So, I went to MangaGamers' booth on Friday to ask the questions I gathered from the DSVN, Gemot and PP boards. Teo de Lange, the CEO of the Dutch company behind MangaGamers, Manga International, wasn't there -he had to go back to the Netherlands in a hurry- but I got to interview Endou Nobuhisa, the CEO of the Japanese company behind Manga International, Japan Animation Contents. The interview was conducted in English.
- Q. Were you the ones who approached the Japanese game makers or the opposite? How did you manage to get the deal done?
A. At the start, you had a will from Japanese companies to look for a market overseas. So Japan Animation Contents was created for this purpose, to create a structure to export the game market overseas. As such, Manga International, the overseas structure was created from scratch by us. It means it's an initiave completely from Japan and under our supervision.
- Q. Which companies? circus, NEXTON, OVERDRIVE? Tarte? But its parent company, Deal, went bankrupt in 2007.
A. circus, NEXTON and Overwrite have indeed invested in us. So far, only their games are planned, but if everything works well, everything is possible.
- Q. Will you accept Paypal as a payment method?
A. Paypal doesn't accept transactions about adult materials.
- Q. Will the DRM method always be present?
A. Yes, we're afterall legit so we have to protect our products. Besides, it's not uncommon to do so in Japan and many companies asked for such a system. There's no plan to implement another activation system such as the ones DLsite uses.
- Q. Are there plans for the other games the companies have, such as circus' MyHime?
A. Not for the present time, but there's no will against the matter. It'll depend on how well we'll manage.
- Q. What about the zillions D.C. fandisks?
A. (laughs) They're very specific to the Japanese market, but who knows?
- Q. Do you plan to release physical disks in the future?
A. No, but we may release merchandise.
- Q. Some people were able to get a link to some of your hidden pages, order and play your games. The result was that it worked but they were horrified by the mistakes present. What is it about it?
A. (looks at me with wide eyes for a few seconds) How was that possible? The page didn't go official for a reason, why did people want to get the games in such a way? The page was put for beta-test purposes, so the only people with access to it were supposed to be the few selected who were our beta-testers.
- Q. So the final games will have all the mistakes corrected?
A. They should, yes.
- Q. What about the prices? They are more higher than your usual Japanese d/l games.
A. It's because we had to uncensor them for the oversea market, giving them additional value for additional work and costs.
- Q. How well do you think everything will work?
A. I hope for the best, of course, but we have good hopes in light that some series are known through the anime series and related merchandise, such as the figures.
I also learnt that, in order to avoid back-ordering, the buying system won't accept Japanese credit cards and that the display is relative to the language of the OS! As Endou Nobuhisa, it's not impossible it displays better on an English OS than a Japanese one, but it maintains a special font/display system for Dutch and French OSes as well!
At last, he gave me his card and email and I promised to send him the links to my posts in the DSVN, Gemot and PP boards, so that his people can read the threads and discuss with us and answer any other question we may have.
Note: I didn't record the interview but just took some brief notes, so it's more a retelling of what I recall the answers were. I apologize to Mr. Endou if I mistook anything. Once again, I thank him for his time and wish them the best.
Final note: on a related matter, Anima, the company that is released the
Higurashi anime in France told me they bought the rights for the game (all the episodes) and it was planned for released for soon!
2008-07-07, 08:52
title withheld due to license restriction
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