It's over, CAVE is dead... or maybe not...

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Teufel_in_Blau
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It's over, CAVE is dead... or maybe not...

Post by Teufel_in_Blau »

Well, pretty much.

http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20130518005/

I am quoting the GAF thread title:
CAVE consumer division closed, going full online/social.
D:

UPDATE:
Sorry, but the era is not actually over yet. Someone pointed out to me that the article doesn't actually say that this is happening now. This is an industry wide assessment/analysis by 4Gamer as part of their reports on the end of the financial year. No one bothered to read the introduction to the article (including me!) and everyone jumped into the summary on Cave.

4Gamer's analysis is saying that based on the business trends of the company and their results, this is the likely route they will take in the future. It's an analysis I think most people will agree with, but it's not something the company has confirmed or commented on. Cave's year end report to shareholders should come out mid-July. If there are any actual announcements about a major shift, that's where it will be.
Source:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=298

SECOND UPDATE:
What has happened is that Cave has restructured their company and moved to new offices recently. As such, the structural change means there is no longer a Consumer Game Division. But it also means there is no longer a Social Game Division or Online Game Division. Instead the entire company is one department meant to leverage on the skills and experience of all the staff to make development more agile.

The new management structure will focus on 3 points of development:
- Existing Social Games
- Existing Online Games
- New Products

It is important to note that what they're saying is that they're going to continue supporting existing services, while creating new products as well.

They're looking to target audiences in-between heavy core users (who play shmups for example) and light casual users. There are other slides I didn't post, which basically also implies heavily that yes, they will be focusing mostly on Smartphones and online distribution of titles.

The last slide there shows the sort of new upcoming products they are developing. ARPU is Average Revenue Per User, and the horizontal axis represents the Social aspect of a product from low on the left to high on the right. In the top left corner is "Bullet Hell Shooters" specifically, which are very high ARPU games with almost no social aspects. The fact that they're still looking to release new stuff close to that range indicates that they're still making shooters, and will probably not abandon arcade development entirely. It's possible that most of the future shmup ports released by Cave themselves will be Smartphone only, but maybe that doesn't rule out arcade ports from other publishers?


tl;dr:
- Cave restructured but they didn't fire everyone from their gaming division
- They still plan to make games with high revenue per user with no social content (ie: shmups)
- Not entirely dead yet, business as usual
Source:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=316
Last edited by Teufel_in_Blau on Fri May 31, 2013 6:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Pretas »

Reposting this in the subject's main thread.

What everyone seems to have suspected is in fact true. It's official now, Dodonpachi Saidaioujou is Cave's final STG, barring any PS3 ports from 5pb. At least they were able to conclude their flagship series in a way that returned to its original spirit (sans DFK's misguided obsession with bullet canceling). Really, there was no feasible better way for them to go out. Consider that Toaplan and Raizing's swan songs, Kyukyoku Tiger II and Brave Blade, were both very mediocre efforts.

What are the chances that Cave's entire arcade/consumer development staff will now jump ship to 5pb, G.Rev, or some other company more receptive of their talents?

EDIT: I jumped the gun, it's not official yet. Given recent events, though, there is a good chance we will be hearing this same announcement from the source in July.
Last edited by Pretas on Fri May 31, 2013 6:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Cagar
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Cagar »

It's all lies. Prepare for a new STG announcement from them soon.
Remember when they said DOJ will be their last stg? Remember when they talked about "our future STGs" in very recent interviews?
Ikeda, the millionaire sure will save the day somehow.. :P

Asada/Ikeda will be doujin developers. I believe this is what they've been waiting for, now they can release the absurdly hardcore shmups they always wanted to do.
EDIT: Of course they'll team up with yotsubane first
EDIT2: Really, I'm serious we will see more shmups by these main-developers in the future. I'm not worried at all, this might indeed be more good than bad news
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Jonathan Ingram »

Cagar wrote:Asada/Ikeda will be doujin developers. I believe this is what they've been waiting for, now they can release the absurdly hardcore shmups they always wanted to do.
Team Shanghai Alice it is, then. ZUN could use some more hands. :lol:
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Pretas »

Cagar wrote:EDIT2: Really, I'm serious we will see more shmups by these main-developers in the future. I'm not worried at all, this might indeed be more good than bad news
I have to admit, if the next STG from Ikeda ends up looking like Blue Wish Resurrection, I probably won't give it more than a few plays. At the end of the day, it's the stellar graphic design and artistry that keep me coming back to the engrossing game design of Cave titles. People like to rag on the sub-par 3D of Deathsmiles II, but the game is still full of imaginative, fascinating creatures and setpieces.

This is the main reason why I've never had more than a mild interest in the Touhou series (outside of the fighting games, which have great sprite work). If Ikeda decides to be a doujin developer, he's going to need to find similarly talented amateur artists to work with.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Udderdude »

It'll be interesting to see if they go on to make something else at a different company, only time will tell ..
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by ptoing »

Pretas wrote:If Ikeda decides to be a doujin developer, he's going to need to find similarly talented amateur artists to work with.
All he needs is a bunch of people from Cave to come with him and start a new studio.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Icarus »

Clover-TAC opens expanded Yotsubane Studio (not "Clover Studio" because we know what happened to that), with former Cave and Raizing developers.
You heard it here first.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by oboewan42 »

Sad to see this happen.

At least Raizing still makes things that could potentially be considered games.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Friendly »

Fully expected, unfortunately.

Here's hoping that the creative minds of Cave's shooting game division form a new company, soon.
Last edited by Friendly on Fri May 31, 2013 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by stryc9 »

My condolences.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by lemonhead »

So, mame support for cv-1000 boards is now ok? :twisted:
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by trap15 »

Finally. Good riddance :3
lemonhead wrote:So, mame support for cv-1000 boards is now ok? :twisted:
Nope, CAVE is still very much alive. They just aren't making anything new.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by IseeThings »

If the platform is actually dead then support for it is likely to be readded sooner rather than later IMHO.

It was thought to be dead at the time tho, and from the talk of internal struggles over SDOJ it probably was, then wasn't, then was, then wasn't ;-)

At the very least I'd expect the older games to get filtered back in sometime soon, some the oldest ones have no proper ports beyond the PS2 after all.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by trap15 »

Let me know if/when that happens, as I do have some fairly significant fixes to both the SH3 CPU core and the CV1000 driver.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Friendly »

Let's focus on the bright side: There'll be no new Cave shmups on Xbone.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Icarus »

trap15 wrote:Let me know if/when that happens, as I do have some fairly significant fixes to both the SH3 CPU core and the CV1000 driver.
If you can get Ibara to work without a massive amount of frameskip on even a Geforce GT with a Core i7 CPU and 4GB RAM, I'd love you and have your babies forever.
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Last edited by Icarus on Fri May 31, 2013 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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IseeThings
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by IseeThings »

if you have significant SH3 fixes you should submit them anyway, nothing to do with the SH3 core was removed, it's an independent part of MAME.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Terramax »

OK I'll be honest, I see Cave Co exiting shmups as a good thing.
I think they took their brand of shmups as far as they could take it. There wasn't anywhere else for their specific kind of shmups to go

Cave was a splinter company of another niche shmup specialist, and formed their own brand of shmup completely different from others. When you play one of their shmups, and you KNOW it's a cave game. If there were to go any other direction, it wouldn't be cave, but if they stayed the same, we'd just get bored of their games. In fact, some have already voiced concerns that their recent games weren't up to their previous standards.

With this said... there's is nothing to say some members of Cave won't form yet another splinter company, as others have mentioned. In fact, I think it's inevitable.

The real question is whether the new company(s)' games will be as distinctive as Cave shmups, and whether they will continue to be for the hardcore demographic, or become more accessible as to target the more mainstream crowd.

Honestly, I think some companies just need to disappear after a while. Look at Lucasarts. They made amazing games in the 90's . After they dropped all original IPs, adventure games, etc, to make just Star Wars games, the company went to shit. If Lucasarts disappeared in the 90's, people would be shedding tears, but when they announced closure earlier this year, people were like "meh... all they did was make shitty Star Wars games. Who cares?"

At least, if Cave go now, they go with their heads high, with dignity, rather than trying to stick it out, making crummy mobile games for the mass market, and longtime fans screaming "OMG wtf Cave, I hate you now, you suck", and all the core members leaving, making the company nothing more than a name, with a long-forgotten, or badly exploited history of shmups.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Zeether »

Icarus wrote:Clover-TAC opens expanded Yotsubane Studio (not "Clover Studio" because we know what happened to that), with former Cave and Raizing developers.
You heard it here first.
As long as the next game they make goes to PC like with Crimzon Clover.

I bet now Cave's going to make some mobage card game like everyone else is.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Skykid »

Everyone with Cave kits, goods and general paraphernalia, get ready for the bounce: you're about to get paid.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by dcharlieJP »

Time to sell those framed prints and those art books... i mean RIP!
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Pretas »

Won't have my copy for some time...

Is there any chance they included some kind of special goodbye message in SDOJ's manual or art book, similar to what SNKP wrote on the final page of the manual for Samurai Shodown V Special on AES to bid farewell to the Neo-Geo? That would be nice. I imagine the decision to close their consumer division might not have been made yet when the game went gold.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by KAI »

FUCK.
CAVE.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by CIT »

Skykid wrote:Everyone with Cave kits, goods and general paraphernalia, get ready for the bounce: you're about to get paid.
Actually, I'll bet you prices will come down, as more and more people lose interest and walk off to the next big thing.

Kinda how Neo Geo prices steadily went into decline when SNK quit supporting the platform and a lot of people started getting into Cave shooters. :wink:
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by ciox »

hail good sir
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by hail good sir »

to
Last edited by hail good sir on Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by robivy64 »

Seems fitting that a DDP title was their last :(.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Skykid »

CIT wrote: Actually, I'll bet you prices will come down, as more and more people lose interest and walk off to the next big thing.

Kinda how Neo Geo prices steadily went into decline when SNK quit supporting the platform and a lot of people started getting into Cave shooters. :wink:
We'll see. Shmups have an incredibly strong market presence compared to any other genre for some reason.
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Re: It's over, CAVE is dead.

Post by Stevas »

So, like, who do we bitch about now?
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