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WrightOfWay posted:Jansen is the perfect example of a character that would be completely insufferable if his voice actor didn't sell his goofiness so well. The voice actor for the character, Michael McGaharn, came from an improv theater background got to ad-lib most of his lines. Jansen's lines are very different in the Japanese/French/Italian dubs.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:06
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If it makes you guys feel better, Tri-Ace is mostly doing contract work these days in order to support themselves since they can't easily secure funding for games like Star Ocean. All their IPs are owned or co-owned by their publishing partners. Similar to Hexadrive, they are an independent Japanese developer with technical skills that are based on console development. Tri-Ace's design team is specialized in JRPGs and reliant for publishers for funding. However, their skill set hasn't made it easy to find funding for original games in the current state of the Japanese industry. Not many Japanese publishers are greenlighting JRPGs with significant budgets for home consoles. Many of have have scaled down console development in favor of handhelds and mobile devices. The few publishers that do want to publish JRPGs on consoles already have in-house staff who can develop them. So Tri-Ace ends up working on IPs owned by other developers as contractors, such as the FFXIII sequels or the recently announced Vita Phantasy Star. Unlike Platinum, they don't have the luxury having a staff that can develop for genres with strong global appeal, such as shooters and action games. It's very difficult to be a tech savvy JRPG developer in Japan if you don't have a big publisher backing you. They usually relied on Square-Enix for support but even they've run into problems this past generation. A few years back, Tri-Ace even showcased a tech demo about the improvements to their cross-platform technology. Since then, they've moved onto mobile development (Powerpoint download). There was a time that they could've been the Japanese Epic Games and provided a strong middleware for the Japanese game industry. However, Silicon Studios is fulfilling that role.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:46
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Baltazar Robotnik posted:That was why I was shocked when Resonance of Fate happened, and I really enjoyed it! That was back when SEGA greenlit a lot of new IPs, such as their publishing deal with Platinum Games. None of them performed very well so they restructured themselves to be a mostly digital publisher. I'm still glad we got some enjoyable games even they were unlikely to get sequels (without Nintendo buying the purchasing rights).
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Aug 20, 2014 18:13
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Dubious posted:Square had DQ8 on display at PAX today on some tablets If it makes you feel better, the game lack voice-overs from the English localization, doesn't feature the orchestrated soundtrack, and forces you to play in the portrait perspective. Wait, that shouldn't make anyone feel better about the mobile port.
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Aug 30, 2014 13:42
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For many Japanese publishers, the PC is seen more of as a platform for casual browser based games than for console-like experiences. When developing Japanese-centric games, the management tends to focus on the domestic market so PC sales aren't even a consideration. Many of the initiatives to port Japanese games to PC tend to be initiatives from overseas branches or from distribution partners. In the early days, there was significant support for microcomputers (MSX. PC-88, etc) until Microsoft Windows released which shifted the PC into becoming more of a business oriented machine. Furthermore, the Japanese PC gaming market is seen as niche so it doesn't get the same support in retail as consoles. Laptops are generally more popular than large gaming desktops. Desktops tend to be pre-built units made for the use of enterprise software rather than for serious gaming. You might find PC games in the software section with enterprise programs of a PC hobbyist store rather than in traditional gaming stores. There also tends to be a lot of price gouging which leads to some severe region locking on Steam.
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Jan 31, 2015 02:13
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DARKSEID DICK PICS posted:Huh. I honestly thought they were a Square-Enix subsidary at this point, with all the contract work and assistance they'd been doing on their titles last-gen. Althought they were an independent developer, their IPs were owned by Enix (and then Square-Enix). They were reliant on Square-Enix (and SEGA) to fund their games. When SE couldn't afford to be their patron, Tri-Ace had to become a work for hire developer in order to keep the lights on. They don't own their IPs and can't exploit for merchandising like Level 5 with Layton/Inazuma Eleven/Yo-kai Watch. Tri-Ace tried to become a middleware developer who could provide cross-platform technology for other Japanese developers. However, most publishers either had their own in-house solution or were not interested in making games with cutting-edge graphics for console games. Then, they tried their hand at mobile game development with Konami. The acquisition was probably to find financial stability with a partner since contracts were drying up for console game development. Even though they weren't shipping original games in their sunset years, Tri-Ace was an important part of developing the FFXIII sequels. The pool of talent that can cutting-edge console JRPGs is dwindling with many going into mobile game development. Canary in the coal mine?
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Feb 20, 2015 15:06
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I think mobile gaming's headed for an Atari crash, to some degree. Everyone's jumping on with their own game to try to make money, and there's only so much free time people have, even for momentary distraction games. It's obviously not going to utterly tank as a market, but a lot of studios that try probably won't find the easy market they're hoping for and fall back to consoles. For Japanese developers, the domestic console industry has contracted to the point that we would have to go back to 1990 to find a lower point. Yearly revenue for hardware and software combined is dwarfed by mobile gaming. Even, if mobile gaming were to plateau, it would still surpass the Japanese console gaming market which shows no signs of recovery. Here's a graph detailing the decline of Japan's console gaming industry:  Many Japanese developers aren't going into mobile development to make a quick buck. They're going to mobile gaming because it's becoming more and more difficult to finance console games in a risky market. Year after year, the sales ceiling for console games sinks and players gravitate to mobile devices to get their gaming needs. There are less and less publishers and investors willing to fund console games. If there is an Atari crash, then it's the Japanese console gaming industry over the past decade. Japanese developers, especially those without the banking of a cash rich publisher, don't have many many options. They can try to be kings of a burning house and gain leadership in the shrinking domestic console gaming market. Or they can compete in Western markets against Western developers who typically have better brand awareness, bigger budgets, and a better understanding of consumer needs. Or they can try their hand at entering the mobile gaming industry. Mobile gaming has lower costs of entry, tremendous growth, and attracts angel investors who can help manage the risk of entering the market. If developers can't succeed in mobile gaming, chances are they'll just close up shop rather than go back into risky console development.
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Feb 20, 2015 15:39
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Endorph posted:Squeenix owns the rights, don't they? It's not really worth the kerfuffle of trying to sort out that mess, since it's not like VP is a hugely popular series. Yes, Square-Enix owns all of IPs of the Tri-Ace games they published. Supposedly, Tri-Ace was initially a co-owner or at least a minority owner of their games' brand with publisher Enix. After Square LTD and Enix merged, this arrangement changed. Square-Enix became the sole owner of Tri-Ace developed properties. Did Tri-Ace exchange ownership rights in order to get Square-Enix to fund their games? Who knows but it definitely hurt Tri-Ace when their publishing partners run into problems. Unlike an self-publishing developer like Level-5, they had no internal IPs or licensing revenue to fall back on.
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Aug 4, 2015 01:24
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ImpAtom posted:Score. ... PC port by Koei-Tecmo.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:34
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HGH posted:Where did I say they never translate anything? I specifically mention the context of niche products like Xenoblade and FF5. At the time of Xenoblade's original release, currency exchange rates were highly unfavorable to Japanese publishers doing business overseas due to the strong Yen at the time. To publishers who had a good deal of their sales come from North America, such as Capcom, Square-Enix, and Nintendo, this was especially devastating. They made the decision to focus their resources on promoting games that had high sales potential over those with more niche appeal. It's also the reason why we saw some Japanese publishers retreat back into the domestic market or European and Oceania territories get games before North America. Here's what Iwata said to a shareholder about currency exchange rates in 2010: quote:Newspapers say that Nintendo incurs foreign exchange losses associated with a strong yen. Why don't you somehow change dollars and euros into yen? http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/meeting/100629qa/index.html I suppose the argument can be made that Nintendo is a platform holder rather than an independent publisher. Their responsibility should to create an active software ecosystem for themselves and third parties even if it means taking losses on individual titles. It's not like they're exactly swimming in third party software that could fill in the gaps in their catalog.
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Nov 14, 2015 00:51
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Mill Village posted:Yeah, that was a problem with the game. It also doesn't help that he never directed a 3D game before. I can't find very much about the guy, but apparently the last game he directed before this one was the SNES RPG Dark Law: Meaning of Death in 1997. That was actually Yoshinori Yamagishi who said it. He is not a Tri-Ace employee or the director of the game. Instead, he works at Square-Enix (and Enix before the merger) as a producer for their co-production division (Tri-Ace games, Lord of Vermilion) under their old division system. He's the liaison between Enix and Tri-Ace dating back to the first Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games. Tri-Ace said Yamagishi is the big reason why Enix/Square-Enix kept funding their games. With his exit after porting Star Ocean 4 to the PS3, Tri-Ace became a support developer for the Final Fantasy XIII sequels and looked to other publishers to fund their original projects. Yamagashi mostly works in promoting their games and making sure development goes smoothly. Believe or not, Star Ocean 4 was aimed at a global audience and had contracted writers help them make the game more appealing to the West. They worked with outside writers and market research companies such as Digital Hearts, which could explain some of the game's problems. There's a new producer, Shuichi Kobayashi, heading Star Ocean 5 who rose from the ranks of Square-Enix's marketing division. He worked closely with Tri-Ace in the past and managed to get a new sequel greenlit. The tone and character design for the recent Star Ocean games probably came from Tri-Ace themselves rather than their longtime producer or their new producer who seem very supportive of their vision.
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Nov 23, 2015 20:25
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bloodychill posted:I wanted WKC to be good. The first preview looked soooo neat. And then I played the demo at sdcc and it was the most deflating thing. That is my PS3 RPG disappointment story. Akihiro Hino might be the best businessman currently in Japan but he and his studio haven't been very good at designing RPGs. White Knight Chronicles was a very ambitious concept but you can tell something went wrong in its lengthy development. Nonetheless, Level 5 got Sony to fund a AAA game while they transitioned into self-publishing. I guess that's a win for Hino. hanales posted:What happened to it? I recall wanting to play it because I loved Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy The initial reveal was a proof of concept trailer rather than actual gameplay footage. This isn't new if you've been following Level 5. In interviews, Level 5 said the multiplayer/community portion of the game significantly contributed to the game's delays.
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Nov 25, 2015 15:58
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HGH posted:So I'm seeing various tweets from the PR conference going that FFXV needs 10 million sales to succeed. Something FF7 only did after years of rereleases. It's also launching in a market where the Japanese home console industry has shrunk significantly. About four million of FF7's ten million sales came from Japan. It doesn't help that many old fans will be aging out and taking up mobile gaming. Red Red Blue posted:I can't remember if it was Tomb Raider or Sleeping Dogs but didn't SE consider one of them a failure even though they sold somewhere around 3 million copies? Maybe they just have crazy expectations All of the Eidos games except Deus Ex Human Revolution failed to meet expectations. The games were given extra development time after the Eidos acquisition so the company could establish itself as competitor in these new genres. In particular, Tomb Raider 2013 was rebooted two times and given the most lavish ad campaign in the company's history. Understandably, expectations were high.
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Mar 31, 2016 22:29
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Tae posted:Even if SO5 was built from the ground up, it's not a triple-A budget. The average call of duty game has more money put into it, easily. In 2001-2006, mid-tier home console JRPGs regularly sold several hundred thousand copies in Japan. Valkyrie Profile 2 sold 400K. Star Ocean 3 sold 700K. Suikoden 3 sold 375K. Now, development costs are substantially higher with face-planting into 75K-150K lifetime sales being the new normal. Square-Enix is most likely making more money of distributing the Call of Duty games for Acti-Blizzard in Japanese under their Extreme Edges label than they are funding and publishing Tri-Ace games. Black Ops 2 sold over 600K copies across all platforms in Japan.
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Apr 14, 2016 20:24
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Davincie posted:is it that every western rpg sells better, or is it that the big bethesda/bioware games sell better? i can't think of any others that are as huge Bioware may actually be one of the less commercially successful AAA WRPG developers when you put it into perspective. Dead Island sold over 5 million on a metacritic score in the low 70s. Dying Light reached five million in six months. Diablo 3 sold over 30 million. Borderlands 2 has sold 12 million. The Witcher 3 is on track to sell more than Final Fantasy VII in a fraction of the time. As for indie/mid-tier/niche developers, Torchlight 2 sold over 3 million. Mount & Blade Warband sold over 2 million. Pillars of Eternity sold over 500K at the end of 2015.
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Apr 23, 2016 14:33
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Scrublord Prime posted:At this rate the 3 in KH3 will represent the number of console generations between it and KH2 If KH3 were to release today, KH2's original December 2005 release in Japan would be closer to the Japanese launch of the Playstation 1 than it would be to KH3's fictitious launch today.
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Mar 2, 2017 00:42
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Tae posted:I haven't heard this level of japanese interference for localization since like...resident evil 1 when the dialogue was cut together by non-English speakers that just picked whatever sounded "right" to their ears. Final Fantasy XIII and Metroid Other M were said to have Japanese creative leads become hands-on with the localization and voice acting. This isn't necessary a bad thing if the development team and the localization team have a series of checks and balances in how they approach the translation. The translators of the Ogre Battle/Ivalice Alliance games have a strong working relationship with the creative leads in Japan that they build up over the years. So the localization team uses the development team as a soundboard for bouncing off ideas. For example, FFXII gets major changes in its localization, such as Sanskrit inspired names or bestiary inspired by Victorian era guidebooks, since it's in the spirit of the game and has the support of the development team.
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Apr 21, 2017 03:45
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cheetah7071 posted:Aren't tri-ace games usually unholy abominations that only run on their native hardware due to witchcraft and satanic rituals? Or is that just Valkyrie Profile 2 Tri-Ace's game engine, ASKA, supports Xbox 360, PS3, and PC cross development. Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean 4, Resonance of Fate, and Star Ocean 5 used this engine.
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May 25, 2017 18:15
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Sakurazuka posted:That looks pretty dull though, least hype trailer ever, jeeze It's looks like an indie Unity RPG with placeholder graphics/UI but it costs more than the pre-order for Divinity Original Sin 2 on Steam.
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May 30, 2017 21:54
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I still reckon that Nintendo pulled a masterpiece out of them by cracking the whip and keeping them on-task and in-scope. Same way they inflicted their big mean draconian management techniques like timetables and planning on poor little Silicone Knights to get them to make Eternal Darkness. (No really, they've cried foul on Nintendo having the gall to check in on them and keep them on-task during development.) Takahashi was ready to scale down Xenoblade when its deadline approached but Nintendo gave them more time. Nintendo also had them do a vertical slice of the game early in development so Monolith had an idea of how the minute to minute gameplay would be like. Typically, Takahashi focused on the story and visuals during preproduction since that was how games were made at Squaresoft.
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Jun 16, 2017 15:27
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The Colonel posted:i'd probably buy i am setsuna for like five bucks but for thirty, as someone who's already not big on chrono trigger, it sounds aggressively dull At Setsuna's discounted price on Steam, you can pick up either Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Cosmic Star Heroine, The Witcher 3, South Park: The Stick of Truth, or all of the new Shadowrun games by Harebrained Schemes. I guess if you really like RPGs that look like a Unity engine prototype by college students, then Setsuna's a real steal at $23.99.
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Jun 24, 2017 20:16
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Why does Xeno 2 look like generic-anime-garbage when Xeno 1 was unique-anime-kitsch? They're going after the Tales demographic but with an actual budget.
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Sep 25, 2017 22:09
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Dennis McClaren posted:I'm looking for a good MMORPG to try out. I would prefer it to have a good PvP system. The only caveat is it needs to be able to run on an i5 laptop, so just a good laptop, nothing special. So low graphics demands. Guild Wars 1 runs on toasters and has a robust PvP system.
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Oct 16, 2017 16:29
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Josuke Higashikata posted:I want that even though I don't want to give Cygames money They have more money than they know what to do with. Cygames has massive booths at tradeshows, by full spread ads in magazines, and fund vanity console game projects when most Japanese publishers are belt-tightening.
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Dec 23, 2017 15:09
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I thought he was the director during its development hell years? Nomura worked on the game as director until mid 2012 when it can cancelled. Much of the Kingdom Hearts 2 team worked on Versus XIII while providing supervision for the spin-off games. The game was eventually rebooted as FFXV under the Type-0 team led by Tabata. Some stragglers from the original development team got folded in but a good portion of the team were Type-O veterans or new recruits. Tae posted:Versus13 was barely a thing outside of a couple tech demos. FF15 is Hajime Tabata's project for the most part. The CGI by Visualworks for Versus XIII was definitely a thing. Even if you're producing it in-house, good quality CGI can cost several million dollars for a few minutes of footage. Versus XIII had several minutes of CGI that was cut or re-rendered due to changes in character design or story. Most of it never made it into FFXV. Money well spent.
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Feb 13, 2018 19:28
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:the most important question i still don't know from the ending of bravely second We're getting a Bravely Default mobile game. We might get a console game if Nintendo is willing to fund it. The series is an a strange place since the games were a middling success in Japan but did well overseas with Nintendo publishing it.
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May 3, 2018 16:18
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babypolis posted:jesus pillars 2 was a huge flop compared to pillars 1 and OS 2. what the hell happened there Original Sin 2 did a lot to rectify the major criticisms of the original game. It also focused a lot on four player co-op which is a big selling point in today's market. Dynamic co-op games work gain good traction on Twitch and YouTube.
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Jul 7, 2018 22:12
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