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Forums - Nintendo - NIS comments about pricing and JRPGs saturation

Kenryoku_Maxis on 23 November 2009
Kasz216 said:
Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Kasz216 said:
outlawauron said:
I love how the conclusion that this is the PS3's fault and it's being blamed on the DS is absolutely hilarious.

It should be noted though that the guy saying this is just a script editor at NIS America.  Which basically means he works at a glorfied translation house.

No offense to his job, but being a script writer to a game studio is worse than being one for an American Anime Distributor.  They expect those guys to churn out a product as fast as possible and don't care about quality or accuracy.  ESPECIALLY for stuff like JRPGs and ESPECIALLY not for the type of niche games NIS puts out.  Essentially, his job is as you hinted at, a glorified Anime subber.

If companies like Namco and SquareEnix don't care about their localizations, NIS sure isn't going to add to their production time or cost and worry about it.  Though sometimes companies like Atlus and XSEED sometimes throw on some extras to their localizations like Japanese voices and subtitles.

Well i disagree about that.

I mean NIS basically relies on their translation.

NIS gameplay isn't really going to set your world on fire outside of the ability to level grind to ridiculious levels.

Without the humor their games have your left with a middle of the road RPG at best.

Yes, but the translators didn't invent the characters or the humor in the first place.  And throwing a few 'doods' into the translation isn't exactly a sign of working that hard.  In fact, its rather annoying that translators always feel they need to slang up or alter characters in JRPGs.  Out of all the genres in gaming, JRPGs have some of the most annoying and incomprehensible dialogue now adays, putting tons of apostrophes, editing characters into different 'accents' or just throwing weird slang words into the middle of sentences out of place.  In a genre which FOCUSES on dialogue in text for many of its games.

Its as if translators get bored and just feel they need to change stuff at random.



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Zlejedi on 23 November 2009
loves2splooge said:
Is NIS making more money in the retail HD market though? Disgaea 3 cost a lot more to develop than their DS games and it had similarly poor sales (0.11m in Americas, 0.11m in Japan). I can't imagine that 220,000 sales is enough to cover a HD-level budget. If NIS wants to consider making low-budget games for PSN/XBLA, that's one thing. Those games are much cheaper to make than $60 retail releases. If NIS can't make much money on the DS and considering the expense of developing for either of the HD twins, you have to wonder about their financial prospects in the gaming industry (as well as the financial prospects for other small Japanese publishers). NIS is a privately-held corporation though so we don't know what's going on with them financially.

Sorry but the only HD part of Disgaea 3 is resolution it outputs on the TV.

Everything else is upgraded PS2 visuals.

 

Also D3 has DLC that costs more than orginal retail price of the game.



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Lostplanet22 on 23 November 2009

Disgaea 3 also has some DLC. Profits of the game aren't just coming from the sales of the game but also from the DLC. Kind of annoys me that in discussions 'Made game X profit with this sales?' no one can include DLC sales' Not that Disgaea 3 would have monster sales with his DLC though.



 

noname2200 on 23 November 2009
Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Kasz216 said:
Kenryoku_Maxis said:

And they're blaming the DS for their trying to focus on the PS3.

Gotta love these third parties.  Out of ALL the consoles to be complaining about, the DS....Not even the Wii, but the DS.  Tha'd be like a company coming out and complaining about the PS2 last gen because their ventures on the XBOX didn't pan out as they hoped.

I can understand why they're frustrated though.  They have the same small group of people buying all their games and that group is more or less "Spread to the wind."


They have no clue where it's gone.  They started with the PS3 hoping it would be them but then the PS3 stalled.

 

Hence all the ports after Disgaea 3.  I think they're just hoping the ports would be good testers for other systems so they could find where their base has gone.

And that's what I'm saying.  They're blaming other companies for 'saturating the market' when they're part of the problem, making a bunch of ports of 10 year old games.  Their comments about Nintendo having too high of rolayty costs just seems like an excuse because they couldn't cover their losses for making a bunch of ports that didn't sell as well as they wanted to cover their lackluster PS3 venture.

I have no idea why you folks are talking like NIS is bitter against the DS, or why people keep bringing up the games they've brought to it. Let's look at the interview one more time:

It opens with "Publishers are saying this, eh?" and at no point does NIS ever say "We have poor sales, and we blame DS." They're simply taking the statement that they're given, and trying to come up with reasons why others feel that way. Shoot, the second paragraph starts with "If publishers are saying this" and continues with "it's probably due to..." Not once is NIS saying "this is what we have to say about that!" They're just trying to give reasons why Siliconera's sentence may be true.

 

 

To repeat: NIS is NOT lamenting their profits, it is NOT necessarily agreeing that RPG publishers are struggling, and it is definitely NOT blaming the DS.



Kasz216 on 23 November 2009
noname2200 said:
Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Kasz216 said:
Kenryoku_Maxis said:

And they're blaming the DS for their trying to focus on the PS3.

Gotta love these third parties.  Out of ALL the consoles to be complaining about, the DS....Not even the Wii, but the DS.  Tha'd be like a company coming out and complaining about the PS2 last gen because their ventures on the XBOX didn't pan out as they hoped.

I can understand why they're frustrated though.  They have the same small group of people buying all their games and that group is more or less "Spread to the wind."


They have no clue where it's gone.  They started with the PS3 hoping it would be them but then the PS3 stalled.

 

Hence all the ports after Disgaea 3.  I think they're just hoping the ports would be good testers for other systems so they could find where their base has gone.

And that's what I'm saying.  They're blaming other companies for 'saturating the market' when they're part of the problem, making a bunch of ports of 10 year old games.  Their comments about Nintendo having too high of rolayty costs just seems like an excuse because they couldn't cover their losses for making a bunch of ports that didn't sell as well as they wanted to cover their lackluster PS3 venture.

I have no idea why you folks are talking like NIS is bitter against the DS, or why people keep bringing up the games they've brought to it. Let's look at the interview one more time:

It opens with "Publishers are saying this, eh?" and at no point does NIS ever say "We have poor sales, and we blame DS." They're simply taking the statement that they're given, and trying to come up with reasons why others feel that way. Shoot, the second paragraph starts with "If publishers are saying this" and continues with "it's probably due to..." Not once is NIS saying "this is what we have to say about that!" They're just trying to give reasons why Siliconera's sentence may be true.

 

 

To repeat: NIS is NOT lamenting their profits, it is NOT necessarily agreeing that RPG publishers are struggling, and it is definitely NOT blaming the DS.

I'm just talking generally about why NIS has to be a bit stressed.

They just can't seem to expand their audience no matter who or where they put their product.

It's a really interesting case study that's easy to follow because they're sales are traditionally so small yet consistant.



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noname2200 on 23 November 2009
Kasz216 said:

I'm just talking generally about why NIS has to be a bit stressed.

They just can't seem to expand their audience no matter who or where they put their product.

It's a really interesting case study that's easy to follow because they're sales are traditionally so small yet consistant.

True, although I'm not convinced that they ARE stressed, to be honest. I can't remember reading any direct evidence to that effect, and to be honest I interpret the fact that they're eschewing the DS in favor of the PS3 as a sign of strength rather than weakness: damn near every small game company has treated the DS as their lifeboat this generation, and this is doubly true for Japanese developers. The stated reason is that the dev costs are small and the userbase is huge and proven.

And yet even after five years, NIS is pretty much ignoring the platform. I have to think there's a good reason for that. They apparently feel that they don't need to focus on the DS to survive (in contrast to their rivals), and they surmise here that avoiding the "red ocean" (to misuse a term) that is the DS is probably a better long-term move.

You're right though that they're pretty stagnant. I wonder how much longer they can keep their head above water...?



SaviorX on 23 November 2009

Blame Nintendo. Isn't the firsttime I heard to do that before.

As for NIS, they need to develop new ideas, or else they will be like Koei, Dynasty Warriors 45.



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Kasz216 on 23 November 2009
SaviorX said:
Blame Nintendo. Isn't the firsttime I heard to do that before.

As for NIS, they need to develop new ideas, or else they will be like Koei, Dynasty Warriors 45.

The funny thing is.


Dynasty Warriors IS there new Idea.  Or rather was.

Before then they only made Strategy War games... and tons of them.

 

DW broke them out of said niche.

So much so they've yet to make ROTK 12.  The bastards.

 

 



ClaudeLv250 on 23 November 2009

I thought Nintendo always had 'high' royalties, though the complaint seems to be a bit moot as most of the industry has no problem tossing games on DS and Wii.

What I find most mindblowing about this thread, though, is that NIS knows that the DS exists!



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Zucas on 23 November 2009

Kinda a silly point because all companies ass for "royalties" (or better put licensing) to develop on their platform. Complaining about it is really a moot point as the only way to get around it is to well develop hardware yourself.