/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>4284915

>Meanwhile, the manga for Higurashi is published and sold at $10.99 per volume, with at least two volumes per chapter of Higurashi, for a total of $21.98 (~16 Euros or ~2000円) per chapter. This means that by the time one purchases the entire Higurashi manga, they will have spent $175.84 (~127 Euros or ~16,000円).

>Also, the anime version sells at a $30 list price per volume, so individually bought it will still run $360 (~259 Euros or ~32,700円） for both the Question and Answer arcs.

>Furthermore, our version of Higurashi contains considerably more text than the manga does while both the manga and the anime leave out all of the tips and many other details to the story which can be found only in our version of the game.

>implying I won't just pirate this shit

Then a later comment

>Also, the novel version of the series sold by Kodansha BOX in Japan, which contains only the text and very little illustration, is still 1365円 per volume with two volumes per chapter of Higurashi. This totals 21,840円 (~$240 or ~173 Euros) for the entire series of question and answer arcs.

Regardless of how the anime may have screwed up, trying to compare the production costs of an anime to the localization of a sound novel is bullshit.

Like I care,

I'm still getting it for free.

This just in - Selling doujin games written by one person but require an entire staff to translate is a shitty business model.

You may see it as ripoff pricing, but I'm sure they looked at the numbers Higurashi 1-4 sold, and realize they were going to lose money if they sold 5-8 for the same price. Of course, they'll probably lose even more money this way, so it's lose-lose.

>but the translators, editors, and proofreaders also must be paid for their work.
>proofreaders
sorry, I missed you here

>>4284935
>Selling doujin games written by one person but require an entire staff to translate is a shitty business model.
How many people worked on the French version?

Did they forget that they are offering purely digital products, not physical products, so price comparisons to anything physical is very stupid.

Also, in Japan you could have just purchased 2 episodes, 4 and 8, and got the full thing, so any argument based on the price of all 8 episodes is stupid

DEM HANDS

>>4284998
but people originally bought ep by ep, so their argument is fair at that point
but the prices are off, UMINEKO, longer and with better music than higurashi, ep6 was sold like for 1300円 more or less, so they're jus using the info they want

Why don't they just spend all that effort making their own VN

>>4284981
>How many people worked on the French version?
Good question; I would like to know the answer as well: how many people were on the french team?

>>4285068
The guy was working alone on it. True story.

>>4285029
Cauce creative talent is one factor you cannot ascertain.

>>4284911
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

Why is Satoko naked?

>>4285084
Oh, I heard of that.
Maybe I'll go get the french version myself.
I'm sure it will be of better quality.

They can whine all they want, no one's going to pay over a 100 fucking dollars for something a fan group could have done a better job of.

They're massively full of bullshit in both their analogies and their 'facts'.

In fact, I'm pretty damn sure they're making those prices up because I recall Higurashi originally being cheaper.

>MangaGamer

>>4285302

>>4285208
Pretty much. I'm sure it takes real PC games hundreds of hours of development time, if not in the thousands of hours for AAA titles, to finish. Yet you don't see them charging $150+. Just because they think their work is worth that much, doesn't mean anyone else does. But hey, just ask G-collections how well selling games nobody wanted for $50 a pop worked out for them. And they at least gave you a physical copy for that price.

>>4285372

Don't they still charge that much?

>>4285386
They went under and Jast/Jlist bought them out. They have admitted their English hgames division loses them money. So yeah, it's still not working out very well.

>>4285403

That's kind of sad.

>>4284981
A single person, pbsaffran.

>>4285021
>but people originally bought ep by ep, so their argument is fair at that point
People also got physical copies with every ep and they have collectors value. Digital products aren't worth shit.

>lets use the Euro because it will rape every american comsumer.

>>4284914
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎ ｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

>>4285640
>let's use the Euro because Mangagamer is based in a country that uses the Euro.

>>4285629
please read what I said after that
I said that people bought 4 times it, but I disapprove of what they are doing just a line after

>proofreaders

hilarious reaction image.jpg X 100

>>4284912
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎ ｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

>>4284912
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎ ｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

>>4284913
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎ ｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

>>4285640
Who cares about Americans?

>>4284913
Please stop constantly spamming and harassing www.ａｎｏｎ ｔａｌｋ.com. Thank you.

What this boils down to is the Managamer has no idea how to make money off of Higurashi, so they're charging absurd prices probably based on their microscopic sales projections. They're not entirely stupid: they know that very few will buy the game. But rather than think of a way to sell more copies, they're pushing all of the cost onto their fanbase, hoping they'll be fanatical enough to pay an absurd amount of money for a product that they regularly get for free.

Who cares? None of you were going to actually buy it. As a pirate I don't really care how much they charge as long as they end up releasing all the chapters.

>>4285372
The difference in market size for "real" PC games and English VNs is fucking immense though.

>>4285807
It doesn't matter. The product they're selling isn't worth the price they're charging. It's simple economics; All overcharging will do is cause it to fail even harder as even your most obsessive customers will think twice about buying it; and people who were iffy may be so disgusted they never look back. To correct solution would be to charge low prices on everything to build up your customer base, THEN start creeping up prices. I'd consider buying more hgames if they cost a maximum of $20. Maaaaybe $25-30 if they were real hgames with actual gameplay instead of visual novels. But $40+ for a game that might take 2-3 hours to finish? Idonthinksotim.jpg

>>4285953
>real hgames with actual gameplay instead of visual novels

>>4285953
>But $40+ for a game that might take 2-3 hours to finish?
Which Mangagamer game are you talking about?

Also $20 for an eroge is ridiculously low. You're asking them to sell a translated product for a fraction of what it costs in Japan?

>translation tax

Not that shit again .... manga-chan is completely right and the retard piratefags got told, however us awesome pirates don't care and don't baaw because we will get everything forn free anyways. Same goes for the retard running the edit project.

>>4285372
facepalm

Has MangaGamer ever addressed how shitty their translations are?

>>4285734

Why not? its how it works in Japan.

And here is the main issue, Japanese prices reflect the Japanese Market were that is acceptable but try doing the same outside Japan were pricing practices are different.

A example is F/SN that was around 8,000 yen ... would it sell in the USA at 80 USD?

>>4287511
More like 88.

>>4287511
>Why not? its how it works in Japan.
I'm confused, since you explain why not in the rest of your post. I agree, incidentally. FSN would never in a million years sell for $80. But then don't they pay more for vidya there than america in general?

As as non-pirate this saddens me


But I don't care about higurashi enough to pay for it, unless it came with a physical CD and shit. In which case I buy in a heartbeat.

Fucking digitat DL

>>4287524

I know it comes out at 88 on the converter but I am not exactly sure of F/SN cost (since HobbySearch stop selling adult material) and also FS/N was released years ago and so exchange rates would be different that of today.

But if I look at ErogeShop catalog what I see are priced at over $80, Sengoku Rance price is 8,925 Yen ($100) with Fate/Stay Night listed at costing 9,240 Yen ($105.00).

How are they releasing the answer arcs? They can't be actually splitting it up into four games, right? All of this $30 per game crap means that they'll charge $120 at once, right? Not that I'll be buying it.

I bought the question arcs so that MG would actually release Kai.

>>4287566

Some things cost a lot more that in the west and other things cost a lot less.

A example would be consoles that are sold at less that in the rest of the world but game prices are usually higher.

Also if your market is niche you have no choice but passing the cost to then or you are out of businesses, take Illusion that only puts out 2 or 3 games per year but they have bills to pay all year around.

Being small makes things worst as you cannot have the losses of a project being taken by the profits of other projects since you only have 1 or 2 projects running at the same time, the failure of a project can doom the company as it cannot further finance other projects.

So much for Mangagamer "doing good for the community", or whatever crap people were saying when the Question Arcs came out.

So are the answer arcs going to cumulative? I bet they won't be.

Honestly I'd still actually pay 80 euro or whatever for a <good> translation. Actually, I'd even settle for a proofread translation.

>>4287731

one a month

lets milk this shit out

So basically, the first one sold like shit, and their solution is to up the price and rip off the few fans fanatical enough to actually pay for their shitty error-ridden translations?

>>4287731
I believe they're getting a native English speaker to proofread Kai.

All I want is for Koihime Musou to be released translated. That's the only one I'm going to buy.

Well, I was just going to pirate it anyway, so I don't care that much. Maybe now the white knights won't be so obnoxious. (Though I'm willing to bet a good portion of them were just trolls who had pirated the shit themselves.)

>2100円 (~17 Euros or ~$23)

Do they realize the currency exchange rate from many years ago isn't the same as now? 2100 yen was more like $18 back then.

>The original version of Higurashi was sold at 2100円 (~17 Euros or ~$23) per chapter over the course of four years. By the time it was finished, customers had paid 16,800円 (~133 Euros or ~$185) for the series.

>We are offering the answer arcs for 19.95 Euros (~$27 or ~2500円)each, and the question arcs at 36.95 Euros (~$51 or ~4600円）for a total of 116.75 Euros (~$162 or ~14,700円).

All complaining ceases at this point.

What exactly is wrong with MangaGamer's translation? Like, does anyone have any screencaps of their translations?

Well too bad I'll just be downloading it anyway.

>>4287953
Quite a few typos, editor didn't have a firm grasp of English and consistently uses incorrect prepositions (or omits them entirely), a few awkward sentences here and there. It's not the worst translation I've read. /jp/ exaggerates how bad it is.

>>4287953
All of the problems could be fixed with better quality check, like typos. There's few awkward translations(like when Mion is asking stuff from Satoko before Zombie Tag game) but other than that it's fine.

>>4285807
>Who cares? None of you were going to actually buy it.

I don't have any kind of a categorical aversion to buying things. But I do demand high quality, a fair cost/value ratio and a physical copy. Non-physical things are worth maybe fifty cents to me.

>THEY'RE CHARGING TOO MUCH FOR SOMETHING I WAS NEVER GOING TO BUY

ITT hypocritical whining

Why do you people keep assuming that we never buy things? I spend all my fucking money buying things.

>>4288310
>Things people would buy if they weren't ridiculously overpriced.

"I would buy this if the translation were good, and the price wasn't so damn high, and there were a physical copy. MG did all of those wrong."

/jp/ consensus?

I didn't complain about the price of the question arcs because I felt it was fair, but this really does seem too much.
I'm sure they did sell for more when they first came out in japan, but that was then and this is now where both question and answer arcs are available at a much lower price.

Even if you accept their reasoning, which I'll admit has truth to it, $120 or whatever for all four answer arcs seems expensive.

I feel for mangagamer, I really do, but I expect the answer arcs to be pirated pretty hard.

Matsuribayashi-hen costs 2100円
http://www.melonbooks.com/item/goods/id_goods/IT0000111417

That's 16.6 euros ... for 4 arcs.
So basically, we are paying 64 euros more for a translation, but without the damn CD, a frigging long time for the soft to be completely released (don't tell me 4 months is anything quick for something as old as Higurashi), but also some content that are likely to be removed.

This is frigging ridiculous, plain and simple.
And like anon mentioned, it is damn stupid that they are comparing with Japanese original release (1 arc at a time) without having the bloody context at hand (cost was most likely different at that period, let alone I'm not even sure if it was indeed 2100 yens...)

>>4288361
No.

Also I'm pretty glad MG doesn't do physical copies because if they did they wouldn't be able to release as many games as they do now, and they'd be mostly nukige. So it'd be like JAST more or less.

>>4290365
>don't tell me 4 months is anything quick for something as old as Higurashi
What does that have to do with anything? It's not like MG has been translating the games since they first came out.

>>4288361
There hasn't been a MG title I have wanted so far.

>>4290402
except they announced the translation back in june/july 09 I reckon (or even earlier than that perhaps). And I doubt any company would start the translation only after they announced that, otherwise they are just morons.

Of course, if you compare them with the twins, they are vastly faster, but essentially, they are pretty much average, borderline slow.

Mangagamer failed at economics.

As anyone can tell you, you cannot say "Product X cost Y in this country, therefore we can make it cost Y in another country".

Heres an example. Go to Mexico and buy a loaf of bread. How much does it cost?

Now go to the UK and buy a loaf of bread. How much does it cost?

Using this logic, the mexican bakeries can sell at UK prices and people will still buy.

DEM HANDS