The whole thing about Nintendo is, they cannot 'ride with' somebody who doesn't understand their philosophies on things. However, after publishing a few of Cing's games, I think Nintendo is fully aware of what the team can do. I'm guessing with $2.5m (oh so small really) the team is made up of about 50 people?

I mean sales for Super Smash Brothers Brawl could pay off their debt in three weeks, and it has been out for 2 years. It isn't like Nintendo would be losing that much and they have oh so much to gain. It is highly unlikely Ninty would do anything about it, but maybe if someone made noise about it they would look at it.

I bet Ninty doesn't even really know about this right now.

Man, this really sucks.....

I LOVED Little Kings Story....
One of the best Wii games out there.

You sir... you have no soul.

Management problems is what would put Nintendo off from buying them. They're very selective about buying outright

Its too bad. Part of the reason Little King's Story didn't turn out as well as it could have is because of their limited production budget. And part of the reason they went bankrupt is because they had no money for advertising.

Quite sad, as they were one of the few companies willing to put out a honest effort on the Wii. But just didn't have the production budget of a major company.

I think I can guess what killed Cing (aside from supposed delays).

Last Window (DS) sold only 40k or so after 7 weeks in Japan while Hotel Dusk sold about 170k+ during that same period in Japan.

Again (DS) was a total bomb in Japan. 1k sales week 1. Worse than Last Rebellion levels of fail sales-wise

And Little King's Story (Wii) might have lost them some money. Depends on their development costs. It sold 170k worldwide. It particularly bombed in Japan (20k... ouch). That's what you get for getting Marvelous Entertainment to publish your work. I like Marvelous and the quirky games they publish. They have some really bizarre weird games (Suda51 games immediately come to mind. And Deadly Premonition has become a hit with the 360 crowd. They've expanded their audience beyond the DS and Wii) and they also have their niche Japanese-oriented stuff (Muramasa, Rune Factory, etc.) But Marvelous doesn't know shit about marketing and getting your game out there. And they've been losing lots of money. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that Little King's Story sold poorly. Especially when there is a lot of oversaturation of niche Japanese games on the Wii.

Another Code: R (Wii) only sold 30k in Japan, much less than Trace Memory (DS)'s 120k. And Nintendo didn't do the sequel any favors by choosing not to localize it to the North American market. Trace Memory sold a bit more in NA than it did in Japan so that boggles my mind.

The sad thing is, The Little King's Story is often referred to as a bomb but it was actually Cing's most successful game in the last year.

Cing was part of the point-and-click adventure resurgence that happened on the DS and Little King's Story had it's base and was critically acclaimed so it sucks they are gonna fold.

If Nintendo of America chooses not to localize Last Window (I wouldn't put it past them. They ignored Another Code: R), Again (DS) may very well be the last english-language Cing game we get. It's coming out March 30th. So go play it. That might be the last we see of Cing. I'll be checking that one out. Hopefully NoA does localize Last Window though.

With Marvelous and NIS on the ropes and Cing going down for the count, you have to really wonder about the viability of producing niche games in Japan no matter what platform you are on. Even if money weren't a consideration (though obviously it IS a consideration), there's only so much time gamers have to devote to gaming. And when you flood the market with a bunch of niche games, you're gonna get lost in the shuffle. A bunch of these small Japanese studios can't survive. That's just the reality. In the west alone, it seems like there's a niche Japanese DS game (often more than 1) being released every bloody week. How are these games supposed to sell? Especially in Japan where the oversaturation is even more severe and the market pales in comparison to the west?

Sadly, I'm not surprised. Sucks though. =/

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's not surprising in the least but

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This sucks. :(

If they were working on the HD consoles, they'd be gone sooner. Nobody said that you can't flop on Wii, or that you can't make losses. But just look at how many under-performing games they managed to make before they went under:

Taken from Jarrod's post:

• [DS] Monster Rancher DS (Tecmo) 2007, 50K lifetime
• [DS] Monster Rancher 2 (Tecmo) 2008, (We don't even have it in the database)
• [Wii] Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memeories (Nintendo) 2009, 30K lifetime
• [Wii] Little King's Story (Marvelous) 2009, 170K lifetime
• [DS] Again (Tecmo) 2009 As someone posted, 1k week one.
• [DS] Last Window: Midnight Promise (Nintendo) 2010, 40K so far.

It only took one flop to kill Factor 5.

I know people won't like me for saying this, but they weren't good developers if they weren't able to make games people wanted, at least in the last few years. The games they were making were not intentionally 'niche', Little King's Story in particular was an attempt to appeal to the mainstream. Financial issues may have caused trouble for Little King's Story's development, as the developer said, but I think what really hurt that was some bad design decisions.