Udderdude wrote:After the recent mess with the Futari shipping (3 weeks and some people STILL have not gotten theirs, including me, not to mention the DLC card/first print run mix-up)
I would highly reccomend preordering anywhere but play-asia
I'm going to order from PA again, but this time I'm using EMS. I bitched and moaned about not getting the 1.01 DLC and they made it up to me, so I'm going to keep going with them. Even with EMS shipping, it will still cost as much as NCSX after tax and media mail shipping (after I use my $5 off coupon from Futari anyways).
I hadn't seen any website that was selling here. I figured that they would post on their blog or something if they had started preorders or something. How soon before the release of Futari did cave begin to offer the preorder goods? For people who have ordered with them, do they allow you to pay by bank or pay the delivery guy cash? Where on their website do you order games? On the shop all I can find is shirts, posters, and stuff like that.
Usually if Amazon offers preorders, somebody will post on here, but I didn't see anyone.
gatsu25 wrote:Where on their website do you order games?
This I can answer, when they start taking pre-orders for a game they create a special page for the game. For example for Futari, this was the website adress from which you could order the game:
But now that they closed the pre-orders for this game, the website is shut down.
I know they started taking pre-orders for the regular edition on the 11th November 2009, but now it is closed as this picture shows (what does it say btw?):
gatsu25 wrote:Where on their website do you order games?
I know they started taking pre-orders for the regular edition on the 11th November 2009, but now it is closed as this picture shows (what does it say btw?):
It says that the selling of the regular edition is over.
Thanks for the information, I hope that people here post when the site is up so I can keep checking it. I have to have this LE!
As they probably will update their blog when they start offering pre-orders.
Someone mentioned that there will be a second batch of pre-orders for the Limited Edition for online stores, so I would keep an eye just in case on amazon.co.jp's Espgaluda II Limited Edition page:
adversity1 wrote:I would be very pessimistic with regards to EspII being region free.
Same here. I would assume it's locked, but wasn't the announcement that Futari would be region free made roughly a month before it was released? Release is still two months away so there's still plenty of time for them to make the announcement.
adversity1 wrote:I would be very pessimistic with regards to EspII being region free.
Same here. I would assume it's locked, but wasn't the announcement that Futari would be region free made roughly a month before it was released? Release is still two months away so there's still plenty of time for them to make the announcement.
Didn't Cave make money that they wouldn't have if Mushi Futari was Region locked? It would be retarded to region lock this(it always has been though I guess).
I did great so much water and milk that I threw up when I was little.
Dale wrote:Didn't Cave make money that they wouldn't have if Mushi Futari was Region locked?
It didn't seem to make any difference...
Yeah, the impact it had was probably fairly nominal, a few hundred, maybe a thousand copies? I guess it depends on how much it cost them to go through the extra hoops involved with making it region free and whether or not copies sold overseas make back that money and turn a profit for them. If not, I doubt they'd continue with region free releases.
Acid King wrote:I guess it depends on how much it cost them to go through the extra hoops involved with making it region free and whether or not copies sold overseas make back that money and turn a profit for them. If not, I doubt they'd continue with region free releases.
I was under the impression that it was "up to the publisher" whether or not to region lock their games on the 360...if this is the case would it really be much extra effort to leave the coding unlocked? Or is my memory of the decision-making situation faulty?
Also, I seem to recall Cave saying that the region-free "experiment" with Mushi was more aimed at the possibility of out-and-out localizations in the future, as opposed to additional region-free releases, but I might misremember that too.
There is no extra cost to the developer to make a game region-free on 360. I know from working on the console that they have no such restrictions/fees. It's all up to the publisher to decide.
If anything, Futari was used as a measuring stick of potential overseas sales. I don't think they did it to soak up those few extra import sales so much as to just get a metric they could base their projections off of. My guess is it was publisher bait, to say, "Look, people over there know more than RAIDEN."
BulletMagnet wrote:
Also, I seem to recall Cave saying that the region-free "experiment" with Mushi was more aimed at the possibility of out-and-out localizations in the future, as opposed to additional region-free releases, but I might misremember that too.
In the original Kotaku post on the port being region free, they specifically refer to it as a test of the waters for future localizations.
8 1/2 wrote:There is no extra cost to the developer to make a game region-free on 360. I know from working on the console that they have no such restrictions/fees. It's all up to the publisher to decide.
I thought that in order to get permission for a region free release, the publisher had to submit the game for rating in the other regions, or was that just conjecture?
8 1/2 wrote:There is no extra cost to the developer to make a game region-free on 360. I know from working on the console that they have no such restrictions/fees. It's all up to the publisher to decide.
I thought that in order to get permission for a region free release, the publisher had to submit the game for rating in the other regions, or was that just conjecture?
Sounds like B.S. or we'd have heard about Mushi showing up in ESRB ratings docs, the way so many releases are leaked. I think that's probably just some random internet guessing at the situation.
If you don't mind my lack of optimism, for all its worth, I'm not sure what would be the required amount of export copies to warrant localization in other regions. But, whatever the actual amount of such copies is, I'm even less sure it will suffice to warrant localization. And we're talking about Futari, one of Cave's most popular shmups of the last 10 years — a game like Espgaluda 2 are going to have even lower sales outside of Japan even if the region lock is removed on it as well. It just cannot compete against the Western gaming conjuncture without extremely optimized and precisely targeted marketing campaigns; niche sales from informed gamers like us won't cover the expenses otherwise, as demonstrated by Futari doing worse than DeathSmiles despite all the hype and stuff.
Long story short, our best bet would be to somehow convince Cave that localization isn't worth it if the game doesn't have "Ikaruga" in its title, and region-free releases would be more profitable in the long run.
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
moozooh wrote:
Long story short, our best bet would be to somehow convince Cave that localization isn't worth it if the game doesn't have "Ikaruga" in its title, and region-free releases would be more profitable in the long run.
Why would you do that?
RFA sold 35k in the states, and Deathsmiles (to be localized) should be able to do as much. I think a better approach would be to ask CAVE to make games that they don't plan to localize region free in the future.
RFA sold 35k in the states, and Deathsmiles (to be localized) should be able to do as much. I think a better approach would be to ask CAVE to make games that they don't plan to localize region free in the future.
And honestly, I think the approach they used on Futari is perfect for localization. It has a wealth of game modes, looks great on an HD TV, and has a novice mode that isn't going to be frustrating for beginners. The biggest obstacle it has is the fact that it's vertically oriented and I think a lot of people would grumble about buying a game that doesn't take up the whole screen. I think a 360 exclusive HD 2d sidescroller would be decently received, given proper novice modes.
moozooh wrote:
Long story short, our best bet would be to somehow convince Cave that localization isn't worth it if the game doesn't have "Ikaruga" in its title, and region-free releases would be more profitable in the long run.
Why would you do that?
RFA sold 35k in the states, and Deathsmiles (to be localized) should be able to do as much. I think a better approach would be to ask CAVE to make games that they don't plan to localize region free in the future.
Yeah, and look how that deal fucked over Europeans - we still can't play the game.
This is the danger with localised region locked releases, and why we have to convince Cave that region free is better for them AND for us. I imagine Deathsmiles will be locked and the same problem will happen again.
Elixir wrote:
Can we just complain about how the scoring system is going to have 90% of the forum drop it after a week.
most people like dodonpachi, i don't see how this would be more annoying than that
It's not annoying, just scoring well is... hard. You really need to be superbly good at zesshikai to dent the high score tables and that will take a lot more learning than something like Futari.
adversity1 wrote:RFA sold 35k in the states, and Deathsmiles (to be localized) should be able to do as much. I think a better approach would be to ask CAVE to make games that they don't plan to localize region free in the future.
I'm surprised nobody brought up the fact that RFA sold for $20 in the US. That is likely much of the reason that it sold as many copies as it did.
If someone localized Deathsmiles, Futari or Galuda II, would it really only cost $20? And if not, would it pull in the kind of numbers required to be profitable? These are difficult questions to answer for any potential publisher.
Having really enjoyed Galuda's scoring system I'm kind of dreading the second's, but that doesn't make me look forward to it less.
http://www.yyrgames.com
I exclusively make arcade-style games. Now available for Steam and Xbox =)
| My games - 
