THE iDOLM@STER > THE iDOLM@STER 2

Vic Ireland on translating im@s

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Daverost:

--- Quote from: Setsuna on May 09, 2012, 08:30:28 am ---if you run the English DLC for significantly less than the Japanese counterpart, well, what's stopping the Japanese from just saving 20+% by importing the game and DLC cards?

--- End quote ---

Japanese text.

Contrary to popular belief, most Japanese people are not fluent in English and all of the Producer's lines as well as the lines for extras (staff members and directors and such) are unvoiced.

Setsuna:

--- Quote from: Daverost on May 09, 2012, 04:38:30 pm ---Japanese text.

Contrary to popular belief, most Japanese people are not fluent in English and all of the Producer's lines as well as the lines for extras (staff members and directors and such) are unvoiced.

--- End quote ---

Really? The reverse didn't stop any of US from doing the reverse. That's a VERY, VERY bad assumption to make.

Basically at a 20+% discount, most people who want to save will go to the trouble. At 50%, honestly, I could see people making guides on how to buy the English version of the game, then cobbling up a basic play guide for it.

... Something like what we do here, in reverse.

If you read about me discussing the business plan concerning im@s 2 back when someone else suggested to get NISA to do it, nothing's changed and you can safely skip the rest of this post. If you're a math junkie, you might enjoy the numbers though.

All I have to say is "Business sucks, but money really DOES make the world go round." and probably "Yes, math sucks, but math doesn't care what you think, you either make those numbers work, or it won't work, so learn them BEFORE it costs you an arm and a leg."

-----


Just to help you actually see in plain numbers what the difference actually is (I was asked to do some number crunching concerning Spain and the possible scenarios, so I figure a little schooling in math couldn't hurt), here's some math:

Assuming we keep steady with the DLC pricing:

The game (at retail release) was 7900 yen.
Each Catalog averages at about 9000 yen each. There is (at this point) a projected 13 catalogs. It's actually slightly more, but the numbers should be scary enough as it stands (Some catalogs require about 11000 yen to close!)

Assuming that we take the live market rate of 1 USD = 79.7284 JPY (Good luck getting it, as this is ex conversions and handling and whatever):

The game sold for about 100 US. (It's actually 99.30 or so)
Each catalog on average costs 112 US. (This is actually 112 and a bit, but I'll round it down. I'll be rounding the final number anyway.)

Now this means the entire sales costs (on the Japanese market) is 100 + (13 * 112), or for those who don't have a calculator, 1456.

In short? You're looking at one and a half THOUSAND DOLLARS to buy the game and all its DLC.

I cannot empathize enough that final sales figure. $1550, US, over 13 months, give or take a bit.

For an idea of how high that figure is, here's the better way to put it - you're one standard deviation ABOVE the median if your ENTIRE BUDGET ON GAMES THAT YEAR was that high. (Actually, closer to one and a half). Yes, gaming is a big business, but most people don't drop 1.5k on their gaming budget in a year. (Console's only 300 dollars, and you don't even replace those yearly!)

a) You would have to be downright INSANE to try sell im@s 2 in the US at 100 dollars, since you'd struggle to post 10k copies at that price in the US. (It's a near clean double of ANY OTHER NON LE VERSION). In fact, the only market that would support such a price is Australia.

No, I'm not kidding. Games are really sold on release at 100 US (give or take a dollar). The UK is fairly close as well. The US is... very under priced. It's another discussion in itself, and it's actually the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.

b) If the first was just insane, I need a better baseline for insane, because you want to sell the DLC for exactly how much? im@s 2 in a month costs more than a lot of games cost over the course of their DLC shelf lives. Heck, you're paying more for it than a BRAND NEW RETAIL RELEASE, every month, for 13 months.

So how much would you be saving at 20% Oh, about 300 dollars. Or in Japanese terms, enough to buy another 3 games. Good luck selling a game at 80 US with DLC costing 100 per month though, because I don't think anyone'd think that's a viable business plan unless inflation rockets up to 20% and stays that way for a year.

Now, more realistically, we see them go down to 50% off. That would put prices at about 50US for the game, and 60US per month for DLC (probably a lot more palatable for US sales) which sounds like a half decent business plan.

... Except now, we've created a scenario where you can save up to 750US for picking up the English version and going to town on the DLC.

Or, more succinctly, a full standard deviation on games spending. Or about 7 OTHER Japanese games. Heck, I suspect you could go pay for a intensive English class or a couple of months of tutoring with that saving.

I'm sorry, at those prices, that's what we call 'A steal', but I'm Australian, so I don't know what they call it for you locally.

Language barriers would be taken down in coordinated fashion at those prices, believe me. Hell, even monetary barriers (like requiring US credit cards to make a purchase) would be knocked down and there'd probably be a mini industry for importing the game and US PSN codes, since they're done here at a regular basis since we pay about 90-100US for games you pay 60US for, and it's catching on big.

NBGI in Japan would also be screaming bloody murder, since NO ONE in their right mind would pay a full double for costumes, not if the cost difference is the price of a good PC. It would, simply put, cause a revenue collapse on the locally sold DLC (and less so the game). A lot of the DLC is language agnostic - namely who cares what language the description for the costume is, since you don't need to read it to put it on.

The only way you could fix that is if you made up the loss in revenue per item sold be recovered by volume. Or more accurately, selling to far more people at the cheaper price.

Namely you'd have to sell about double (I'd estimate 2.5 due to losses at this point of the calculation) the DLC to regain that lost revenue.

DLC followthrough rates are lower in the US than they are in Japan, so you'd need a multiplier on your unit sales. (This is where I make my correction and state for a decent chance of recovering the entire lost stream, you'd only need about a 4x to 5x multiplier. Or in short, about 440-550 thousand copies out there. Doesn't sound like much, but uh, half a million? That's creeping close to near blockbuster territory.)

Now, before you try to cop out and point out you'd be insane to buy all the DLC for im@s, I'd point out two things.

a) At 50% off, your DLC mileage goes FAR longer. More bang for your buck.
b) You'd have to apply the same logic to both sides. You get a net zero to your argument. They don't expect you to buy all the DLC in Japan either (Their forecast last I saw was somewhere in the 25-30% sale pushthrough rate.) Basically your math at a 20% discount may not be completely worth it, but at 50% still nets you about 250-300 dollars US.

The above is the ONE thing no one I know, fan or even business associates, can address. You're going to have to talk NBGI into giving up that revenue stream (and when you consider that you're talking about 110000 copies (From memory anyway) * about .25 to 0.33 then multiplying that by oh, 1500US, well, you're only talking about 4 million+ Conservatively, of course.) and mass sell to a market that it doesn't know is there yet.

Fortunately, the same out applies - Once NBGI write down the stream voluntarily (namely, they voluntarily mark down the price of the game themselves) on a forward basis, (they normally do it by about 50%) then most of the risk of a market collapse and break diminishes by a lot. Basically NBGI would book the profits as they are, and would not expect any significant cash flows past that point.

The only way to make this happen though is for im@s 2 to be completely done and dusted (DLC and all) prior to im@s 2 US to be released. NBGI won't be complaining too much (any cross importing losses will be relatively small, as opposed to massive) which means they're more likely to agree to providing license.

Good news is that the losses are cut to 5 catalogs if they released it tomorrow. We're halfway to avoiding NBGI baulking. Just need another half year or so before we can safely announce an im@s 2 PS3 US.

The bad news is that you then have a different set of problems. You know stuff like people asking "Why the hell is there a bloody two year wait between a Japanese and US release?" and "Why couldn't you even say you were considering making a US release until 2 years after the game came out in Japan?" You know, little things like that.

And then having to explain why for this to even work at all, you need to provide an arbitrage of 18 months (if not 24), for im@s 2, and (I imagine you'd want this) any future im@s games. In short, this would have to be a PERMANENT arrangement, not a one off.

I'm not sure how people would feel about the fact you're going to be at least a game, or actually closer to two games, behind, on a regular basis.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vic knew the numbers (and probably have more accurate ones if he's been actively inquiring, since the numbers I'm using are from January when I last saw them) and knows this is the ultimate problem. Translation and localization are the easy bits. The fun part is when you need to con NBGI to take one for the team just cause you said so. You can't blame them if they demand as a minimum you replace the lost money.

As an aside, I might add this is why I argue in im@s' case, it is far cheaper to actually make your own songs. At 4 to 6 million, you could get quite a few works for hire done. I won't vouch on the quality though.

... But then again, at a 6 mill budget, you could probably make decent inroads into just making your own game.

Then again, if he DOESN'T know, he'll find out soon enough, because the reason I got the numbers in the first place was because I tried to make the same argument at a business lunch and the executive in question gave me them, and I ended up kicking my own backside when I realised what we ended up with. (I couldn't build a decent business case in the realm of possiblity (about 99.9% chance, or about SIX standard deviations) where the math would actually work out.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the same executive I went up against would be the same one who'd probably outline the conditions of NBGI handing it over. Vic would pitch, then he'd just throw the right numbers to blow the pitch to hell.

Daverost:

--- Quote from: Setsuna on May 10, 2012, 08:07:52 am ---Really? The reverse didn't stop any of US from doing the reverse. That's a VERY, VERY bad assumption to make.

--- End quote ---

That's a poor argument. We do it because we have no choice. If you had the option of an English version, you'd never buy the Japanese version, even if it was cheaper. (Unless you were fluent in Japanese, I guess.) There's no reason to buy a game in a language you can't understand when it's available in one you can, especially when it's more of a hassle (though admittedly not much more) to get DLC from another region.

Only a very tiny percentage of gamers are hardcore enough to import at all.

Setsuna:

--- Quote from: Daverost on May 10, 2012, 05:29:56 pm ---That's a poor argument. We do it because we have no choice. If you had the option of an English version, you'd never buy the Japanese version, even if it was cheaper. (Unless you were fluent in Japanese, I guess.) There's no reason to buy a game in a language you can't understand when it's available in one you can, especially when it's more of a hassle (though admittedly not much more) to get DLC from another region.

Only a very tiny percentage of gamers are hardcore enough to import at all.

--- End quote ---

The stats would prove you wrong on that one - Australia would like to have a word with you. We all speak the same language here.

The reasoning is this - at 50% or more saving, we've had defections where people jump through all sorts of MONETARY barriers (and even LEGAL barriers, Kogan defied a COURT ORDER to not sell the Galaxy S2 because of Apple, then defied an order from SAMSUNG because they were undercutting the pricing here!) to get their hands on things at such a discount, and yes, we don't even necessarily import them from just the US. There's even a market for it, known as the grey import market. It only saw rocket gains for the last three years in a ROW. And we're only talking 20%. At 50% it is (and has proven to be) a no brainer.

You have to address the math above. Until you do, NBGI would be scared about the loss. You are (literally) asking the Japanese to pay a near DOUBLE just for the convenience of having it in their own language (which isn't even a big thing in im@s in the long term - the PV and M@D community use the video, not the storyline, for most of their work. If the songs are not redone, you wouldn't even know the difference, the PS3 version allows subtitles to be turned off). You wouldn't do it if provided the choice, I wouldn't do it (750 dollars would cover some of my medical bills), and the stats say that a massive majority wouldn't do it either.

No one to this date has addressed the saving and the consequent problem. In short, market forces would kick your butt so hard you'd probably be fired from your position no matter what it was if you tried it.

Daverost:
That's a completely different scenario. You're talking English -> English importing.

Not only that, but I don't recall reverse importing of English games to be a huge issue killing the Japanese game market to begin with. Reverse importing of anime, sure, but not games.

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