Hollow_Ninja
Member
Xelloss said:
Sooo... the PSP phone wont play PSP games?Anyhow, theres still a chance they will open up. They will have to if they plan to survive in the mobile/handheld market. But it is Sony, so they might just go down in a flaming heap.
No, it won't play PSP games.
And obviously, PSPhone development will be open, but PSP development (thankfully, because otherwise we'd get too much shovelware) won't be. The PSPhone will play PS1 games, but not PSP games.
Xelloss
Member
Thats unfortunate, and somewhat surprising.
I wholeheartedly disagree about closed development being a good thing though,I think it simply guarantees that their new phone will be a nonfactor (as a platform, it may be a popular Android phone model), and they are effectively ceding the mobile platform space to Nintendo, Apple and Google. The last thing most mobile developers care about is yet another niche platform that has limited market penetration.
Also, where did you get this info? I have yet to find good sources on the PSP phone, all the articles I read were pretty ambiguous on what the phone will actually do and what Sonys plans are.
Xelloss
Member
Hollow_Ninja said:
The PSPhone is not the PSP2. This has been officially announced. The rest can easily be deduced.
Noone ever though PSPhone was PSP2, where did you get that idea?
However it is extremely reasonable to "deduce" a "PSP Phone" may in fact be capable of playing PSP games. As in PSP 1. Frankly, the fact that Sony has demonstrated such an extreme lack of strategic prowess over the past several years is all that makes it reasonable to conjecture that a PSP phone might NOT play PSP1 games.
Hollow_Ninja
Member
Xelloss said:
Noone ever though PSPhone was PSP2, where did you get that idea?However it is extremely reasonable to "deduce" a "PSP Phone" may in fact be capable of playing PSP games. As in PSP 1. Frankly, the fact that Sony has demonstrated such an extreme lack of strategic prowess over the past several years is all that makes it reasonable to conjecture that a PSP phone might NOT play PSP1 games.
Except we've already seen its capability to play PS1 games. And we also know that it's processing capabilities aren't particularly great.
Now, you may point out that it's a prototype, and while that's certainly true, if Sony was planning to make this capable of PSP games, I can guarantee they'd have gone with much more powerful hardware right off the bat.
Plus, there's commercial issues to consider. Sony just released the Go, and the PSP2 is coming out soon. The PSP is still going to be actively developed on, for a little while though. So do you really think they'll completely undercut their own sales by making a phone capable of playing PSP games? That kind of support is rarely extended to consoles that aren't dead. They'd basically be killing off their own PSP.
Reider
Member
Davin said:
Growlanser 5 was also a worse game, hands down. :\ I actually liked Growlanser Generations and bought 5 without doing my research first.(Disclaimer: I am a person on the internets with an opinion.)
I certainly won't argue with you on that point, but I do wish that since they brought that one over, they would've brought VI as well since it was a sequel to V. Out of all of them though, I really wanted to see IV simply due to how much I liked the main character's appearance. :P
caddyalan
Member
They've already rejected 1 & 2, unfortunately. Visual novels have a tough time getting to the states; we're lucky we got V.
As you said, the English-speaking VN fandom is still pretty small. There are a few companies that professionally translate titles, mostly for PC, though each of them have a less-than-positive legacy (few if any non-porn games, few attempts to reach new audiences, lots of low quality translations). There are people and groups that create their own visual novels in English, and a few who release them as commercial indie games... though except for The Chaos Gateway, no one has managed to publish on consoles. Also in fandom, there's fan translators, and a few people who only play untranslated games.
That said, it's tough to be optimistic about the future of Sakura Wars, for the following reasons:
1 - Apparently only a few people bought the English version of the fifth game.
2 - The fourth game in the series is not well regarded. RPGFan's review of the untranslated version of Sakura Wars 5 regards the game as a return to form, which is kind of a backhanded compliment.
3 - The original two games in the series have been ported to a bunch of platforms, but the only translations are Russian and Chinese (see this VNDB entry: http://vndb.org/v952 ), and I don't know if the games have aged well.
4 - Things aren't looking all that great for SEGA. Back in the Saturn-Dreamcast era, the company created a few VNs based on series. But the company's only VN in the last four years was Imabikisou, a horror story, created along with Chunsoft.
5 - Red Entertainment seems to be struggling as well -- some of its recent high profile games include Nostalgia and Fossil Fighters. That said, the company also released an otome game equivalent of Sakura Wars, called Scarred Rider Zechs (see this blog entry: http://lijaka.com/blog/2010/03/scared-rider-xechs ), though it's only on PS2 at the moment.
That said, I don't expect any more Sakura Wars games in English, unless someone fan translates the Windows versions, or unless someone creates a fangame.
Kuroishi
Member
I wouldn't be shocked if sakura taisen 1-3 made its way over. I wouldn't be shocked either if 4 was bypassed all together... It was dreadful. (I have all 4 on dreamcast) With Red and Sega needing money im sure that its easier for companies like NISAmerica and others to get the licenses.
I have hope, though unlikely...
innuendologist
Member
About ST4 being bad, both reviews of it on RPGfan seem positive and one guy brought up that everyone he knew that had played those games thought 5 was the worst.
http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/sakurataisen4/Sakura_Taisen_4.html
http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/sakurataisen4/Sakura_Taisen_4-2.html
http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/sakurataisen4/Sakura_Taisen_4-3.html
and Growlanser
http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/growlanser/Growlanser.html
PurpleDoom
Member
Kuroishi said:
I wouldn't be shocked if sakura taisen 1-3 made its way over. I wouldn't be shocked either if 4 was bypassed all together... It was dreadful. (I have all 4 on dreamcast) With Red and Sega needing money im sure that its easier for companies like NISAmerica and others to get the licenses.I have hope, though unlikely...
It's not that the licenses are hard to get - obviously it's possible, since V got translated. The problem lies more in that Sony of America isn't allowing them to publish it in America. I remember reading that one company got ahold of I & II for PSP, but Sony didn't let them release it.
Sad Panda
Member
PurpleDoom said:
It's not that the licenses are hard to get - obviously it's possible, since V got translated. The problem lies more in that Sony of America isn't allowing them to publish it in America. I remember reading that one company got ahold of I & II for PSP, but Sony didn't let them release it.
Yes, because "they are not games", which is a very odd statement to make even if you'd buy the (nonsense) argument that SW isn't a game. I don't know about SoA, but here in Europe we have official PSP software that aren't games. Travel guides for one. And considering how well the non-games on the DS have been doing, I don't understand the reasoning. It sounds like someone at SoA just simply doesn't personally like visual novels.
Anyway, SoA gave permission to release Disgaea Infinity, which is even more of a visual novel than Sakura Wars. They just can't make up their minds. Oh, Sony.
innuendologist
Member
Sad Panda said:
Yes, because "they are not games", which is a very odd statement to make even if you'd buy the (nonsense) argument that SW isn't a game. I don't know about SoA, but here in Europe we have official PSP software that aren't games. Travel guides for one. And considering how well the non-games on the DS have been doing, I don't understand the reasoning. It sounds like someone at SoA just simply doesn't personally like visual novels.Anyway, SoA gave permission to release Disgaea Infinity, which is even more of a visual novel than Sakura Wars. They just can't make up their minds. Oh, Sony.
I saw someplace that Infinite was allowed because it was so short, and that seems like a stupid reason to allow it since we should want as much content as we can get for a certain price.
Ironically, Sony actually published a couple recent "non-games" like EyePet and to an extent Invisimals could be called a non-game too.
Hollow_Ninja
Member
I get the idea that it's basically just that. I think someone high up in Sony just doesn't like VNs and Japanese RPGs in general.
But there's also the fact that we don't know when Sakura Wars had its shot. It was released in Japan in 2006, so it could have been anytime after that. 2006 was before non-games started to become popular. Disgaea Infinite might have gone through due to a policy change.
Another thing is that NISA and Sony have a very close relationship. It's akin to what Insomniac has with Sony, almost. So maybe they took advantage of that relationship to get Disgaea through.
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