Idea Factory Japan translating Otome games?!

[chelxoxo]

Read and rejoice, fellow otakus~ Idea Factory Japan may be bringing you your favourite Otome games in English at some point in the distant future! -edit- or at least I hope they are. I read the post wrong. It was quite a while ago. Argh, I should stop posting past my bedtime. :S >.> Anyway, here's the link...

http://www.my-neoromance.com/index.php? ... iew&id=120

>> For those that can read Japanese, the link for the IFJ is also on that page~ I'm not sure what it says, though. >.<

Apparently Idea Factory Japan want to release a/some game(s) in English, so they're currently reviewing how popular they might be~ There's a poll on the Neo site (see the link provided in the page above for details) on what kind of games we want to see. Hopefully it's still going through...

[Ren]

Already voted. :P

In fact, this had been already been mentioned in another thread some time ago.

[LinWest]

I had no idea! Awesome!

Although, wow that was some time ago (2008?).... hopefully they're still going through with it. :/

[chelxoxo]

*feels dumb*

Ah. ._. Ok. I think it has become blantantly obvious when I am only semi-conscious when I post, because I just saw '10th July' on that post, and not the 2008 part. X_x . *hides under rock*

[gekiganwing]

Yeah, it has been two years since I heard about Idea Factory's plan... and there has been neither good nor bad news.

The latest Idea Factory game in English is Trinity Universe, an RPG with characters from multiple series, published by NISA on PS3. I looked over the list of titles on GameFAQs ( http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/42709.html ). I think that if Idea Factory is still willing to publish one of its visual novels or romance games in English, it *might* have success by selling PSP titles via Playstation Store. Why? Because there's not much life left in the DS, much less the PS2. And to make profit on the 360, companies have to sell squillions.

Anyway, I'd recommend writing a persuasive email to the Idea Factory staff. If you need ideas on how to persuade companies into action, read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

[sayuri]

I hope they still translate the PS2 games and sell them on the PS3 network. I'm not sure they sell PS2 games. I feel like they do but I'm not sure. Either way without any PS2 playback capability it will be coming soon (I hope).

[papillon]

it *might* have success by selling PSP titles via Playstation Store. Why? Because there's not much life left in the DS

... haven't DS sales been vastly outstripping the PSP for years and years?

Admittedly the DS has replacement hardware on the horizon, so the console lifespan is a bit more limited, but there's a huge install base out there and as the PS2 itself demonstrates, people don't always abandon the older platform quickly. Also, if they're going to sell otome games, the DS is generally believed to have a much larger female userbase than other consoles.

[LVUER]

Although NDS replacement is near, since N3DS will have full backward compability (could play NDS game), there's no reason for NDS games to immediately dies. At least for several years after N3DS launched, NDS could still have some games for it.

[GLACIER]

Yeah, it has been two years since I heard about Idea Factory's plan... and there has been neither good nor bad news.

It's probably safe to say that nothing is happening on that front.

The latest Idea Factory game in English is Trinity Universe, an RPG with characters from multiple series, published by NISA on PS3. I looked over the list of titles on GameFAQs ( http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/42709.html ). I think that if Idea Factory is still willing to publish one of its visual novels or romance games in English, it *might* have success by selling PSP titles via Playstation Store. Why? Because there's not much life left in the DS, much less the PS2. And to make profit on the 360, companies have to sell squillions.

Anyway, I'd recommend writing a persuasive email to the Idea Factory staff. If you need ideas on how to persuade companies into action, read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Idea Factory doesn't self-publish outside of Japan, so it might be a good idea to contact other companies (NISA is their main partner, although they've also published through Aksys, Ignition, and O3). Even if Idea Factory were interested, it's futile if publishing companies aren't interested.

[CandyStar]

... haven't DS sales been vastly outstripping the PSP for years and years?

Well... it seems to me (I know nothing, so I'm probably wrong) that practically 90% of their games are my little pony, dora the explorer, those god awful "I wanna be a <insert stereotypical female role> when I grow up!" games, etc. soooo they may have higher sales, but their games are all for little kids -___-

-Jesse

[lepapillonrouge]

But there's also Phoenix Wright, Pokemon, Professor Layton, Mario Kart, Harvest Moon, ...that one KH game -shot by fans-, that are popular with ...older people. At least teenagers. ...that helps too. >D

Ah, whatever. Ren'py exists so that English speaking people can make moar otome for the fangirls. Mwhahaha.
(And moar galge for the fanboys.)

[papillon]

those god awful "I wanna be a <insert stereotypical female role> when I grow up!" games

The weirdest thing about those is that some of them are Japanese games ported over and not nearly that bad*, and some are downright abysmal, and there's no way to tell which is which from the marketing.

It *really bugs me* that a lot of gaming sites turn up their noses at anything that looks the slightest bit "girly" and refuse to review it, making it that much more difficult for anyone who is girly and a *potential* gamer to be able to be exposed to video games that don't suck. Not to mention that by automatically decreeing that anything cutesy MUST be crap and sneering about it, they drive away a lot of people who feel insulted by the attitude.

(Which is not to say that Japanese games are automatically better, just that from what research I *have* done on the subject, the ones I know about of the series that are halfway playable are Japanese ports, and iirc the ones considered the absolutely worst were created by the ubisoft brazil studio.)

[Jake]

Well... it seems to me (I know nothing, so I'm probably wrong) that practically 90% of their games are my little pony, dora the explorer, those god awful "I wanna be a <insert stereotypical female role> when I grow up!" games, etc. soooo they may have higher sales, but their games are all for little kids -___-

Leaving aside that - as others have mentioned - there are actually a lot of really good girl-friendly/non-masculine titles for the DS already, leaving aside decent totally-gender-neutral stuff (I'm really enjoying Picross 3D myself, at the moment) - there's two other things to consider:

- The fact that there is a lot of crap on the system doesn't seem to have put a lot of females of various ages off getting the system, so they're still a potential market... and the fact that there's a lot of crap surely just means that they'd appreciate good titles even more?

- There was a hell of a lot of crap produced for the PS2, as well; there's a lot of crap produced for most consoles. It's just that when the volume of titles is increased overall, the volume of crap is increased as well. So if the DS has ten times the titles of the PSP or the 360, it's likely to have ten times the crap as well. There's a lot of crap for the Wii, as well, but there's also some seriously good titles between that.

[gekiganwing]

I am seriously thinking about translating and releasing our otome games to for some time now.

MikeWatson, it looks like your site features a number of browser games for young fans, all written in English. If you intend to translate them into other languages (especially if you have consent from the copyright holders), go ahead. But unless I seriously misunderstood your site or your intentions, make sure to call your games with an accurate term such as "games for kids."

[papillon]

I am seriously thinking about translating and releasing our otome games to for some time now.

MikeWatson, it looks like your site features a number of browser games for young fans, all written in English. If you intend to translate them into other languages (especially if you have consent from the copyright holders), go ahead. But unless I seriously misunderstood your site or your intentions, make sure to call your games with an accurate term such as "games for kids."

You need more training in recognising spambots.