CAVE staff quitting

[Illyrian]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... -CEO-Bails

WHAT THE FUCK.

[Op Intensify]

Yeah, there's really little doubt left at this point that SDOJ on 360 will be their swan song. If it even makes it to market. If not for Microsoft Japan's good graces, we'd never be hearing about it in the first place. I'm placing my bet on 2013 being their final year of business, at least in the arcade/console sectors.

We could see the remaining staff migrate to a newly formed studio when they inevitably fold, like what's happening with Irem right now, though they'd probably only make iOS Temple Run clones or some shit.

Perhaps they should merge with G-Rev? Or maybe Square-Enix would be willing to bring them under the Taito blanket? I don't think Atlus cares about them anymore. I guess if they totally go under, it's going to be a lot harder for Rising Star to get a hold of the licenses.

Man, Japan needs its own version of Kickstarter so badly.

[emphatic]

LOL, prophet of doom to the rescue.

[sven666]

Man, Japan needs its own version of Kickstarter so badly.

not enough scams in japan you mean?

cave need to boil down to the core if they are to survive, right now theyre flailing about without making any proper profit anywhere.

[Op Intensify]

Kickstarter certainly has huge potential for scammers, but I've never heard of an actual scam successfully carried out on the site.

cave need to boil down to the core if they are to survive

The shmupper "core" is more like a tiny flickering ember these days. These games have lost every ounce of mass market appeal they once had, period, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It seems like the nostalgic 80's and 90's gamers don't even care about Raiden, Gradius or R-Type anymore, or they're just unaware that new releases from all three franchises have been released in the past five years. Sure, there's the Touhou kids, but as we all know, they don't actually play shmups.

Cave's only hope for long-term survival would be a total investment in developing MMOs and casual games for social/mobile. I figure SMT Imagine has been reasonably successful for them, and Shirotsuku supposedly has over a million players in Japan, even if less than 10% of them are actually paying for anything in it. I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but I still think they should seriously look into porting Uo Poko + Mushi Tama to iOS.

I'm not trying to be a prophet of doom. I'm just making informed observations and realistic speculations.

[chempop]

Poop, and I was hoping the iOS ports would have been profitable enough to keep things going for a while. Looking back, it's still pretty incredible how many titles were released on 360. Even if SDOJ is the grand finale I was certainly great while it lasted. Who knows, maybe a little restructuring of the company will benefit their core shmup audience...

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Yeah, there's really little doubt left at this point that SDOJ on 360 will be their swan song. If it even makes it to market. If not for Microsoft Japan's good graces, we'd never be hearing about it in the first place. I'm placing my bet on 2013 being their final year of business, at least in the arcade/console sectors.

We could see the remaining staff migrate to a newly formed studio when they inevitably fold, like what's happening with Irem right now, though they'd probably only make iOS Temple Run clones or some shit.

Perhaps they should merge with G-Rev? Or maybe Square-Enix would be willing to bring them under the Taito blanket? I don't think Atlus cares about them anymore. I guess if they totally go under, it's going to be a lot harder for Rising Star to get a hold of the licenses.

Man, Japan needs its own version of Kickstarter so badly.

Kickstarter certainly has huge potential for scammers, but I've never heard of an actual scam successfully carried out on the site.

cave need to boil down to the core if they are to survive

The shmupper "core" is more like a tiny flickering ember these days. These games have lost every ounce of mass market appeal they once had, period, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It seems like the nostalgic 80's and 90's gamers don't even care about Raiden, Gradius or R-Type anymore. Sure, there's the Touhou kids, but as we all know they don't actually play shmups.

Cave's only hope for long-term survival would be a total investment in developing MMOs and casual games for social/mobile. I figure SMT Imagine has been reasonably successful for them, and Shirotsuku supposedly has over a million players in Japan, even if less than 10% of them are actually paying for anything in it.

I'm not trying to sound like a prophet of doom. I'm just making informed observations and realistic speculations.

ITT: Estebang sums up his entire forum existence in a nutshell.

[Op Intensify]

A far preferable existence to shitting up fighting game threads with inflammatory off-topic posts, I think.

[SuperSoaker360]

So much for the thought of a Deathsmiles III where it takes place on Valentine's Day and involves plenty of yuri fluff.
... except for the trap.

[O. Van Bruce]

So much for the thought of a Deathsmiles III where it takes place on Valentine's Day and involves plenty of yuri fluff.
... except for the trap.

I like how you think SuperSoaker

[matrigs]

inb4 "they shoud have gone steam" comments

[evil_ash_xero]

It's tough seeing all my favorite Japanese companies fall apart, or go out of business.

Gaming just ain't what it used to be.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not all that up there with these names, so what involvement did the COO (lol two canceled Vita games...obviously the company's main focus) and the CEO have in actual game development? Anything?

It'd be no surprise if times were a bit rough for Cave, but I don't think the Vita titles were much but a distraction.

[Illyrian]

In any business, a CEO quitting for any reason is a big deal, and is often an indicator of larger underlying problems in the company in general.

To be honest, if the SDOJ port is their last hurrah, then from what I've seen it's a hell of a way to finish

If they announce they're going under I'm going to mail Ikeda a nice fruitbasket for all the years of hard work and great games he has overseen.

Not Yagawa though. Fuck that guy

[Op Intensify]

If they announce they're going under I'm going to mail Ikeda a nice fruitbasket for all the years of hard work and great games he has overseen.

Most likely they won't even announce it. Every closure of a small-time Japanese game developer in recent memory--Flight Plan, X-Nauts, Warashi, Milestone--was announced only by their websites suddenly being replaced by 404s. Cultural honor thing, I think.

Not Yagawa though. Fuck that guy

lol

I'm sure Ikeda will remain somewhere else in the industry post-Cave. He learned programming specifically because he wanted to make games, after all.

[Ed Oscuro]

In any business, a CEO quitting for any reason is a big deal

Like maybe his/her vision didn't suit the company and they thought it high time to put their talents to use elsewhere.

BREAKING NEWS EXCLUSIVE:

Ken Watanabe tapped for new Cave COO. Staff presentations of new platform development ideas will have to undergo an exam with wooden swords, and expense reports will be finely pared.

[Casey120]

I was waiting for the annual CAVE doom and dead news !

[antime]

In any business, a CEO quitting for any reason is a big deal

Like maybe his/her vision didn't suit the company and they thought it high time to put their talents to use elsewhere.

An executive resigning for "personal reasons" is nearly always code for getting the boot. See also "to spend more time with their family".

Anyone know if Cave's social games were depending on the item gambling that became illegal back in June?

[Kollision]

RIP Cave
All hail the rise of Qute

or not

[MR_Soren]

Isn't it entirely possible that this guy leaving could be a good thing and that the new CEO might steer the company in a better direction?

[trap15]

To be completely honest, I think so. Obviously what CAVE was doing wasn't right, and I am going to blame all the corporate bullshit for that. Good riddance.

[BPzeBanshee]

I think that based on Op Intensify's credible statistical evidence that we should raise the prices of our Ibara PCBs up by 5000% to gain additional money and then use that to crowdsource a new company called "Flailing Japanese Developer Cavern Earth Vagina" (FJDCEV) as a backup company for Cave's arcade division.

Using random statistical facts I pulled out of my arse I conclude that this should be sufficient for the developers to create ports to the Xbox Diageo for the next few months until the world ends on December 21st.

[Illyrian]

I think that based on Op Intensify's credible statistical evidence that we should raise the prices of our Ibara PCBs up by 5000% to gain additional money and then use that to crowdsource a new company called "Flailing Japanese Developer Cavern Earth Vagina" (FJDCEV) as a backup company for Cave's arcade division.

Using random statistical facts I pulled out of my arse I conclude that this should be sufficient for the developers to create ports to the Xbox Diageo for the next few months until the world ends on December 21st.

Can't you count? A few months is 2-3 at the most. December 21st is over 3 1/2 months away. Learn to math you spacker.

[BPzeBanshee]

Learn to math you spacker.

My statistical bullshit is absolute.

[mesh control]

RIP Toaplan

[Jeneki]

So much for the thought of a Deathsmiles III where it takes place on Valentine's Day and involves plenty of yuri fluff.
... except for the trap.

Add H scenes and it will sell millions and save teh beezness.

[KAI]

They should be doing onaholes. Those things will sell like hot cakes.

[trap15]

I'd buy one.

And by one I mean a lot.

[KAI]

Windia's onahole will blow their profits through the roof.

[Cuilan]

As I've said before, this is actually good news.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 73#p801873

I hope that even more of the upper-echelon staffers leave. This would only be a bad thing if they're replaced with people who are either just as bad or worse, but that seems unlikely.