Senran Kagura Official News/Announcements Thread [NSFW]

NormanicGrav

Quintessential Grav
AUKN Staff
I figured this thread should become the sole thread for Senran Kagura related information, thus I will rename the thread as 'Senran Kagura'!

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Original Post - EU announcement for Shinovi Versus and Bon Appetit, digital only titles for Vita:

After months of waiting for confirmation on whether Europe will be receiving the Ninja franchise on Vita, Marvelous AQL Europe have confirmed they will be releasing Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus and Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit! for the Playstation Vita this October.


However, while Bon Appetit! was never given a physical release Shinovi Versus will be digital only. In the states XSEED provided a limited physical release (given Burst was digital only on 3DS over there) while Japan has a physical version in both standard and The Best edition (titles that sell very well).

If you don't have a Vita but own a 3DS, you can get Senran Kagura: Burst (compilation of Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows and a new story mode) in both physical and digital format.

Credit goes to XOMG Play (Emo185)
 
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Re: Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus & Bon Appetit heading to EU

Bit more info:
I can confirm that we are bringing ALL the DLC for SHINOVI VERSUS and Bon Appétit! so I hope to see lots of images of the Kagura Girls in their different attire in the future on here :)

As this is our first foray into publishing on console in Europe, we won’t be doing a physical release this time – however, if the demand proves strong enough, this will only strengthen the case for a physical release next time ;) We do have a few boxes of limited edition SENRAN KAGURA figurines sitting on a desk opposite me, just waiting to be won, so send us a tweet @marvelous_games with #KaguraEU for a chance to win a box!

No problem! We hope to be quite active in the forums (although the work load is a bit crazy at the moment), and build up a community here. And thanks for your understanding -this is a long-term thing for us, and these two games are just the beginning. We definitely want to be in a position later down the line to deliver physical releases – I love a good physical release myself, and have a few racks of games to prove it :)

In answer to your questions, SHINOVI VERSUS & Bon Appétit! will only be available with English subtitles – the translation of which has been done by our awesome friends over at XSEED. The pricing is still an unknown even to us at this point, but we will be updating the website with new content over the coming weeks/months and this info is sure to be included. So keep checking back every now and then ;) Multi-player functionality will be included in SHINOVI VERSUS, and Bon Appétit! features the “Honor Roll” where you are ranked against friends etc.

We have our eye on Deep Crimson, I think it looks very cool too! :)

“I’m sorry to confirm that for this time at least, both releases will be Digital only. This is our teams first foray into console publishing so we want to take things one step at a time, and considering we have never published on Vita before it is very difficult to gauge demand. We are looking at this as a long term project however, and hopefully these will be the first games of many. If we continue to see good support and demand for our titles, there is a far greater chance that future releases will include some kind of physical presence.

We don’t like to disappoint fans of the series and fans of Japanese games as a whole, and we are striving to reach a point where physical is a part of our strategy and appeal.

We do share the frustration of the fans that we cannot go physical this time around, but we are hopeful this won’t be the case in future.”


Read more at http://nichegamer.net/2014/08/marvelous ... XOQd1wr.99
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

I am really hating this digital only rubbish for Europe. I love my Vita but Sony is doing the best to kill it off and their digital prices are a total joke. As for the Publishers saying they'll strive to reach a point where Physical is part, they won't get so many sales when it's digital only so they'll think the demand is low and then they won't release future titles physically.

There's at least 6 games I haven't picked up for this reason and I may import them when they drop below the £15 limit for customs or if they're a couple of pounds more from a UK distributor. Not only that but I keep running out of space on my 32gb card and I hate not being able to fit all the stuff I've bought on it because re-downloading games you already own is such a disorganised mess. I have to write down every digital game (PSP & PSone mainly) that I buy so that I can keep track without having to scan through my entire download list.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

serpantino said:
I am really hating this digital only rubbish for Europe. I love my Vita but Sony is doing the best to kill it off and their digital prices are a total joke. As for the Publishers saying they'll strive to reach a point where Physical is part, they won't get so many sales when it's digital only so they'll think the demand is low and then they won't release future titles physically.

There's at least 6 games I haven't picked up for this reason and I may import them when they drop below the £15 limit for customs or if they're a couple of pounds more from a UK distributor. Not only that but I keep running out of space on my 32gb card and I hate not being able to fit all the stuff I've bought on it because re-downloading games you already own is such a disorganised mess. I have to write down every digital game (PSP & PSone mainly) that I buy so that I can keep track without having to scan through my entire download list.

I haven't bought a Vita yet (really want one) but my main criticism is the prices. It's too much for the console with low amount of games and the whole memory card thing is a joke (especially restricting access to multiple accounts).

May I ask what the 6 games are? I'm assuming Conception 2, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth, Muramasa Rebirth and Soul Sacrifice Delta are four of them (all of which are victims of digital only releases for EU)? As far as I know the only title that went from digital download only to physical release was Freedom Wars.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

NormanicGrav said:
May I ask what the 6 games are? I'm assuming Conception 2, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth, Muramasa Rebirth and Soul Sacrifice Delta are four of them (all of which are victims of digital only releases for EU)?

Most of those, though I own Muramasa Rebirth already (PS Plus game). There were also a couple of the Atelier games and Sword Art Online (which to be fair, is digital only in the US too) and a few others but to be honest I was just estimating as I generally pay little attention to them when I find out they're digital only here. Vita is my primary console I purchase for at the moment and I tend to panic buy any physical Japanese games that make it here just in case they get rare and I miss out.

There are quite a few good games on the Vita but it's hardly the asian power house that the PSP was. If you do ever get one, make a US account as there's no easy way to switch accounts on Vita and I foolishly invested too much in my European one to warrant changing. The US store has a much bigger selection and much better prices, especially in sales.

If you primarily love JRPGS though and are on a small budget I'd definitely go for a PSP if you don't have one, there's a lot of great rpgs that haven't been released digitally and the Vita's options are fairly limited and digital only is killing it, especially when companies like Atlus are charging £35 a pop. The original PSPs were the best (1000 series) as the later models all had cutbacks somewhere to make them cheaper and some are just awful.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

serpantino said:
NormanicGrav said:
May I ask what the 6 games are? I'm assuming Conception 2, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth, Muramasa Rebirth and Soul Sacrifice Delta are four of them (all of which are victims of digital only releases for EU)?

Most of those, though I own Muramasa Rebirth already (PS Plus game). There were also a couple of the Atelier games and Sword Art Online (which to be fair, is digital only in the US too) and a few others but to be honest I was just estimating as I generally pay little attention to them when I find out they're digital only here. Vita is my primary console I purchase for at the moment and I tend to panic buy any physical Japanese games that make it here just in case they get rare and I miss out.

There are quite a few good games on the Vita but it's hardly the asian power house that the PSP was. If you do ever get one, make a US account as there's no easy way to switch accounts on Vita and I foolishly invested too much in my European one to warrant changing. The US store has a much bigger selection and much better prices, especially in sales.

If you primarily love JRPGS though and are on a small budget I'd definitely go for a PSP if you don't have one, there's a lot of great rpgs that haven't been released digitally and the Vita's options are fairly limited and digital only is killing it, especially when companies like Atlus are charging £35 a pop. The original PSPs were the best (1000 series) as the later models all had cutbacks somewhere to make them cheaper and some are just awful.

Interesting, one time I did want to get a PSP specifically for Birth by Sleep (PSP exclusive until 2.5 HD Remix came along) and Dissidia Final Fantasies but I stayed with the DS (and 360) back then. Heck the Japanese are still selling PSP games (well now they're stopping) and if I recall they are also region free so that's cool.

As for the US account idea, that's pretty (*any word aside from Interesting, I'm saying that a lot now*) since it's not a bad idea. Hmm.. though I wouldn't mind getting 2 Memory cards as long as they're reasonably priced (and given I already have 3 Vita games from PS+ including Muramasa Rebirth). I'll take your word and consider that idea (I'm going to end up with US versions eventually so it's considerable).

As for JRPGs, I like them but the main problem is dedicating tons of time towards them which is why I prefer Action RPGs (like Kingdom Hearts) since it's faster paced. I do have Neptunia and Tales of Symphonia to go through (the second which I barely played but I liked the concept).
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

There's a lot more RPG variety on PSP, for instance 2 excellent star ocean games and a Tactics Ogre game. Vita is mostly dungeon crawlers. There are a lot of great non-Japanese games on vita though.

One of the really naff ideas from Sony I must mention is that memory card swapping is a pain. You have to turn off the console and it practically resets itself and takes a couple of minutes to set up again every time! Unlike the PS 3 you can't have multiple accounts tied to it either which is why I can't just shift between US and UK.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

Why do people not like digital releases? The main benefit of something like the Vita for me is that I can download the games and not have to mess about with boxes or have no space issues taking multiple games with me when I'm going on a trip or something.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

ilmaestro said:
Why do people not like digital releases? The main benefit of something like the Vita for me is that I can download the games and not have to mess about with boxes or have no space issues taking multiple games with me when I'm going on a trip or something.
To me it's a collector's thing. I like to have the game on the shelf and look at it everyday.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

Do you really do that though? ^^; I understand it for some number of high quality releases, but for the more run-of-the-mill stuff, do you even notice it's there after a while?
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

ilmaestro said:
Do you really do that though? ^^; I understand it for some number of high quality releases, but for the more run-of-the-mill stuff, do you even notice it's there after a while?
Yep, remember I used to collect video games before going into anime (not much but quite a lot of them were 360).
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

ilmaestro said:
Why do people not like digital releases? The main benefit of something like the Vita for me is that I can download the games and not have to mess about with boxes or have no space issues taking multiple games with me when I'm going on a trip or something.

Digital games are overpriced, especially Sony's European territories, they also don't feel as safe as physical as companies always class it as a rental to get round the event that they might take it offline or otherwise make it unavailable one day. Vita cards are also expensive, hard to swap out and undersized. Physical gives peace of mind, though in the case of the vita I've never been able to find read/write lifecycle statistics for the games or memory cards (pretty sure the games are read only so should have an extremely long lifecycle).
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

I mean, sure, I've also been buying video games for ~25 years (much longer than I have anime), but this doesn't mean that I would... I dunno, complain about Steam sales just because the stuff I buy from them doesn't come in a plastic case with the game's title visible down the spine.

Maybe what I'm subconsciously just trying to do is advise people that they would be better off not advertising the fact that they have bought Senran Kagura games at any time in the past. :D

serpantino said:
Digital games are overpriced
This is certainly an argument you can make, but it's not really anything inherent to digital games any more than it is to any physical releases which are also overpriced.

edit: I think I would sum up my position as "I can't wait for the day when I can download sandwiches if I'm pushed for time getting lunch, and I don't want any of you Luddites getting in the way. :p
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

ilmaestro said:
I mean, sure, I've also been buying video games for ~25 years (much longer than I have anime), but this doesn't mean that I would... I dunno, complain about Steam sales just because the stuff I buy from them doesn't come in a plastic case with the game's title visible down the spine.

Maybe what I'm subconsciously just trying to do is advise people that they would be better off not advertising the fact that they have bought Senran Kagura games at any time in the past. :D

serpantino said:
Digital games are overpriced
This is certainly an argument you can make, but it's not really anything inherent to digital games any more than it is to any physical releases which are also overpriced.

*warning, wall of text incoming*

It's not just about having a physical copy, the market is competitive with different retailers so games can regularly be had below their RRP. With digital you only have one price from one company and you have no choice but to pay the price or hope for a sale, it's a terrible practice and it'll ruin gaming in the future if it becomes the norm, and they are pushing for it all the time.

The regular price for digital downloads on Sony's European store seems to be £35. When you consider it's self published so the publisher gets a much bigger cut than they do retail, that means they could afford to sell it cheaper if they wanted as they're saving big already on the lack of production and manufacturing costs and not selling at the trade cost of distribution to retailers. On average they get 30% of the game's RRP if I remember rightly, Sony takes approx 20-30% from digital sales. I'd never spend more than £15 on a digital game personally and they could still make a profit from that. I don't think any more than £18 for a new digital release is fair.

Another thing to take into account is that the excuse often given for the price of digital games is they don't want to undercut the physical retailers, however when there's no physical release then that excuse doesn't work, so what's the justification for the pricing other than greed?


Sony's storefront for playstation consoles is also rubbish. There's no way to sort your purchases by format or even sort it into games (meaning you have demos you've tried and avatars etc all bundled in.) It's literally just one huge download list of everything you have ever downloaded on the store. I have to keep a paper backup of all the digital games I've purchased just so I can find them quicker.

Games in steam sales are fine and steam, by virtue of being so big and popular, is a pretty safe platform for digital, there's also still that competitive market as plenty of sites can sell keys for steam legally, or on another pc platform such as Uplay. I also only ever buy games for steam, in steam sales. I do buy new steamworks games but I always buy physical releases for another issue... internet speed. A digital download isn't a convenience when it takes 8+ hours to download the game.

Sorry for the long post, I hope it answers all your questions about the reasons of people who want physical releases.

P.S I've never bought a Senran Kagura game! I just tend to snap up any asian games I can that are released physically on the vita. I collect as much as play and I like buying games that become rare or are rare. (I even own a mint copy of Sid Meier's Sim Health on pc complete with all the advert/feedback cards etc and that's a terrible game!)
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

I missed this while on holiday? Dayum, I need to buy both. I absolutely love Senran Kagura (I think the review I wrote for it is probably one of the highest rated on the internet? xD). I was also really tempted to get a Japanese copy of Senran Kagura 2, but I didn't have the spare money.

Due to the physical release of Burst in Europe, I was hoping that we might see more physical releases - especially on the Vita, which has stupidly overpriced memory cards. If the memory cards weren't so expensive, I wouldn't have a problem.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Vita games heading to UK/EU/AUS - Digital

Bit more info on why Shinovi Versus is digital only for Europe:
Hi – let me chime in on this. I’m Harry and I run Marvelous Europe, so I’m best placed to explain why Shinovi Versus is digital only here, and to be the target of any aggravation that that might cause.

We would love to be bringing the game physically to Europe. We know that physical editions, and special editions, are very important to people, and it is a major part of our strategy in the future to support them. Europe has been overlooked for a long time, by many Japanese publishers, and we will be trying very hard to rectify this.

However, there are a number of reasons why it’s more practical for this to be done in the US than Europe right now.

1. We have never released a PSVita game before. The PSVita market is different from the 3DS one. Us manufacturing a load of PS Vita games which then don’t sell would be a pretty bad start, and scupper all our ambitions to bring a whole load of other games to Europe. We need to do this one step at a time.

2. We are a very small team – in Japan, Marvelous is hundreds of people. Marvelous USA/XSEED is much smaller, but still 15 or so people (who work incredibly hard for their fans and do a great job). In Europe, there are four of us. That’s four people launching mobile, console and PC games. This will expand steadily if we are successful, but we just don’t have the capacity to do a physical release right now. Doing that involves salespeople, distribution, merchandising and a whole bunch of other stuff that we just cannot handle right now. Four people is not many – but it’s four more than there used to be, before we opened our office, so it’s a step in the right direction. So ‘they should hire more staff’ sounds kind of obvious, but there’s a chicken/egg thing there that we need to be able to pay them before we do, which means taking things one step at a time.

3. At the moment, Japanese games tend to sell a lot less in Europe than in USA. One reason for this is likely to be that some players are put off by a lot of games being English only. We’d love to rectify that in the future, with more languages, but, again, that’s a long term thing for us.

4. Physical releases, however desirable, do come with a good deal of baggage for a publisher – for example, a lot of retailers don’t like to stock niche games like ours. They take a big margin (much bigger in the UK than in the USA by the way), which makes it more expensive for customers and they also won’t let a publisher release a digital game for less than they sell the physical one for. If the game doesn’t sell out immediately, some retailers will reduce the price – but then will go back to the publisher and ask for an equivalent discount. This, plus the high cost of goods for the game (ie what the publisher pays for the cartridge, box etc), can result in a situation where publishers end up making a loss even on a game which sells OK.

So, all those four reasons lead to the situation that, while I’m pretty confident Shinovi Versus will be popular in Europe, I’m not so confident that I want to put people’s jobs on the line if it turns out I was wrong.

What I’d love to do is find out more about exactly what people do want in future – and also, over time, to understand exactly how many people there are out there who will buy our games, if we can give them to you in the ways you want them. One thing we want to do for next year is introduce our own store, so we can sell limited editions, maybe some packaged versions etc directly, without all the difficulties of trying to sell everything through retail.

At the end of the day, we’re a business, and we need to make money in order to pay everyone. For everything we want to do to improve the business in Europe, we have to make a financial justification to our parent company as to why that’s a good idea, and worth the investment. So, for example, we’d love to have more languages supported in our games, but the upfront cost is huge – Harvest Moon, which came out last year, had over a million words. Slowly, I want us to establish business cases for all the things we want to do – whether it’s a French translation or a physical limited edition.

We’ve talked a lot internally about how best we can give our players what they want. One idea we’ve been considering is whether some kind of pre-order/pre-pay or even Kickstarter-type approach might allow us to fund bringing physical copies, limited editions or even translations to market. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I don’t think we’ll be able to do it this year, but it would be amazing if we could start doing things like that next year.

So, on the basis that, no matter how much we all want it, we just cannot deliver a physical version of Shinovi Versus to Europe, we’re keen to see what, if anything, we can do to soften the blow. For example – one possibility is that we sell a ‘limited edition’ pack which includes all the materials people would get from the US release, but not the game itself. Obviously, we’d need to price everything so that people aren’t getting ripped off, and we’d sell it directly so we can keep prices where we want them to be. I know it’s not the same as the full special edition but it might be that some people would want that, although others might prefer to import the US version. Unlike Burst, at least the fans who really want the physical game can get it from XSEED/Marvelous USA.

Thanks all for the feedback. One thing, though – I want to keep this forum a nice place to discuss gaming. While I appreciate that some users may be frustrated that they’ll have to import if they want a physical game, I don’t appreciate seeing abusive comments towards my staff, other companies, or indeed other forum users. Other parts of the internet are pretty tarnished with that kind of thing, and I won’t tolerate it here.

Please remember, we’re four people in a room in Kent, trying very hard to make this work. We appreciate your support.

Thanks Harry
 
Re: Senran Kagura Thread - Shinovi Versus EU censored

I renamed the thread for anything Senran Kagura news related.

The European version of Shinovi Versus has been censored by Marvelous Europe:
Hey [redacted]

Thanks for getting in touch, and we massively appreciate your support.

I can confirm that this is not a bug, it was a conscious decision to remove the subtitles from the dressing room in the European version of SHINOVI VERSUS (and Bon Appétit!).

When localised, we found that some of the dressing room phrases would have been unacceptable for 1 or more of the classification boards we submit our games to. In order to get the game out in PAL territories at the same time as the US (or even at all) and without any functionality modifications, we decided to remove the subs.

All dressing room functionality and Japanese voice acting remains intact, so everything that appears in the original Japanese version of the game is still in its original state.

I hope that you can understand the necessity to do this and still continue to enjoy the game and the SENRAN KAGURA series as a whole.

The US version (aka XSEED) kept the subtitles. Both versions did remove the age of the characters but in all honestly you can probably guess how old they are by what school year they're in.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Thread - Shinovi Versus EU censored

I want to know what the removed subtitles were now...

EDIT: Just looked it up. It was just generic reactions to the girls being touched. Not too bad.
 
Re: Senran Kagura Thread - Shinovi Versus EU censored

It seems they didn't even bother sending it to the rating boards with the subtitles intact in the first place though. They removed them beforehand incase the rating board *might* have had a problem (and let's be honest, out of all the ones to have issues, it would most likely have only been Germany) - and in that case, why not have a censored version for Germany only? (like Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty, many other games).

Censorship (that is only announced after the game releases) alongside a digital only release is very disappointing. Glad I opted to just import the Physical Edition.
 
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