Well it happened. Hooray!

Quote:The visual novel distributor MangaGamer.com has announced on Monday that it will release minori's ef adult interactive novel software with authorized English translations by the fan group No Name Losers (NNL). The ef-The First Tale and ef-The Latter Tale titles will be the first ones to be released under the partnership that covers minori's software library.

The two ef titles feature computer graphics by Da Capo illustrator Naru Nanao and animation by 5 Centimeters Per Second director Makoto Shinkai. They inspired the ef - a tale of memories television anime series (pictured at right) and its sequel ef - a tale of melodies. Other software by minori have also inspired the Haru no Ashioto The Movie: Ourin Dakkan video anime project and the Wind a breath of heart anime franchise.

The minori software studio had sent a cease-and-desist notice to NNL for the fan group's earlier unauthorized translations on July 12. However, minori had added a postscript to the letter to express its willingness to discuss with NNL an official license for the English-speaking market. The studio then announced that it started "preliminary discussions" with NNL two days later.

NNL listed the number of changes that will be made to the authorized release of the ef software titles, including improved and more consistent translations, changed terminology "to comply with Western laws," and fixes for technical issues.

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest...en-sofware

http://nnl1.com/
http://overseas.minori.ph/

http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2010/09/...r-forever/

Quote:I believe that everyone prays to God at least once in their lives. Even if they do not believe that he exists, the one day that they pray will inevitably arrive. All human beings will pray for something. They will wish to pursue it. They will want to reach out and take hold of it. It is something imagined from our affinities and our emotions. Of that much I am certain.

(This post was last modified: 27/09/2010 05:56 AM by S7*.)

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(This post was last modified: 27/09/2010 08:39 AM by 1-R.)

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(27/09/2010 08:39 AM)1-R Wrote:  soo epic~~

I'd love to try this out when released.

or after i finish the anime...or a translation....

You know about 1/2 a year back... something got posted... somewhere here...

Anyway, it's not there any more.

(28/09/2010 05:28 AM)SkyDX Wrote:  Wow that's awesome YAY!^^

The only thing that worries me a bit:

Senseito7 Wrote:changed terminology "to comply with Western laws,"

Sounds a bit fishy >.>

Yeah it does :[

Anyway, I think ef will probably bomb, because, well, there's already a "free" fan translation out there, and MangaGamer being MangaGamer, probably wouldn't even offer a boxed product (only download versions).  So your pretty much paying for something that's almost exactly the same as what you most likely already have on your HDD, from a year ago (same translations too).

MangerGamer's sort of in a shitty position, because due to their crappy sales counts, offering boxed versions (much more costly to manufacture and deliver than download versions) would cut into their profit margin and reduce what little profit they are currently scraping together (if it's not a loss).  While on the other hand, not offering boxed versions hurts their sales count, for obvious reasons.

So yeah, profit margin per sale vs total sale count.  I personally think they'll do better with boxed versions (from gut feeling, I have 0 sources of market research data to back that up).  But either way, it's a risky move, and companies don't generally like risk.

And eroge is hard to sell, because firstly, noone knows about this stuff.  Secondly, the sort of people who know about and want this stuff are mostly teens and young adults (early to mid 20's).  Kids aren't going to go to their parents and go "please buy me this h-game", and young adults probably aren't loaded with money either (hi, poor uni students like me).  More precisely, the majority of the customer base are probably anime fans who spend a lot of time on the internet (how else do they find out about eroges?).  That absolutely doesn't help because anime fans are already very used to pirating (hi fansubs) and familiarity with the internet is positively correlated with level of piracy.

I don't think your reasoning quite stacks up.  There's probably a huge market for this type of stuff in Japan, which would explain how large the hentai industry over there is.  If it's hard to profit, then there won't be many of it.
As for the English translation, it's probably difficult to get it in stores, so maybe it'll mostly be download.  Sales wise, it may be difficult to judge at this point, but if there's any correlation with the Japanese market, it could work.
Young adults may not make the most money, but they generally don't have many costs, which kinda balances things out.  Especially if you're working.
Generally, these types of things are fairly price inelastic (like drugs) so you can make a fair bit of profit per sale.

(This post was last modified: 30/09/2010 08:55 PM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

(30/09/2010 08:51 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I don't think your reasoning quite stacks up.  There's probably a huge market for this type of stuff in Japan, which would explain how large the hentai industry over there is.  If it's hard to profit, then there won't be many of it.
Generally, these types of things are fairly price inelastic (like drugs) so you can make a fair bit of profit per sale.

In Japan, yeah, this stuff does sell.  Usually around the 10,000-100,000 range, though the big titles can go over that.  Compare to video games which is usually in like a 100,000 to 1,000,000 range, with the big titles capable of getting multiple million.  But then again, eroge is also has much much lower production costs than your typical FPS shooter.

Outside Japan, MangaGamer doubts they can even get 2000 sales.

(This post was last modified: 30/09/2010 09:19 PM by Assassinator.)

(30/09/2010 09:03 PM)Assassinator Wrote:  Outside Japan, MangaGamer doubts they can even get 2000 sales.

A translation is relatively even less expensive.  If you can sell 2000 copies and the cost of translation is less than the revenue gained, you're still profiting.
I say the article is hinting at the risk of the project, not really lack of expectation, though.