Guys, don't worry about Triplebrc too much. Some people is just cheapskates that won't pay up no matter what. He believes 35 bucks is too high for an eroge. That's what he believes in. For the amount of content that Sengoku Rance gives, 35 dollars is incredible. It has more content than so called Triple AAA games these days. And triple AAA games doesn't even have bare tiddies.
What he forgets is that, alicesoft is basically going, is westerners still interested in our eroges? They buy? Good Keep on bringing out our eroges. Its a two way street. Then maybe someday, we can too have bunch of eushally eroges here. I only got to play kamidori alchemist one, i want to play the next ones.
I don't generally rule out to fork up 35 bucks for an eroge, but usually it should not be that high. I have seen long ass eroge games go for as little as 5$, most range between 10 and 20, I might pay 35-40 for huge eroge like Rance X, or big Eushully games like Madou Koukaku if that ever ends up being translated, but only if they are somewhat new and I haven't played them before. I say it again, SR is 10+ years old and it shows, the standards keep rising and the longer a game is out the cheaper it gets, even huge masterpiece Triple A games like The Witcher 3 are often on sale, it is on sale for 10-15$ often with all dlc included, because it has been out for years. Alicesoft prices of like 80$ is definitely something I would never pay for an eroge, I don't even pay that for a Triple A game.
If you are worried about the signal sent to Alicesoft then the decision to release SR should piss you off, because due to aforementioned reasons of the game being ancient and the other translation being free and easily available, the number of sells are likely to be lower than Rance 6 for example, sending a bad message because paying 35 for that is just not a smart thing to do.
So where's the problem? Hentai Games have much lower # of sold copies, which means the price needs to be higher to compete.
AAA titles can afford to have high fixed costs because they sell a lot of copies. Indie titles and Hentai-games do not sell many copies, so they will never be as good of a "value". You aren't going to get the same level of 3d art, rock-star programmers making highly optimized code, or special effects like a AAA game will deliver.
The costs are so much lower that it should not even be worth comparing them, even if people do it anyway in both directions. Indie games that are often done by 2-10 people as a side activity or hobby project can go on sale for 5-10$ and still make a killing, many eroge just need a few cheap assets and the rest is often provided by free game engines bypassing all the expensive programming work, no animations or VA keeps it even cheaper, art costs can be down to nearly zero if someone makes his cgs himself or a new artists just wants his name out there. The customer base is not as small for Alicesoft as it is for other Eroge too, their games are longer but their costs are still very low compared to even mid grade mainstream games. You think a mid tier game wouldn't be laughed out of the building for delivering the number of features Alicesoft does for Sengoku Rance and ask for 35$? If you are in that price range people start to compare you to other games in that range, which is an unfair comparison because normal games costing 35$ usually had millions of production cost and therefore much more value and features, but of course people want value for their money and if they do not know Sengoku Rance, all they see is a visual novel with basic gameplay, old art, no animations worth mentioning and not even voice acting included.
If they included voice acting, I actually would have bought the thing because it would have been SOMETHING new, instead they released a game they already got their sales from 10+ years ago with zero new features and the cost of translation put onto Mangagamer, not even recognizing that most people played the thing translated long ago, someone buying this now gets zero value out of it. They want to cash in twice without doing anything because by now even they understand that there is a western market interested, thats just not the way to go about it, either translate something people haven't played so they experience something new, or improve upon the old stuff people already know, basic business.
I sure as fuck can and no one can stop me.
SR brought me much enjoyment, AAA games brought me none to very little enjoyment. It's that simple and everyone on their own decides if something is worth their money.
The answer to the "is a game that I already put dozens of hours into and liked pretty much all of it worth it?" question isn't that complex.
Yeah you can, but you kinda make yourself look bad doing it because it is not a sensible thing to do. Your choice in AAA games must be really crappy then, I instantly agree that most of the industry is going downhill fast, but in the last 10 years there have been many high quality AAA games that you could sink hundreds of hours into, some of them are 10-20$ or even less on sale. Of course you can try to convince yourself that 35$ for something you have already seen for free years ago is worth it for you, hell I could burn a 50$ bill and inhale the smoke of it and argue that this gave me more pleasure than any game currently on the market could, but from a rational standpoint this is simply the lower value thing to do with your money, you get something less valuable out of it plain and simple, even if you end up having more fun with it.
I just think they should have put SR together in a bundle with the next game, my main point of complaining is that releasing SR, slowly as they did too, is halting the progression of actually getting to see something new. People like me who know the translators for many years now have been waiting so freaking long for the good new stuff, what Arunaru and Maria actually were allowed to release from Alicesoft since joining Mangagamer is pitiful compared to the speed they used to release, at this rate we might wait 6-7 more years until all Rance games are released. This kind of thing is slowing it down even further by re-releasing stuff people have already seen, the price being too high for that is only a minor complaint in comparison, I would actually pay that price for Rance Quest because I haven't played that one yet, it has more features and I have been waiting for it for so long, fuck it having actual much lower value than any normal 35$ game, I would make that work for me, but I can't with SR because my standards simply aren't that low, you can't re-sell me stuff I already have.
Senhime can into spaceship I go.