In a recent interview with encubed, MangaGamer translator John (aka Kouryuu on the net) touched upon the company’s current translation process. He pointed out that improving the quality of their translations has been one of the publisher’s primary concerns, and that scripts now go through more quality-control passes than they did in the past.
John went on to address the sales side of their business, citing KiraKira and Higurashi as examples of games that haven’t sold as well as hoped. "As it stands, they’re nowhere near as high as we wish they’d be. If our sales could reach those goals, it would be much easier for us to license some of the games that are out of our reach right now," he told encubed.
As one would suspect, piracy has taken its toll on sales as well, and is a factor that hinders the process of acquiring new licenses. John elaborated further: "For a multi-million-dollar console game developer, a few hundred or a thousand copies lost isn’t very significant, but for a small company like ours, every single loss hurts. As it stands, our best seller, Shuffle, has still only sold half the copies we’d like it to, and our next best sellers, Da Capo, Higurashi, and Kira Kira, have sold even less. People have asked us about whether or not we would ever publish hard copy print-runs, but the fact of the matter is that those are impossible if we can’t anticipate sales equating our current goal."
Be sure to check out the entire interview for hints at upcoming MangaGamer licenses, including another game from [KiraKira developer] Overdrive.
