here and there to stir up some controversy.

[WinterfuryZX]

1 hour ago, Zenophilious said:

But...you're expecting a Japanese company that's never put anything up on Steam, or really interacted with the western VN community, to already do better than them?  I don't even remember SP doing almost any marketing for Nekopara at all, or even the developer doing much of anything in order to spread it, and it became the Steam meme VN.  Granted, I might not have been paying attention, but I don't remember some sort of slick marketing campaign that made NekoPara the meme VN it is.

Something sipmly go viral sometimes, I think you can do nothing to control this phenomenon, many tried, and many failed, it's purely random.

[sanahtlig]

10 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

But...you're expecting a Japanese company that's never put anything up on Steam, or really interacted with the western VN community, to already do better than them?  I don't even remember SP doing almost any marketing for Nekopara at all, or even the developer doing much of anything in order to spread it, and it became the Steam meme VN.  Granted, I might not have been paying attention, but I don't remember some sort of slick marketing campaign that made NekoPara the meme VN it is.

I expect that Dies Irae has more meme potential than Tokyo Babel (which I had to look up because I couldn't even remember the name).  Even if light does no marketing at all, the chances of people latching onto it are greater (but still low).  Raising those chances to the realm of "maybe" would require conscious outreach and marketing efforts, like Aksys did with Agarest War.

[Conjueror]

Guys, spread the word that Dies Irae implies that Reinhard Heydrich (almost Hitler) is Jesus to all the Christian circles you know.
Also, there's incest skullfucking.

[Arcadeotic]

English tweet is up

At least there isn't any broken English like with most of these in-house announcements

[Dergonu]

1 minute ago, Conjueror said:

Also, there's incest skullfucking.

Well, steam disagrees!

[novurdim]

56 minutes ago, Conjueror said:

Also, there's incest skullfucking

I have my doubts there'll be any in a usually tame all-ages steam version though. 

[Senri094]

Great, just great. I'll be a backer of this project: Amantes Amentes (the best version with all the extra contents) + HD assets? Instabacked. 

[Nandemonai]

Are you guys really sure that Tokyo Babel did poorly?  I've seen a few people tossing that around, but I'm not so sure.  2K copies seems to be the 'worth-it' point for longish VNs, at least if Koihime's voice licensing brouhaha is any guide.  And not only is SteamSpy telling me Tokyo Babel sold more than 2K copies, it is also telling me it significantly outsold Gahkthun.  And we know Gahkthun did well (or well enough) as MangaGamer just licensed another game from the series.

[solidbatman]

15 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

Are you guys really sure that Tokyo Babel did poorly?  I've seen a few people tossing that around, but I'm not so sure.  2K copies seems to be the 'worth-it' point for longish VNs, at least if Koihime's voice licensing brouhaha is any guide.  And not only is SteamSpy telling me Tokyo Babel sold more than 2K copies, it is also telling me it significantly outsold Gahkthun.  And we know Gahkthun did well (or well enough) as MangaGamer just licensed another game from the series.

Everything is speculation  I don't think the companies release sales numbers, and if they do, I've never seen them myself. Only hear bits and pieces from company staff when they are talkative. 

[Nandemonai]

SteamSpy is not speculation

So yeah, Tokyo Babel hasn't sold anywhere near the handful of items up at the top.  But those are abberations; Higurashi is famous, and Go Go Nippon was in the right place at the right time.  But 2000-ish copies isn't nothing.  And that's just Steam sales; SteamSpy has no visibility at all into MangaGamer's internal sales figures.

[Decay]

19 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

Are you guys really sure that Tokyo Babel did poorly?  I've seen a few people tossing that around, but I'm not so sure.  2K copies seems to be the 'worth-it' point for longish VNs, at least if Koihime's voice licensing brouhaha is any guide.  And not only is SteamSpy telling me Tokyo Babel sold more than 2K copies, it is also telling me it significantly outsold Gahkthun.  And we know Gahkthun did well (or well enough) as MangaGamer just licensed another game from the series.

Gahkthun didn't do very well, either. Maybe MG broke even on it, maybe they didn't. MG has always been and seems like they'll continue to be the kind of company that doesn't mind taking minor hits or not making much money on some "prestige" releases while they rake in the money elsewhere.

The MG staff has been super down on the sales of both Gahkthun and Tokyo Babel, with people like Doddler and Conjueror claiming that they are both far below what they'd like to see from these kinds of titles. What that means is that you'll continue to see one or two titles like these a year instead of them going whole hog and licensing a ton of liar soft stuff. Notice how they haven't really announced a new chuuni/action title at all this year? 

[Decay]

1 minute ago, Nandemonai said:

SteamSpy is not speculation

Steamspy is definitely a form of speculation and it is known to be highly inaccurate when it comes to products with low amounts of sales (less than 10,000)

[solidbatman]

Gahkthun did really bad if memory serves. 

[sanahtlig]

12 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

SteamSpy is not speculation

SteamSpy reports a range of 900-3300 estimated sales for Tokyo Babel.  On the low end that's "failure", and on the high end that's "reasonable".  The uncertainty is too great here to make any real conclusion based on this data except, "Tokyo Babel did poorly, relative to its length, compared to other MG titles sold on Steam."  And MangaGamer already told us that, as Decay pointed out.

[ChaosRaven]

It's difficult to compare Gahkthun with Tokyo Babel using Steam because Gahkthun came much later to Steam as it was released on MangaGamer's site. The percentage of sales is surely lower on Steam in case of Gahkthun than Tokyo Babel, because everyone who wanted to read the title straight after release had to buy it from MG's site. People who bought Tokyo Babel could choose between Steam and MG from the beginning.

[Decay]

Besides... 

Look at this fluctuation. That isn't fluctuation in actual steam owners, that's fluctuation in Steamspy's reporting. One day they'll say it's 2100 plus or minus 1200, a few days later it's 950 plus or minus 600, then nine days later it's back up to being 2100 plus or minus 1200, and there's no way to know what's real. Steamspy is useful to get general ideas about some things, like we can see that Tokyo Babel has probably sold better than Fata Morgana has thus far, but please don't attempt to extrapolate actual sales figures from this kind of highly unreliable data. Games need to have far more sales to be able to be measured somewhat consistently.

[Nandemonai]

4 minutes ago, Decay said:

Steamspy is definitely a form of speculation and it is known to be highly inaccurate when it comes to products with low amounts of sales (less than 10,000)

Speculation means commenting on something in the absence of real information.  No, SteamSpy is not speculation.  It might (well, okay, does) provide crappy data, but crappy data is still data

And yeah, okay, MangaGamer wishes that Gahkthun had been much more successful.  But the game didn't bomb badly enough that they gave up.  To me, that's the true measure of failure.  Brooktown High was a failure.