~Bunbunmaru News~ > Front Page Headlines
Two main Touhou games announced for Steam release!
Mero:
--- Quote from: Purvis Washington on November 01, 2017, 07:57:34 AM ---Okay, I have a question.
Has anything been said on pricing, yet?
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DDC was 15 USD on Playism iirc, seems like a reasonable price for Steam to follow
--- Quote from: Fluury on November 01, 2017, 01:32:46 PM ---International features being what exactly? Achievements, or?
No translation (probably) happening is an obvious bummer which will scare a way a lot of potential buyers, sadly.
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Well, you don't really need to know Japanese to just play, most basic menu options are already in English, and one can easily tell who's what character and figure out the controls after a few minutes. Even then, Steam has its own forums for games, which would help give exposure to things like thcrap (and maybe even have proper static patches, like Drake suggested)
I do wonder if this is why ZUN's been holding up the 1.00b version of HSiFS, there are some game breaking bugs in the current version, and those usually do get revisions made for
Fluury:
--- Quote from: Mero on November 01, 2017, 03:24:01 PM ---Well, you don't really need to know Japanese to just play, most basic menu options are already in English, and one can easily tell who's what character and figure out the controls after a few minutes. Even then, Steam has its own forums for games, which would help give exposure to things like thcrap (and maybe even have proper static patches, like Drake suggested)
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--- Quote from: Drake on November 01, 2017, 02:45:52 PM ---I say "international features" in the general sense of translations and offering any kind of language support. Entirely possible there won't be his self-translated custom.exe or even a non-Japanese Steam page (is this allowed?). I'm paraphrasing, not quoting him.
That being said, achievements and other such trinkets will even more definitely not happen if ZUN can avoid doing them. If there's anything that will keep the man from releasing on a new platform it's giving him more work to do for literally no benefit.
I don't think it's productive to talk about a lack of translation "pushing away" potential buyers when the game is, in all official capacities, not translated to begin with. If people don't click because they don't even understand what the game is then you haven't really lost anything; Touhou (and most games) spreads through word of mouth, not so much blind discovery. If people get to to the point where they don't want to buy purely because it isn't translated, they'd also have to avoid the fact that many other people do play the game translated. In this case we assume these people want to play the game, so if it can be easily figured out that the game has a fan translation, this is easily resolved. I think this use case is a good opportunity to bring back static patches that can be easily applied to any random buying the game, because god knows many people won't want to go through the full setup of thcrap.
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Thanks for clarifying.
Steam works kinda differently and appeal to a lot more different folk; If they see Touhou on the frontpage or anything like that, they'll check it out and end up seeing everything in a language they dont understand. That alone is extremely unattractive to most customers - and while there are patches, most people dont want to download unofficial patches to make the game playable in english. People just wanna play the game, not jump through extra hoops.
As they say, convenience is king, and it not getting any official translation or whatever is a shame if you ask me.
On the other hand: Does the same go for 15.5? No Translation alongside of no achievements/cards/whatever other steam gimmicks? And more importantly - in 15.5's Case, is there anything to measure if it'll have proper Steam "Online features" such as "Join game" and the like, or will it be bare-bones? I often see people calling Tasofro a "wild card" in that sense.
Drake:
Thing is that's only relevant for reach. ZUN doesn't need reach, he already has it. He is also likely still mainly concerned with reception by the Japanese side, in which case not having translations is obviously unimportant for reach. On the international side, this is about accessibility, not reach; the intention is not to spread but to allow people to purchase easily overseas and at a legitimate price point.
Convenience being critical to purchase is why this is important. Being on Steam is the convenience. The majority of this fanbase still pirates absolutely everything and a significant part of that is because of the lack of cheap and convenient ways to purchase, which Steam unequivocally solves. This is just one game to be released so far, but realize that this changes the situation from one where: some people find buying to be cumbersome and expensive, some people don't know how to buy the games, and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with; to a situation where you pretty much literally cannot make it easier for the western audience to see and buy.
Hello Purvis:
--- Quote from: Drake on November 01, 2017, 08:45:41 PM ---and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with
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This is a biggie. People talking about pirating the games is by far the most common report the moderators get.
Fluury:
--- Quote from: Drake on November 01, 2017, 08:45:41 PM ---Thing is that's only relevant for reach. ZUN doesn't need reach, he already has it. He is also likely still mainly concerned with reception by the Japanese side, in which case not having translations is obviously unimportant for reach. On the international side, this is about accessibility, not reach; the intention is not to spread but to allow people to purchase easily overseas and at a legitimate price point.
Convenience being critical to purchase is why this is important. Being on Steam is the convenience. The majority of this fanbase still pirates absolutely everything and a significant part of that is because of the lack of cheap and convenient ways to purchase, which Steam unequivocally solves. This is just one game to be released so far, but realize that this changes the situation from one where: some people find buying to be cumbersome and expensive, some people don't know how to buy the games, and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with; to a situation where you pretty much literally cannot make it easier for the western audience to see and buy.
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You are right I suppose - perhaps translation, caring about reception overseas etc. are gonna be things that will be relevant in the far future.