Vic Ireland on translating im@s

[Daverost]

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?

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]

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.

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]

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

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]

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.

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.

[Setsuna]

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.

Nope, we also have Asian grey imports (Korea is a good example of this, with another Samsung product, and Kogan have been making good money selling Korean PHONES, to people who can't read Korean). It's gotten so bad that even the government has gotten involved with a productivity commission with the question 'what the hell is going on?'.

In fact, there's quite a few Japanese 3DSes floating around - this is due to the 100 dollar (yes, you read this right, it's a full 33% more expensive in Australia than the US!) price arbitrage. Some were sourced from the US, but the Japanese ones have sold surprisingly well.

This isn't limited to gaming by the way. We have grey imports of Japanese food. Yes, I'm not kidding. There's a grey import market for FOOD in Australia.

Why? Price arbitage of about 25% to 33%

Not 50% or 100% (ie, im@s 2). A quarter to a third of what's required to make the im@s2 scenario work.

Why does this matter? Well, they just slap a single sticker on it (translated nutritional requirements) and put it on the shelf. Im@s 2 sort of has similar requirements - Get a guide on how to get the stuff in Japanese, and that's about ALL you need. (This can be easily proven - Hi there im@s wiki! I can't read Japanese, and I update the im@s online compendium. And I used to work as a reporter in the space for about 12 years.)


You don't really think about price arbitrage being a big thing, but that's because you don't experience it much or come into direct contact with it, if you're in the US or in Canada.

In Australia? There's a MASSIVE price arbitrage, and they use stuff imported around the world (UK, US, Japan, HK, China, India, you pretty much NAME it, and there's decent odds of parallel or grey importing). Essentially, we've hit the point where the local demands are literally 'Tax all private imports more' even though that's a operational impossiblity (it'd send the Australian Government (via customs) broke because any taxes they recover would be dwarfed by the costs of compliance.)

So it's in my face every day, when I go shopping. And yes, we get everything from biscuits, breakfast foods all the way down to ipads (Yes, we got grey APPLE products. I'm not kidding.) and all sorts of other hardware.

Yes, there are risks, but considering the savings can be somewhere in the vicinity of 33-66%, damn right you'll see people flock to them.

Basically, you're incredibly underestimating what happens when you make a massive price disparency, mostly because you haven't actually been in the middle of what happens when one happens.

The only way to prevent it is to literally a) control all information and b) con the government to make the parallel import illegal. a) was true before the internet became a thing, and b) used to be true until Sony pushed their luck and got the backsides handed to them in the Surpreme Court and consequently opened that up.

Australia is a perfect example of what you should expect if you make a massive gap in costs - it didn't take the price differentials lying down, and it's gotten to the point where all the retailers are claiming it's going to MURDER their industry wholesale (some since have given up and joined in, see Harvey Norman), because a non trivial percentage of sales are now happening outside the country.

The size of that sales figure? About 10% It's only doubling every two years though, so a final established figure of maybe 33-40% isn't unreasonable.

By the way, the average arbitrage? About a 33% discount, average. There's a few examples where they go a clean double, and some that clear even more than that.

However, that's not the scary part. The Australian GOVERNMENT launched an inquiry over it because it FEARS that the revenue loss will hurt its tax revenues over a long period of time. It can't claim GST or duty for most private purchases simply due to the fact the cost of compliance costs more than the money they could possibly make.

...

So you're telling me that if we do a full 50% (or half price, if you prefer) for im@s 2, we won't see anything close to the same results that have an entire NATION up in arms and a government frightened?

Yeah, I believe the entire nation of AUSTRALIA might want to have a word with your assertion. The Australian Government and all the major retailers too, because clearly everyone here has been hallucinating and blowing hot air and importing all for nothing, and you're apparently entirely correct that extreme price differences mean nothing. And NBGI, since you're asking them to risk their revenue stream and clearly their concerns are moot.

[Daverost]

Regardless of whether or not it's happening in Australia, it has, to the best of my knowledge, NEVER happened in Japan and is unlikely to start out of nowhere with an iM@S2 localization. The scenario of an English localization of a Japanese game at a lower price point has happened tens of thousands of times and has never once taken that kind of turn. There's zero evidence to support any theory that it ever will.

[TTB]

This isn't limited to gaming by the way. We have grey imports of Japanese food. Yes, I'm not kidding. There's a grey import market for FOOD in Australia.

lol what...?

So I've looked into it and it turns out there's a number of theories as to why Aus prices are so incredibly high: Exchange rate, Australia's growing economy, ridiculous 12 dollar minimum wage! (That alone is mind-boggling, the only political explanation that comes to mind for something like that must be runaway batsh** insane socialism up the yahoo, at least by American standards).

So I looked up the exchange rate:
1 Australian dollar = 1.0053 US dollars

Wow 12 dollar minimum wage? Australia's operating on an entirely different set of numbers. But yeah, the grey market thing must be huge. Still, the food thing is laugh out loud funny. What kinds of food do you see getting sold on the grey market? Reminds me of a story recently about illegal smuggling of BOLOGNA\BALONEY for sandwiches across the Mexican-US border lol...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20124855-504083/bologna-smuggler-busted-at-u.s.-mexico-border/

As for IM@S being so expensive in Japan, don't Japanese gamers feel ripped off too like Australian gamers when they see the dirt cheap US prices? How did the standard price become so high compared to the U.S.? I'm thinking of IM@S and all the seiyuu licensing fees... but no really... even like eroge that's just drawings and starving seiyuu abound over there like starving artists everywhere, but still the eroge costs like 100 USD... how do they get away with that? And if they could get away with a higher price, why not just charge more? What keeps the games industry from moving together up to 105 or 110 USD for a new game?

Just thinking about it is bizarre... us consumers here in the U.S. have it really good don't we... 

[Elixir]

The AUD:USD exchange rate isn't really an accurate thing to judge by, it's only matched the USD in recent years.  Feel free to visit mightyape.co.nz and convert games into your own currency, if you want to see what kind of prices I see here.

As for IM@S being so expensive in Japan, don't Japanese gamers feel ripped off too like Australian gamers when they see the dirt cheap US prices?

The target demographic's games cater to a Japanese audience in Japanese, always coming out before the states ― while a PAL gamer sees a game released in English for the states, yet they won't receive it until 6 months later, and for twice the price. Meanwhile the game has deteriorated in value as well. Importing Tales of Graces f cost me $70 USD, which I don't consider expensive as $80-100 USD per game has been the norm for two decades.
 

[Setsuna]

lol what...?

So I've looked into it and it turns out there's a number of theories as to why Aus prices are so incredibly high: Exchange rate, Australia's growing economy, ridiculous 12 dollar minimum wage! (That alone is mind-boggling, the only political explanation that comes to mind for something like that must be runaway batsh** insane socialism up the yahoo, at least by American standards).

So I looked up the exchange rate:
1 Australian dollar = 1.0053 US dollars

Wow 12 dollar minimum wage? Australia's operating on an entirely different set of numbers. But yeah, the grey market thing must be huge. Still, the food thing is laugh out loud funny. What kinds of food do you see getting sold on the grey market? Reminds me of a story recently about illegal smuggling of BOLOGNA\BALONEY for sandwiches across the Mexican-US border lol...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20124855-504083/bologna-smuggler-busted-at-u.s.-mexico-border/

As for IM@S being so expensive in Japan, don't Japanese gamers feel ripped off too like Australian gamers when they see the dirt cheap US prices? How did the standard price become so high compared to the U.S.? I'm thinking of IM@S and all the seiyuu licensing fees... but no really... even like eroge that's just drawings and starving seiyuu abound over there like starving artists everywhere, but still the eroge costs like 100 USD... how do they get away with that? And if they could get away with a higher price, why not just charge more? What keeps the games industry from moving together up to 105 or 110 USD for a new game?

Just thinking about it is bizarre... us consumers here in the U.S. have it really good don't we... 

Grey importing is when you decide to import a product from a third party in another country, as opposed to the distributor that normally handles that country's product. In Australia it's not illegal it's just going to upset business relations, as you can guess.

An example is in Australia, Woolworths (One of the two major supermarket chains) grey imports Pringle Chips from Mexico. It's apparently cheaper to do that, than to buy them from the local distributor here (Which of course upset the hell out of them). They say the supplier cost was 50c more (out of a sales final price of about 3 dollars)

The cans themselves are in SPANISH, and they slap a translated nutritional information chart on the thing, and throw them on the shelf.

Another example is I bought a box of Oreos for a dollar. They normally sell for about 3. These ones were the Japanese ones, as I saw Japanese kana and Kanji on them. The distributor tried to file court proceedings to prevent the grey importing sometime last year, and they lost the case.

You can probably see where I'm going with this - The margins are just so high, that people (both retailers AND consumers) will seek to cut the margins down, cause they want to pay less.

Any claim that they WON'T as a market on language grounds is outright crazy, because well, you're describing an ENTIRE COUNTRY that's doing it enough to scare a GOVERNMENT over tax revenue. Price Arbitrage if you can take advantage of it is powerful stuff.

As for why Australia is very expensive, just say 'It's complicated.'

Basically it's always been this expensive, mostly due to the principle that markets will always charge whatever prices it can support.

Or in laymen's terms 'They'll charge as much as they think they can get away with.'

As I said above (which someone else is conveniently ignoring) the reason why we had a recent price collapse (to the point the government is scared of losing TAX revenue over it) is because the price differential is just so LARGE.

There's a significant interest difference (You can get 6% interest on a term deposit here) and there's also the weakness in the US market (It's complicated, but long story short - the US needs to get its house in order).

It also has a remoteness and more to the point, a limited competition base. Basically the US does not generally suffer from a significant lack of competition.

In regards with the Japanese industry, they charge so much because a) they can get away with it because well, where else can you go? and b) It's generally understood that the sales rate is so low (usually 10000ish or so, so you can guess they'd need to turn over more per sale)

It's actually sustainable - basically they make games on a basis where a low sales figure won't instantly blow them up. They won't post amazing profits, but the losses are limited.

In regards with the US one - let's put it this way - They REALLY shot themselves in the foot. Basically, they held down the price of games deliberately (Absorbing inflation costs for about 10 years or so) in an attempt to mass market (Namely make up a small profit by selling LOTS of copies).

It worked, except in the process caused a distortion in the market. It's a lot more complicated than that, but once again, the industry is ignoring the elephant in the room here. One of the oddities in the mainstream US market is that it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE to sell a million copies of a game and still NOT break even! (This actually happened to a PS3 title)

Right now, it'd be very difficult to raise the price of a US title - mostly due to the state of the US economy. The companies are scared they can't sell to their model if they raise the price too much though.

Basically more 'Prices are set to what the market can bear' and in the US it's pretty poor at the moment.

[JNiles]

I was under the impression that tariffs were partially responsible for the price differences of games in other countries (Brazil?).

It is funny, whenever gas prices come up, people say our gas prices are too low (though this is wrong, because it's taxes that make their gas cost more), but the people on the gaming forums I frequent are a lot less enthusiastic about setting the standard for game prices.  Like how games in Europe are priced with the same numbers... only in Euros.

To add to what Setsuna said about the US market, judging by responses on gaming forums, a lot of people here don't even like the current price point of $60.  Publishers get around the problem by selling loads of DLC, which also triggers a negative response but people still buy it, and plotting against used game sales.

[Daverost]

As for IM@S being so expensive in Japan, don't Japanese gamers feel ripped off too like Australian gamers when they see the dirt cheap US prices? How did the standard price become so high compared to the U.S.? I'm thinking of IM@S and all the seiyuu licensing fees... but no really... even like eroge that's just drawings and starving seiyuu abound over there like starving artists everywhere, but still the eroge costs like 100 USD... how do they get away with that? And if they could get away with a higher price, why not just charge more? What keeps the games industry from moving together up to 105 or 110 USD for a new game?

Just thinking about it is bizarre... us consumers here in the U.S. have it really good don't we... 

Japan just tends to have really bad sales models. The U.S. sales models operate on "distribute at a lower price so you sell more." Japan sales models operate on "We probably aren't going to sell a lot, so charge a lot." They both kind of perpetuate themselves, but the U.S. sales model tends to make consumer happier and I'd imagine profit margins are roughly the same proportionally (given the differences in population).

It's at its worst with anime, where Japan will charge $60-80 for 2-3 episodes and you can get an entire 12-14 episode set in the states for $50-60. Sometimes a little less if it's sub-only. That's why reverse importing is such a killer for anime. If only Japan would adjust their sales models accordingly, they could sell at the same prices to the same number of people by cutting out the need for imports entirely. More sales would make up for the difference in price.

It's never really been an issue for games, though. The only games I know Japan reverse imports are ones they already have that they just want a dub for and they almost always double dip on those. Very few people do it anyway.

[Setsuna]

Japan just tends to have really bad sales models. The U.S. sales models operate on "distribute at a lower price so you sell more." Japan sales models operate on "We probably aren't going to sell a lot, so charge a lot." They both kind of perpetuate themselves, but the U.S. sales model tends to make consumer happier and I'd imagine profit margins are roughly the same proportionally (given the differences in population).

It's at its worst with anime, where Japan will charge $60-80 for 2-3 episodes and you can get an entire 12-14 episode set in the states for $50-60. Sometimes a little less if it's sub-only. That's why reverse importing is such a killer for anime. If only Japan would adjust their sales models accordingly, they could sell at the same prices to the same number of people by cutting out the need for imports entirely. More sales would make up for the difference in price.

It's never really been an issue for games, though. The only games I know Japan reverse imports are ones they already have that they just want a dub for and they almost always double dip on those. Very few people do it anyway.

The problem is that Japan can't (or they BELIEVE they can't) - The reverse importing demonstrated that making a significant price discrepancy with a product will have imports go against them. Anime is a good example of it.

The funny part about the Anime model being cited though is this - the Anime industry in Japan (traditionally) isn't even geared around selling the actual BR/DVD. They're mostly incidentals, and are (well, used to be considered anyway. Not so sure now) priced for rentals. Namely, businesses buy them, then you'd rent the thing out to viewers. Part of its high costs are over that.

The rest of it (or most of the rest of it) is 'Most of an anime's revenue is through the merchandising'.

In the US, it's more or less the reverse - A lot of anime in the US doesn't have merchandising backing. Some of the major ones do, but a lot of the licensed stuff doesn't, mostly because the model isn't available.

This even applies to idolm@ster - The game and the anime are designed to support the rest of the fandom.

Japan's Gaming business model actually NOT a bad business model - it is one designed where they do NOT believe there is much room for growth, and that risks need to be hedged (Namely the vast majority of them don't make massive sales, and they want to stay in business). For one, it actually WORKS, without any major clambering around changing laws or massive cost pressures.

Basically, their 'available market' in a lot of cases is fairly small, and the numbers posted are fairly consistent around the 100-200k range, and a lot of companies don't believe that they can expand very much out of that.

Given the current state, it's actually a fairly decent call, because in a lot of cases they're right - they WON'T get the massive sales required. A few have tried to buck the trend and well, they're no longer ongoing businesses. I'd love to see a business case where you could justify selling an eroge to a million people, for instance.

Not all mind you, Capcom's Monster Hunter enjoyed a 2 mill sale hit, and there's Final Fantasy and a few others, but they were planned to be sold on a mass market basis, and take the US model in terms of sales. However, they also have the funds to take a sales miss or two (The recent FF sort of ended up in this catergory.) and they believe the game CAN work to the model.

The US gaming model ONLY works as long as you can SELL the numbers of copies required. Basically, if you want to sell on copies, you better be damn sure that there'll be people to buy them. In the US, the lower price acts as an inducer, but there's been quite a few loss makers even at 40-50 dollars (Sakura Wars 5 comes to mind) but like I said, not every game can work to this model. (Not every game is suited to it, basically.)

Modern Warfare can, it has massive appeal, and their numbers speak for themselves. Ys? You're not going to see a million copies sold - You plan your model accordingly, and in Xseed's case, they kept their operating costs small, because they didn't think bumping the price would work.

This worked well in the past (but this is due to economic factors which are WELL outside the scope of im@s. If you understand what a housing bubble was and know of the massive frauds that happened in the last few years, you MAY have an idea of what I might say if you ask,) but in the current state, won't work now. Consumer sentiment is weak in the US, and consequently, price arbitrage is the only way to make im@s 2 sell in the US, but as I pointed out, you'd suffer a massive wipe in the process in the higher priced country.

Ironically, the only way the industry could survive is to start adjusting inflation up - but it believes it can't do it without suffering a massive loss in sales, therefore breaking its own business model.

Which of course, makes an amusing situation - the US gaming industry now has a really bad business model, due to the incredibly increased risks at low return, and the best part is that if they attempt to correct it (Either start reducing the production budgets, or pushing prices up beyond what's 'expected') we'd see the distortion starting to take things out.

But as I said, the US gaming model is NOT always the best one - the model that works is one where you can make something, make a decent return with as little risk as possible.

In the Japanese Gaming Industry, it's high margin, low sales (What ELSE would you call a 1550 US ownership of im@s 2 to be, really?). In the US it's low margin, massive sales.

Both have their problems, but right now, I'd argue that the US model is actually in more trouble, since it's more difficult to erode a dedicated fanbase which hangs in at high prices (but still possible, just requires more drastic action), than a massive group of people who don't have that dedication, and where you can effect significant changes by smaller movements.

(Best way to test this one is this - Go ask your gamers if they'd accept a 20 dollar price hike on Modern warfare anytime soon (12-18 months). I guarantee that it'd be a revolt against it in the vicinity of about 20% of its base. Then again, I cheat a bit, because Activision had run their market analysis and found that out already and I asked them about it a while ago.)

The question which NBGI would have to address is this - CAN it sell 4x the amount of copies in Japan to soften the loss of revenue per sale on a US release attempt?

The math says 'You'd have to sell about 450k copies pull it off'.

Now do you REALLY believe that it'd happen? NBGI says 'Not on any risk scale we're willing to hedge that revenue stream on'. That's a significant part of the way to a significant breakout, if not a blockbuster.

I like im@s 2 as much as the next person, but I'm not crazy enough to believe that it's going to fly into mass market territory, not in its current form.

[ninjamitsuki]

y'know, it's very likely the anime will make it overseas but the games will remain Japan-only.

It's a lot easier to license anime than games, and there are a crapload of anime based on visual novels that got licensed and even dubbed while the source material never made it.

[Bro]

y'know, it's very likely the anime will make it overseas but the games will remain Japan-only.

It's a lot easier to license anime than games, and there are a crapload of anime based on visual novels that got licensed and even dubbed while the source material never made it.

I'm not sure if this goes here, but it's a topic I'm not very much interested in so I'd like to see someone else research it a bit more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idolmaster:_Xenoglossia

The series has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America.

Apparently, Xenoglossia is getting an NA release! Thoughts, opinions, and does anyone care more than I to confirm this? What does this mean for the possibility of the real anime making it overseas?