So, Degica...

[qmish]

Did you really abandon shmups? All new releases for last 1.5 years are mostly visual novels or jrpgs.



Come on, we need more Cave and Taito in Steam

[pegboy]

Unfortunately I think the whole Cave on Steam experiment was a big flop, so I doubt we will see anything ever again.

[Xyga]

Cave X Degica obviously pictured wrong the target audience and marketing strategy to make this really successful.
Their two mistakes:

- Focusing on reusing the licences that had already seen overseas releases before on 360/iOS/Android, thinking that would help when in fact the shmuppers niche demographics (which opinion has influence on casuals) more than anything expected new previously unreleased titles like SDOJ, Ibara series, whatever but not yet again Mushi, Deathsmiles, DFK.
If another release was actually planned you can be certain it was going to be Galuda II. Dunno if Cave and Degica has meeting for they showed zero awareness and imagination.

- Technically half-assed ports showing several issues (inaccurate slowdowns, vsync issues, more lag than the console ports), making the Steam ports worse than the even the ealready imperfect 360 ones.
And that when the audience is obviously one very picky on these topics. Ouch.

In short; not knowing who were their targeted customers and their expectations. When you don't know the nature of a market's demand well-enough, you can't succeed.
M2 behave the opposite, they know the audience and what we like, so they make better selections and put their efforts where it matters. Simple as that.

[BulletMagnet]

M2 behave the opposite, they know the audience and what we like, so they make better selections and put their efforts where it matters. Simple as that.

In fairness, judging by their abandonment of localizations since Dangun Feveron they weren't able to make many inroads outside of Japan either, though the apparent presence of English trophies for ESP Ra.de Psi might hint that they're having one more go at it.

[Oniros]

Cave are a shit company and Degica didn't have the technical know-how to deliver ports the way M2 has on consoles. I appreciate them for porting Mushi to PC but I wish they had also brought Akai Katana as a last ditch effort since an English localization had already been made. Either way, while console-only, we're finally currently getting good ports of Cave games and importing this gen is a lot easier.

Outside of Cave, stuff like DBCS, Game Tengoku, Eschatos was great but probably not profitable enough. Their last shmup release was Castle Shikigami IIRC? I don't think anyone outside of like 3 people here even gave a shit.

when in fact the shmuppers niche demographics (which opinion has influence on casuals)

LMAOOOOOO

You can't possibly believe this, I can't

[Xyga]

@BM: Doesn't matter much and we all know it, shmuppers put accuracy and stuff like that on top of everything, in short a port must do the original justice, which is what M2 offer, with extra.

And they're games that have had either no official release before, or not really quality.

No english doesn't stop our demographics, not even non-specifically-shmuppers, to buy the games which are available with a few clicks on amazon, P-A etc.
There's always people on forums to translate the menus, so who cares.

Cave and Degica really didn't know what they were doing, Steam wasn't a fitting platform.

If Cave really had wanted to sell their whole stuff again, best idea would have been to update and reissue the Collection box on PS4 again period.
Those had at least 3 sold out prints on the 360, SkyKid was confident they would print more on new gen consoles, I wasn't.
Result? the box's nearing $1,000 now, and all games included are JP versions.

But since Cave apparently have completely lost the ability to make [̲̅$̲̅(ツ)$̲̅] with real non-mobage STG's, they needed help and how in the Hell they thought Degica would cut it is beyond my understanding.
M2 have been the obvious best for so long, they're the only ones they should have spoken with.
Why wasn't it so tho ? well ¯\(°_o)/¯


@Oniros: of course 100%, most casuals who peek and pick into niche genres always follow what the niche's core demographics say is best to play.
Always, and it's not just shmups. It's been so since the internet has been a thing. If you don't think it is actually how things go, then LMAOOOOOO

[Oniros]

I'm sorry, but if casuals somewhat paid attention to what people like us say, Cave would've never stop making arcade STGs and Sine Mora wouldn't be one of the best selling shmups of recent time.

Hell, I can't wait for the "end of the decade" lists to name Azur Lane as the shmup of the generation.

[blossom]

Azur Lane won't be on any lists. If we're talking purely casual players, they're going to say the genre is dead because Cave or Raizing barely made any new games in the past decade. To some people, indie games are cute little diversions instead of the current torch bearers. Hell, Mark_MSX called Blue Revolver "an enjoyable side game for when you're burnt out on Dodonpachi" or something to that effect in one of his recent videos.

As for Degica, if nothing else I hope one day they'll give us a PC port of Space Invaders: Infinity Gene. Beyond that, I would love ports of Ginga Force, Natsuki Chronicles, Border Down, Under Defeat, Zanac Neo, Cotton 2/Boomerang, Guardian Force, Soukyugurentai... okay, this list is becoming more and more unrealistic. Space Invaders is the only one that seems pretty likely, although considering that game didn't make it on the upcoming collection, I'm going to assume there is some odd reason that porting it is difficult.

[Elixir]

Degica has practically ghosted me through email and twitter, which I take as confirmation they're done with the genre.

Steam ports retaining game-breaking bugs like DFK 360's Arrange A hardlocking bug, whatever the hell this is, or fixed internal resolutions shouldn't make it into PC ports. Judgment Silversword releasing without leaderboard support made no sense. There should be some sort of anti-cheat measure in place too - you should not be able to pause the game, search CheatEngine for your current score, modify it and continue playing. I realize the mass consumer standpoint is "port everything to every modern platform and also do SDOJ first", which isn't really realistic, but I understand where they're coming from. I haven't turned on my 360 since 2014, people want semi-relevant majorly region-locked games on modern platforms.

Steam is a perfectly fine platform (CCWI is a good example of a perfectly fine release), but it's good because it's a doujin game to begin with - no actual real "porting" is necessary.

Result? the box's nearing $1,000 now

it's
really
not

[Xyga]

On eBay, some even beyond $1,000

Not everyone does his shopping on Japanese websites you know...

I'm sorry, but if casuals somewhat paid attention to what people like us say, Cave would've never stop making arcade STGs and Sine Mora wouldn't be one of the best selling shmups of recent time.

Hell, I can't wait for the "end of the decade" lists to name Azur Lane as the shmup of the generation.

I think you're putting together things that aren't contextually in the same place and time and not targeting the same people.

Arcades were dead outside of Japan even as Cave were continuing to make games naturally looking only at their local market.
Comparing that to popcorn-marketed games of the internet era available for cheap on every dld platform worldwide and quoting sales figures doesn't make much sense, these things were in almost completely different dimensions.
Even people who had never even heard of the term 'shmup' or 'STG' and were never interested in digging further into the genre bought games like Sine Mora or even Ikaruga which they probably never should have or not even realized they wouldn't enjoy since its so niche.
Similarly droves of people bought the Nth Space Invaders games on any platform before, yet it being technically shmup genre doesn't make it data useable for anyone like Cave or M2, they're not sales representative of the actual targeted demographics/segment.

We have people who discovered shmups with Steam and never played from anything but a PC and probably believe everything they saw happen from that window's perspective pictures the reality of the genre and market, but when Steam shmups began to grow in numbers the genre was technically just entering pseudo-death mode forever, moe specifically the arcades roots of it that were dead by 2012.
And we have the casuals then, which can come from variuous horizons, but those I speak of are those who walk the step no matter what, people who are curious, not ones who barely even have a name to put on the genre and won't care any more, or who will never look from any other perspective than the only/primary entry point they know. A casual who investigates and wants to play more games then inevitably comes into contact with the material online, communities and of fucking course he'll come to learn what the niche core is into and from there he'll be under influence.

Even if barely or temporariy the casuals walking that path become part of the audience, they join the larger demographics of natural customers that (should) matter to the likes of Cave and M2, the niche is multiple and whether fresh or veteran, casual or serious, it is the target, the broader pool of general casuals who also happen to have bought a couple of the best-sellers online isn't.

I really, really believe both Cave and Degica had no real understanding of where they were going.
All-immaterial ports of the 360's, poorly implemented, on a western platform known to make everything not high-profile-enough lose all value and profit within months if not weeks after release, and disappointing the niche's core on top of it all?
Of course that was going to crap.

In Cave's shoes, instead I would have spammed new Shooting Collection boxes for the PS4 during the early years, the moment the PS4 was confrmed taking this gen's lead actually.
Right now (which is quite late in the gen's cycle already), I would cooperate with M2 as much/quickly as possible to let them port one-by-one more never-before released titles or better re-edits a la ShotTriggers of course, and more specifically several cv1k would deserve better ports with unique fixes, unseen matsuri/special stuff, etc.
And more than ever get close, all-ears with the communities. M2 know well-enough by culture what's good to do, Cave don't because they have nuked their STG/arcade culture years ago, so they more than anyone need players input from all around the world (not just a handful of superplayers in Japan), the kind of interaction Degica failed to provide, and that Cave probably didn't expect from them anyway since they seemed to believe they could casually publish games and they'd sell like any product.

They should do that...assuming they're still any seriously thinking about using the broader range of their shmups IPS's at all anymore.
(I doubt they do, we'll eventually see the same IPs and code they already used several times like with Degica, resurface here and there from time-to-time. Some companies just lazily repeat the same mistake forever because they don't care, they're just selling old stock to make pocket money)

[Zeether]

I hope they can at least do something with Qute so we can get Natsuki Chronicle and Ginga Force on PC.

[evil_ash_xero]

The big problem with the M2 ports are the price. They're just bonkers, to actually get many buyers. I appreciate them, but you're not gonna get some guy who doesn't know the genre well to buy this stuff.
ESP Ra.de. is great, but it's not gonna sell at a 35 dollar price point. You have to sell them cheaper, or release them in bundles on a disc.

Still hope they do well enough to keep making a bunch of them. I don't want them to lose enthusiasm for them before they get to Batrider, Bakraid, Ibara, and a few others. Looks like we might be in Toaplan land for a while. I hope they don't just fixate on that catalogue, and forget about the Raizing and CAVE stuff.

[Elixir]

On eBay, some even beyond $1,000

Not everyone does his shopping on Japanese websites you know...

Just because something is listed on eBay for a ridiculous price doesn't mean that's the going rate, nor does it mean it's ever selling. Not everyone shops on eBay either.

[Prales]

.

[Xyga]

On eBay, some even beyond $1,000

Not everyone does his shopping on Japanese websites you know...

Just because something is listed on eBay for a ridiculous price doesn't mean that's the going rate, nor does it mean it's ever selling. Not everyone shops on eBay either.

Just because a minority of people's aware of going rates in Japan doesn't mean everyone wil automatically be.

For a lot what's perceptible from a western stand point, IS reality / going rates, etc. Even just the idea of trying to purchase from Japan is beyond them. Well, amazon seems okay for some when available, but that's apparently as far as many will go.
A large part of the post-original-retrogaming-era speculative boom and prices explosion that's still a thing today even if we're more in the aftermath now than in the middle of the apocalypse, was due largely to droves of people who ignored everything of 'rates in Japan' and still do today.

Don't make the mistake similar to - let's make some parallels using different focus topics - like in hardware discussions where a handful think everyone posting in there is skilled in building electronics and video science, or in emulation/development where for some it should go without saying that everyone knows at least a bit of programming, or hiscore and all related topics in which some seem to have always believed everyone in the entire niche demographics should take shmups as pure scoring and competition material and if they don't they're worthless.

Nope, shmups aren't so niche yet that everyone within the communities is objectively savvy in one, two, or all related fields whether it's for playing, building, or even purchasing...
Maybe one day only an actual handful of old veteran farts will remain and they'll all be knowledegeable and skilled-enough whatever the topic (some communties are already in that sad state, really only a handful of old farts ever posting) but even today for the shmups niche that still isn't the case.
Give it another decade or two and there won't be one member left not knowing about how to trigger that obscure juicy route only best players know about, not one not aware of the polarity and whatever TTL load for every machine's signal, not one ignoring the names of every unemulated chip in research and they'll be quoting dev progress lines on github directly before even whatsnew.txt even mentions it, and no one not aware how much X board sold on YAJ last month when it's sold a different amount at Y and Z jp shop days before and that buyer was ignorant after all lololol.

[Austin]

Those walls of nonsensical text are making my eyes bleed.

[Xyga]

Those useless condescending one line posts make me cringe.

[Udderdude]

I appreciate them for porting Mushi to PC but I wish they had also brought Akai Katana as a last ditch effort since an English localization had already been made.

It was technically already on PC if you count Akai Katana Shin being brought to NESiCAxLive. Would've been pretty easy to strip out the NESiCAxLive related stuff and re-release it on home PCs. Oh well.

[Despatche]

What is this awful thread? What a terrible Christmas present.

Threads like this are why I'm so glad CAVE is basically dead. Either all you clowns finally give up on this genre you clearly don't care one bit about, or you actually put aside your CAVE fetishism and play anything else. Either way, I win!

In short; not knowing who were their targeted customers and their expectations. When you don't know the nature of a market's demand well-enough, you can't succeed.
M2 behave the opposite, they know the audience and what we like, so they make better selections and put their efforts where it matters. Simple as that.

No matter the year, there will be localization begging. Clearly you weren't here for the years of people also begging CAVE to port all these 360 releases to PC, especially the ones that got localized. "You're shutting out such a huge part of your potential market!" and other consumerist garbage like that.

[...]or in emulation/development where for some it should go without saying that everyone knows at least a bit of programming[...]

You can say that again, Christ. Your MAME shilling really needs to stop.

Cave are a shit company and Degica didn't have the technical know-how to deliver ports the way M2 has on consoles. I appreciate them for porting Mushi to PC but I wish they had also brought Akai Katana as a last ditch effort since an English localization had already been made. Either way, while console-only, we're finally currently getting good ports of Cave games and importing this gen is a lot easier.

For the last damned time, CAVE did the PC ports, not Degica. Degica is not XSEED. CAVE wanted to make those changes because they don't really care about "arcade accuracy", and to an extent that's actually the right thing to do. Some of these arcade versions positively suck and need a lot of work done; that's how we got things like all those Black Labels and v1.01s and v1.51s and such. No matter how good these ports could be, noone is ever going to treat them as the same thing, simply because they aren't the arcade PCBs themselves.

Steam is a perfectly fine platform (CCWI is a good example of a perfectly fine release), but it's good because it's a doujin game to begin with - no actual real "porting" is necessary.

I don't get why you'd say this. WI is not the original PC version, it's a port of the arcade version, which has a ton of changes and is basically a new game. It's a good port more because the arcade version was already on PC-based hardware, not really because it was originally a doujin game. You know this.

Actually might be enthusiastic about a 達人王 (Tatsujin Ou/Oh) port, I've been playing a lot of that and Truxton II recently and I can't remember liking a video game that much in a long time.

Glad to see people starting to like the game, it sure deserves it. But I better not hear anyone try to tell me "the community never hated the game" like they tried to do with fucking R-Type.

[cj iwakura]

This really sucks, I still want Shikigami 2 to get a proper localization.

Ah well, guess I'll just have to do it myself one day.

[qmish]

If we're talking purely casual players, they're going to say the genre is dead because Cave or Raizing barely made any new games in the past decade.

Excuse me... Actual, *ahem*, casuals, always go about how "Jets'n'Guns was abosulute blast!" while moaning about "i don't play those epileptic anime games". *

*or at least this is my impression of somebody who grew up in a country where arcade culture was almost non-existent and after nes and megadrive (and stgs were not popular even on them here, unlike run-n-guns etc.) most folks jumped straight into PC gaming (hence Tyrian, DoveZ and the like for many) until psp/x360 era.

[blossom]

You know, at least those who enjoy games like Jets'n'Guns actually play the games instead of whining how the glory days are long in the past.

[qmish]

You know, at least those who enjoy games like Jets'n'Guns actually play the games instead of whining how the glory days are long in the past.

If you don't count "haven't seen a good shmup since r-type/gradius days" crowd

[GSK]

You say "given up" like there's a massive vault of feasible, commercially-viable STG out there to publish on PC. Remember, Degica isn't the one porting these games, so they're at the whims of what's available, what can be ported or maintained with minimal fuss and what's not tied up with other publishers or licensees.

With specific regards to Cave, their STG PC ports were basically an interim project for the small internal PC team that had just come off the SMT MMO; my understanding is that the absence of future ports is primarily a consequence of that team being dissolved more than anything else, and that Cave has no interest in producing further ports themselves, for Degica or anyone else.

[cj iwakura]

You say "given up" like there's a massive vault of feasible, commercially-viable STG out there to publish on PC. Remember, Degica isn't the one porting these games, so they're at the whims of what's available, what can be ported or maintained with minimal fuss and what's not tied up with other publishers or licensees.

With specific regards to Cave, their STG PC ports were basically an interim project for the small internal PC team that had just come off the SMT MMO; my understanding is that the absence of future ports is primarily a consequence of that team being dissolved more than anything else, and that Cave has no interest in producing further ports themselves, for Degica or anyone else.

Still shocks me that not only did Cave make an SMT MMO, but they actually nailed the atmosphere too. (The gameplay had issues, but just typical MMO trappings.)

[Gus]

With specific regards to Cave, their STG PC ports were basically an interim project for the small internal PC team that had just come off the SMT MMO; my understanding is that the absence of future ports is primarily a consequence of that team being dissolved more than anything else, and that Cave has no interest in producing further ports themselves, for Degica or anyone else.

This is really interesting information. Do you have a source? I've always been curious about who was behind producing the ports and who to blame for the issues they're laden with.

[qmish]

You say "given up" like there's a massive vault of feasible, commercially-viable STG out there to publish on PC. Remember, Degica isn't the one porting these games, so they're at the whims of what's available, what can be ported or maintained with minimal fuss and what's not tied up with other publishers or licensees.

Degica participated actively in "shmup renaissance on pc", so its disappointing to see how it all suddenly died out. And besides Cave, it just feels that Degica never reached full potential with partners (shmup devs) it collaborated with - in most cases at looked like they "were just starting", but "never continued".

And don't corporate speak to me... I say stuff as user/gamer viewpoint and not as marketing/publishing viewpoint, obviously...

[GSK]

This is really interesting information. Do you have a source? I've always been curious about who was behind producing the ports and who to blame for the issues they're laden with.

There's nothing public I can point to offhand but I think people on the Cave side did allude to this publicly at the time. It's been a while so don't quote me on this but the overall team composition was slightly different on both ends between the Mushi port and the other two, and I'm pretty sure the main programmer for all three ports is still at Cave--he was on the 3jus team but I'm not quite sure what he's doing now.

Again, my memory's fuzzy but I believe some of the issues with DFK in particular, like the weird slowdown in the arrange modes, were not only a difficult-to-address relic of the X360 code but something that was actually present on X360 but just weren't heavily documented--the X360 went through a lot of unlabeled component revisions over the course of its life so even just balancing the slowdown against the X360 port isn't easy because it varies from unit to unit.

Degica participated actively in "shmup renaissance on pc", so its disappointing to see how it all suddenly died out. And besides Cave, it just feels that Degica never reached full potential with partners (shmup devs) it collaborated with - in most cases at looked like they "were just starting", but "never continued".

And don't corporate speak to me... I say stuff as user/gamer viewpoint and not as marketing/publishing viewpoint, obviously...

Fair enough, it just pays to think bigger-picture in order to set more pragmatic expectations is all. Even if they never put out another STG, I think they gave it an honest shot--three Cave games, Dariusburst and Space Invaders Extreme, all the Triangle Service stuff, the Eschatos pack, Senkoro 2, Game Tengoku, Shikigami no Shiro, RefRain, Crimzon Clover, Rival Megagun... if anything, they probably put out too many STG too quickly.

I have no idea if they've stopped for good, but I do know they've been working directly on consoles over the last year or so and that's probably diverted their focus somewhat. It probably doesn't help that Taito, City Connection and others are getting more directly involved in publishing, leaving fewer potential games for Degica, but it doesn't really matter so long as somebody's doing something.

I will say I expected they'd bring the recent Rayforce/storm/crisis ports over from iOS/Android. Maybe Taito will get to those themselves in due time.

[floralcateyes]

Virgo Versus the Zodiac, the newest game published by Degica, has shmup sections! The options menu even lets you set dedicated keybinds for said sections!

...but they seem pretty awful imo. Granted, I've only played through one such section so far. But it's exactly the kind of minigame drivel you'd expect from this specific kind of indie jrpg, complete with simplistic patterns, a healthbar, and an attempt to justify its scoring system by rewarding a good performance with crafting materials.

Seriously though. Rival Megagun was released just a little over a year ago. I don't know how long it took between their shmup releases in the past, but I'm not sure a year is a long enough hiatus to conclude that they've abandoned the genre completely. If they actually have, well, as GSK points out, they have a pretty respectable catalogue behind them. Many of those games can and should last us a pretty long time.

[Necronom]

It was technically already on PC if you count Akai Katana Shin being brought to NESiCAxLive. Would've been pretty easy to strip out the NESiCAxLive related stuff and re-release it on home PCs. Oh well.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy at all - a PC port would piss off the arcade owners who are still making money off it. Also, the 360 ports clearly showed that the only Cave titles with a soso mass appeal outside of Japan are Dodon and Deathsmiles.
Cave x Degica was nice while it lasted and with backwards compatibility the games should remain playable on the upcoming Xbox. While this may not be the happy ending everyone wished for, it's really time to accept the fact that both companies will not cooperate again.