If doujin games can do well on Steam...

[Varion]

I know we've had this conversation before, but we've got even more material to have it now!

So as I'm sure a few people have heard, some guys on SomethingAwful forums thought it'd be fun to get permission to localise a doujin game about running an item shop called Recettear - and it's actually selling really well just by word of mouth. So if anyone was wondering if there's a market on Steam for relatively niche Japanese titles, it seems like there is. There's already been mumblings about people trying this for other doujin titles as well.

So that leads me on to the obvious question - why not try this for Falcom titles? While this goes for other titles like Xanadu Next as well, I'm more specifically talking about the ones XSEED is licensing anyway - Felghana, Ys I&II, the Sora no Kiseki games, etc. The hard work in those is the translation, and you're doing that for the PSP versions already. Releasing the PC ones would require relatively minimal work and rake in a fair bit more money, while building up the fanbase (through people trying the game through sales or whatever) and making everything else sell better. And the games can keep on selling long after you stop printing new PSP copies. Then once the market's established with those, perhaps then it'd be worthwhile to try and get untranslated unported titles released (We can have wyrdy translated Xanadu Next again! Hurrah!).

But yeah, it just seems like such a logical option to me. Comparatively minimal extra work and cost for a larger potential audience. Anyone else got any other good arguments so we can stick them in a virtual envelope and beat XSEED with it?

[Varion]

Sept 12, 2010 20:14:25 GMT -5 Wyrdwad said:

I've been barking up that tree since I got hired. It's not out of the question, definitely, but it's probably not in our immediate future, either.

I'll keep at 'em, though.

-Tom

This is why I love you man.

[Disgaeamad]

Nothing better than having our own personal Wyrdy to hear our opinions!

[Ascended Mermaid]

Now this is a guy we can truly look up to.

[Varion]

Sept 12, 2010 20:25:19 GMT -5 Disgaeamad said:

Nothing better than having our own personal Wyrdy to hear our opinions!

Yeah, I can say "Oh I asked the XSEED translator" as if I have some super industry connections or something, when in reality I just posted it on a forum and bang, there he was.

Feels good man.

[RyuKisargi]

Both are good, but Steam has a much more diverse library.

Plus Falcom wouldn't have to worry much about piracy.

[Adol.Christin]

Sept 12, 2010 22:35:20 GMT -5 omgfloofy said:

Actually, I think Steam is fantastic. I've even installed it on another computer and it just allowed me to reinstall my purchased games on that new machine all in the background overnight.

I love the overlay system so that I can use the web browser and chat system in-game while playing some games (Borderlands and Left 4 Dead, specifically) in full screen mode. (I don't like playing shooters outside of full screen, personally.)

Nevertheless, Wyrdwad's right. And I've considered it myself as well with game company ideas- that would be that if you release a game via Steam, you save on the costs of printing boxes, CDs, booklets, labels and casing everything. If you were to want to go sell 25,000 copies, you still had to have each of these things. If the instruction manual *alone* cost you $5 each to print (low price there, really- but I'm not sure of the bulk pricing), you already have $125,000 for overhead.

One site I found for bulk CD allows you to buy cartons at $26 each in bulk. A carton contains 100 DVD cases. That's $2600 added to your overhead.

Now, just looking at these, and to take a licensing cost of around $100,000 (which is actually, by the way, very low for a game license fee)... this comes up to a total of $231,500. No labels, of course. But that's okay. If you want to sell the game for $35/each... You'd break even at around 6615 copies. Not this is without everything else. Without warehouse costs, wages for employees aren't covered, shipping to distributors, CD/DVDs aren't purchased, and aren't labeled.

If you're wanting to take a risk on a game you don't KNOW will succeed?

I'd say steam cuts out a TON of the overhead (ie. labeling, printing, distributing) and makes it a much easier venture to take.

your licencing costs are way to low, guess you can tripple that amount. cd's cost almost nothing to print in bulk. it's the boxes and stuff that does it.

you forgot shipping to retailers/dirstributors, marketing.

[Kimimi]

I'm one of these dinosaurs that still prefers to buy things in boxes, but if my choices were Falcom translations on Steam or none at all I know which one I'd go for

[Adol.Christin]

I would like to see Falcom PC games in Steam, just so to spread the word/love that is Falcom

But I prefer a physical copy of the game over digital. Another dinosaur talking here

[Varion]

Hey, we're not dinosaurs, we're just proud of our collections! Or at least that's how I am. I love my shelves full of game boxes on display, and no virtual games collection will ever match that. So I don't have Steam installed.

But of course in this case that's just not an option (no retail store is going to carry niche PC games, and even if they didn't they wouldn't sell well), so take what we can get. I'd rather have a download PC version than a retail PSP version, I know that much.

[Adol.Christin]

but isn't this an outdated discussion since Falcom stopped making PC games?

[Varion]

Sept 13, 2010 7:10:40 GMT -5 Adol.Christin said:

but isn't this an outdated discussion since Falcom stopped making PC games?

...No? They've still left an entire library of games that've never been released in English on the PC. No one's trying to convince Falcom to get back onto PC development on Steam, that's not the issue here.

[wheels]

I think most people prefer physical product, but I'd take Falcom games in English on steam over not having them at all

[schlagwerk]

Funny how this topic pops up when just this weekend I found Recetear on Steam. I just logged in to IM a friend and there was a banner for it. With a comment of "well this looks more animu than most of Steam's offerings" I grabbed the demo of it to see how it was. I haven't gotten around to playing it yet

[Mutagene]

I played Recettear back in '08, I believe, and it was surprisingly good. I think most people here would enjoy it; it's a fun action RPG, even if it does focus very heavily on the capitalism aspect.

[Disgaeamad]

Capitalism, ho!

Truly the manly way to solve one's problems.

[tancients]

I tried the demo, I think the localization is fairly decent, though there are some lapses in presentation I'd have done differently, but I suppose thats how things go.

[regalsin]

I opt out for downaloding games as well, but why not just down and buy the thing from the authors website?

Steam and all of these downlaod services is like the dumb way of actually buying something.

About the game where you play as a shop keeper (reminds me of the shop keeper from another game ), there is like three other games that comes to mind. Let me give you a hint.

1. Fatty Fat boom Balaty
2. That Simpsons character
3. Darn sarnit, they shot my cans.

If anybody cares to guess those games. The shop keeper game is unoriginal but a real nice thing. Also why not make a Saturn release for crying out loud, or a PC engine release dammit. I would order a new PC engine game dammit.

[Red Hairdo]

There was a somewhat new PCEngine game, by the way. Wasn't SkyeWelse involved with it, even? xD

There was a thread about it in here, too.

[cronorei]

You also have to remember, Recettear was an indie game in both Japan and America. and EasyGameStation is a very easy going company as well. The licensing deal CF struck with them was something like "pay a few thousand now, ESG gets 50%+ of the sales from all copies sold" Far, far cheaper than any regular licensing fee. Then you have to consider Steam's own fees, and the other networks they got the game added to. At the end of the day CF needed to sell around 30k copies for all 3 of the men involved to actually make a decent amount of money. Which they did, and was great for ESG by a massive amount, but most indie games aren't going to sell that much. A good amount of the sales were from SA directly and /v/.

Keep in mind that's them requiring 30k sales to make more than a few hundred dollars each on a 3 man team while paying almost nothing in licensing fees. As I recall Falcom has some solid rate of $500,000 per game for licensing. Even ignoring the amount taking out by all participating parties, selling a Ys game for $30 on steam would have to sell far far more copies then an average Japanese game would on Steam. Even CF wasn't really expecting to break 10k.

So while it would be awesome, it's not terribly likely to happen