MoeNovel's next title - Cross Channel

[bakauchuujin]

6 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Huh, this was fast... And it's just 10 bucks?

Pretty sure the aim of Moenovel is to sell their VNs cheap to people interested in VNs and in the art but who aren't really that knowledgeable. If they were to sell it at higher prices it would push away a lot of people who are more casual and generally buy cheaper VNs and those interested in VNs at higher prices would most likely try to look more into it before buying it and find out how horrible Moenovel is if they didn't already know. By selling it for low prices I think they are getting a lot more sales than they would otherwise. Ofc I hope their sale strategy doesn't end up working but I think the price is understandable.

Edited March 27, 2018 by bakauchuujin

[Plk_Lesiak]

28 minutes ago, bakauchuujin said:

Pretty sure the aim of Moenovel is to sell their VNs cheap to people interested in VNs and in the art but who aren't really that knowledgeable. If they were to sell it at higher prices it would push away a lot of people who are more casual and generally buy cheaper VNs and those interested in VNs at higher prices would most likely try to look more into it before buying it and find out how horrible Moenovel is if they didn't already know. By selling it for low prices I think they are getting a lot more sales than they would otherwise. Ofc I hope their sale strategy doesn't end up working but I think the price is understandable.

Yup, definitely, but that's what you can say about their every major release and this one's still significantly below their usual pricing. It's even cheaper than the LoveKami spin-offs, so they either really cut corners with the localization process to make it worthwhile or are desperate to boost sale numbers after the relatively poor performance of Miagete (relatively, because it was a really shitty years for plotge in general and in perspective the numbers don't look that bad for MoeNovel - look at the poor Dal Segno with ~1000 copies sold on Steam...). 

Edited March 27, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[bakauchuujin]

What I can see on steamspy atm Dal Segno 3,012 ±1,776 and A Sky Full of Stars 5,750 ±2,454. However it is important to keep in mind that Dal Segno is roughly double the price and is also being sold on Mangagamers own store. Dal Segno released a bit before so it does have that advantage but I wouldn't really say A Sky Full of Stars did much better.

[Plk_Lesiak]

1 minute ago, bakauchuujin said:

What I can see on steamspy atm Dal Segno 3,012 ±1,776 and A Sky Full of Stars 5,750 ±2,454. However it is important to keep in mind that Dal Segno is roughly double the price and is also being sold on Mangagamers own store. Dal Segno released a bit before so it does have that advantage but I wouldn't really say A Sky Full of Stars did much better.

Oh, nice, that's actually a huge improvement from the previous numbers I've seen for -DS-. The point stays though, Miagete was probably a failure from Pulltop's perspective,  considering the sale numbers Moenovel got in the past, but wasn't a disaster considering how saturated and competetive the market is ATM. Getting the price even lower on release looks desperate on their part and I'm really curious whether that's basically a dumping scheme of sorts or they've just invested so little into this license that they can throw it away half-free SakuraGame style.

[bakauchuujin]

19 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

The point stays though, Miagete was probably a failure from Pulltop's perspective,  considering the sale numbers Moenovel got in the past, but wasn't a disaster considering how saturated and competetive the market is ATM.

Btw have you seen how things have sold before? I haven't really followed the number of sales before recently and I am not sure how many of the sales of different VNs are due to large discounts and humblebundles and how many are initial full price sales. I would say the success is based more on how much they managed to earn and not how many copies they sold, atleast as long as the previously sold copies doesn't help promote newer titles which I doubt they do for Moenovel.

[VirginSmasher]

5 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

Basically, ending spoilers in the achievements? I don't even...

It's MoeNovel. You couldn't have expected better from them.

[Infernoplex]

Even the very first 5 minutes of it look godawful.

 

[VirginSmasher]

13 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Even the very first 5 minutes of it look godawful.

 

That grammar and bland prose. 

[Infernoplex]

2 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

That grammar and bland prose. 

I am not going to comment on the prose since it's not my area of expertise (though I do agree it leaves much to be desired), but that text font and that color and that background don't match very well for any kind of acceptable reading experience. Granted, this is only from NVL, I am yet to see how it reads in ADV sections.

[VirginSmasher]

1 minute ago, Infernoplex said:

I am not going to comment on the prose since it's not my area of expertise (though I do agree it leaves much to be desired), but that text font and that color and that background don't match very well for any kind of acceptable reading experience. Granted, this is only from NVL, I am yet to see how it reads in ADV sections.

If Romeo is an apparent master of prose, this TL really doesn't reflect it at all. 

[Infernoplex]

1 minute ago, VirginSmasher said:

If Romeo is an apparent master of prose, this TL really doesn't reflect it at all. 

Ah, I am not surprised by that, it was to be expected. Moenovel isn't hiring competent enough people for the job.

[VirginSmasher]

10 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Ah, I am not surprised by that, it was to be expected. Moenovel isn't hiring competent enough people for the job.

You would have to hire one of the top tier translators to deliver somewhat for a TL of this VN.

[novurdim]

As the city sleeps, prose experts wake up.

[PiggiesGoMoo]

48 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Even the very first 5 minutes of it look godawful.

 

This VN caught my interest recently, and I've been comparing the different translations to decide on one to read. I looked at this exact same passage with all three translations (GHS and the other), and I have to say that I prefer GHS's.  Moenovel's version of the passage is less convoluted then the other two, but it seems to have lost some of its character.  Very generic, whereas the other two translations at least attempt to copy the original's style, which apparently is known for its unique prose.

Edited March 27, 2018 by PiggiesGoMoo

[Plk_Lesiak]

2 hours ago, bakauchuujin said:

Btw have you seen how things have sold before? I haven't really followed the number of sales before recently and I am not sure how many of the sales of different VNs are due to large discounts and humblebundles and how many are initial full price sales. I would say the success is based more on how much they managed to earn and not how many copies they sold, atleast as long as the previously sold copies doesn't help promote newer titles which I doubt they do for Moenovel.

Mangagamer is indeed a bit different because of many people buying directly from their shop, especially if they want 18+ version, but with Sekai and other, smaller publishers you can see that while in 2014 or 2015 most major releases could sell even over 50k copies, last year only games that came anywhere close were Ecchi trash (like Nekopara and that rip-off catgirl game), that don't necessarily rely on VN fans, the latest Higurashi title and maybe 1-2 others. The whole rest performed poorly (below 5k copies sold in first few months). 

OELVN market might be doing even worse BTW, apart from its own Ecchi trash like the Sakura games. 

[Infernoplex]

40 minutes ago, PiggiesGoMoo said:

This VN caught my interest recently, and I've been comparing the different translations to decide on one to read. I looked at this exact same passage with all three translations (GHS and the other), and I have to say that I prefer GHS's.  Moenovel's version of the passage is less convoluted then the other two, but it seems to have lost some of its character.  Very generic, whereas the other two translations at least attempt to copy the original's style, which apparently is known for its unique prose.

I actually read through this entire VN with Ixrec's translation and managed to enjoy it to a certain degree despite all of the translation flaws. Still, even with a better TL, I doubt my impression of Cross Channel would have been much better (I rated it 7/10 on VNDB). There are some things I just dislike about Cross Channel. I am not sure if it's only due to lack of the translation quality, but I simply couldn't enjoy some plot developments that seemed so out of the loop, and my impression of the VN was constantly going like "wow, this is so goood!", to "man, this is shit", and then again "aaaaah! Amazing!" and again "what garbage!"... Maybe it's the translation, maybe it's the VN itself... I dunno. I just hated some sections of it that made me very annoyed.

[Dreamysyu]

19 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

I actually read through this entire VN with Ixrec's translation and managed to enjoy it to a certain degree despite all of the translation flaws. Still, even with a better TL, I doubt my impression of Cross Channel would have been much better (I rated it 7/10 on VNDB). There are some things I just dislike about Cross Channel. I am not sure if it's only due to lack of the translation quality, but I simply couldn't enjoy some plot developments that seemed so out of the loop, and my impression of the VN was constantly going like "wow, this is so goood!", to "man, this is shit", and then again "aaaaah! Amazing!" and again "what garbage!"... Maybe it's the translation, maybe it's the VN itself... I dunno. I just hated some sections of it that made me very annoyed.

I personally have similar impression about Ixrec's version of CC, but my personal opinion on this is that you just can't judge about how good a VN is if you only read a bad translation. A lot of VNs only work due to details in how they are written. Why do you think we have so many awful anime adaptations? And a lot of people who watch them say exactly the same things about them. Grisaia, for example, would never work with a bad translation. Without proper translations for Yuuji's monologues the game would loose half of its charm, and I'm not even talking about the comedic scenes.

[Infernoplex]

2 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

I personally have similar impression about Ixrec's version of CC, but my personal opinion on this is that you just can't judge about how good a VN is if you only read a bad translation. A lot of VNs only work due to details in how they are written. Why do you think we have so many awful anime adaptations? And a lot of people who watch them say exactly the same things about them. Grisaia, for example, would never work with a bad translation. Without proper translations for Yuuji's monologues the game would loose half of its charm, and I'm not even talking about the comedic scenes.

Yeah, I know. A bad VN can be saved (somewhat) by a good translation (meaning captivating prose, well-written sentences) and vice-versa (good VN can be ruined by a bad translation). I know that. Take my earlier comment as my impression of the poorer version of Cross Channel. I am still interested in CC, and would have read it again now, had it got a much better translation, just so I can measure my impression of it with a better TL. Sadly, Moenovel's version certainly isn't the one that would improve my opinion of CC, so it's the one worth skipping. That being said, since you mentioned Grisaia... rare are translators of Koestl quality xD I think we can count all the really good translators on our fingers since there aren't that many of them.

[bakauchuujin]

1 hour ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Mangagamer is indeed a bit different because of many people buying directly from their shop, especially if they want 18+ version, but with Sekai and other, smaller publishers you can see that while in 2014 or 2015 most major releases could sell even over 50k copies, last year only games that came anywhere close were Ecchi trash (like Nekopara and that rip-off catgirl game), that don't necessarily rely on VN fans, the latest Higurashi title and maybe 1-2 others. The whole rest performed poorly (below 5k copies sold in first few months). 

OELVN market might be doing even worse BTW, apart from its own Ecchi trash like the Sakura games. 

To me it seems like it is very much related to the price, the only ones that cost more than 15$ that have sold 50k copies or more are Root Double, Sunrider: Liberation Day, Idol Magical Girl Chiru Chiru Michiru, RaidersSphere4th, CLANNAD and eden*. Among these titles a lot have also been on massive discounts and many have been in humble bundles. For instance RaidersSphere4th was in the Humble Hunie Sekai bundle for 1$ while root double and Liberation Day was in the 7.24$ bundle. 85,352 bundles were sold it seems just in this one bundle. There is also the Mangagamer and friends bundle that had eden* in the 1$ bundle and where 72,987 bundles were sold. I also know there are more humble bundles but those were the only ones I bothered to look up.

The VNs with low sales seem to either have a higher price or be an OELVN that isn't popular. Ofc I might be wrong but from what I can see the ones with higher prices does a lot worse than those with low prices, even though the ones with higher prices tend to be much longer and are often more known within the VN community.

Edited March 27, 2018 by bakauchuujin

[Mkilbride]

I read the fan translated version of this years ago and adored it. One of my favorites. I see it's so cheap, but I hear it's a really bad port, kind of like the new Muv Luv translation in the Steam version?

[Narcosis]

Holy frocking shit, what a failure.

I doubt even their legion of 12y old french girls can save them now.

[littleshogun]

Congratulation to the Pulltop for the release I suppose, and thanks for releasing this because basically this is a redundant release to me XDDD.

Well seeing that this time it's Pulltop who handle Cross Channel, I'm not surprised that their Cross Channel translation get some flak. Because after all, they couldn't even did Konosora in the past and they only slightly improved in Miagete translation (Yes slightly, because I'd hear that it's lack of QC). And yet Cross Channel here was one of hard to translate VNs (According to Moogy, so this might be subjective opinion), so basically it couldn't be translated easily by anyone else. I knew that we already have two translation available, but from what I'd hear it's apparently still below standard.

For my opinion here, while I think that anyone who think current Cross Channel translation is bad have some point, I also think that at least we can still understand the plot so is all good to me. Also apparently what part that was hard to translate was the prose, so I think that maybe Romeo Tanaka was tried to use the prose to cover the story writing. What I can say is that while prose may be important, the majority of the people who read Cross Channel would less likely care about that as long as they can read that in English. Besides from what I can read back at Ixrec's review, Cross Channel itself was have very vast polarization so we can't expect that this VNs would be good for everyone else even with the better translation. So in the end I say that to each other own if we talk about Cross Channel translation.

Edited March 28, 2018 by littleshogun

[Antera]

well as expected, it is total trainwrack