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owsf2000Ok according to this post over on Nintendo Life NIS is seriously running dry on funds. Apparently the blame is being placed entirely on their Disgaea RPG game - a mobile game service. And yeah I'm sure that thing would be a micro-transaction infected cancer. Supposedly it was launched in March but due to various issues nobody's been able to download it yet. Which I'm sure causes problems with the business plan.
I don't know if this includes NIS America or if it's ultimately just the Japanese company that's in trouble. I'd assume they're kinda joined at the hip though.
I say this as someone who use to be a fairly huge NIS fan from the PS2 days. Good riddance!
Sorry I can't be any more supportive of them than that but they lost me as a fan when they became massive DLC whores in the PS3 era and onward with anywhere from 50-150 dollars of DLC per game. ALL of it being in the "Bad DLC" categories I explained previously. Stat boosts, Level boosts, good boosts, free item packs, purchased item packs, new classes (things you would unlock in previous disgaea games), bonus stages (ditto), etc. All that cut out of the game design formula to be DLC that effectively doubled to tripled the cost of the game if you wanted the "Full Game Experience".
They never learned their lesson and ultimately they got put on the boycott list for me several times. It seemed every time I lowered the boycott to give them a chance they showed as a company that there was no reason for me to have done so. Naturally half of this ire belongs to NIS America which I doubt the Japanese branch had any say in - or any care about, but like a franchised business, the shame of one international branch falls on all international branches as far as I'm concerned.
Did a quick check on the PSN store for Disgaea games and I guess they got a -little- better with their DLC whoring. Most of the games that popped up there had no DLC because they were streaming-only games from earlier systems. Can't count those really, but let's look at Disgaea 4. It had a bunch of DLC that would have totaled probably about 40-50 bucks (20 things listed not including the season pass, a couple of those are free etc, but the costs of them are between 1.99 to 3.99 or something. So we'll assume about 40 bucks.
The Season pass is 24.99. All the DLC listed falls into the Bad Categories. Ripped out jobs/classes, special characters, and episodes. Disgaea games tend to flow like an episodic game although traditionally you at least get all the episodes as part of the purchase on the disc.
Oh, and to help encourage season passes, one of the special characters which I guess they feel is desirable by the fans more than others, is only available if you buy the season pass.
Their Disgaea Complete games seem to have no Bad DLC although they certainly have a hell of a lot of $0.99 avatar pics to buy. Some only as a batch. I wouldn't bother counting that against them, but you'd have to remember that they have the DLC bundled in here. I assume. They do mention in the desc about what DLCs are added to the Complete edition but I'd have to look at a physical edition of the game to find out if that DLC is actually on the disc or given via a one-use DLC coupon. I can't even say for sure that "Well it's not listed separately as DLC on PSN so obviously it's baked into the game itself!" because I've seen instances where a free DLC coupon for a game wasn't otherwise listed in the store. You either had a coupon for it or you did without.
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, NIS sucks. Sad to see devs lose their jobs but if they're good at their job they'll be able to find work easily elsewhere or even start up their own new group. If NIS actually focused on developing complete games all this time instead of almost leading the charge on nickel and diming the masses they'd probably have more than enough fans left to buy up their new releases each time to keep the money flowing. Lord knows I was eager to buy up anything with NIS on it in the PS2 era, and I was -just- starting to order directly from their online shop for collectors editions of just about everything when the DLC shitstorm hit.
I don't know if this includes NIS America or if it's ultimately just the Japanese company that's in trouble. I'd assume they're kinda joined at the hip though.
I say this as someone who use to be a fairly huge NIS fan from the PS2 days. Good riddance!
Sorry I can't be any more supportive of them than that but they lost me as a fan when they became massive DLC whores in the PS3 era and onward with anywhere from 50-150 dollars of DLC per game. ALL of it being in the "Bad DLC" categories I explained previously. Stat boosts, Level boosts, good boosts, free item packs, purchased item packs, new classes (things you would unlock in previous disgaea games), bonus stages (ditto), etc. All that cut out of the game design formula to be DLC that effectively doubled to tripled the cost of the game if you wanted the "Full Game Experience".
They never learned their lesson and ultimately they got put on the boycott list for me several times. It seemed every time I lowered the boycott to give them a chance they showed as a company that there was no reason for me to have done so. Naturally half of this ire belongs to NIS America which I doubt the Japanese branch had any say in - or any care about, but like a franchised business, the shame of one international branch falls on all international branches as far as I'm concerned.
Did a quick check on the PSN store for Disgaea games and I guess they got a -little- better with their DLC whoring. Most of the games that popped up there had no DLC because they were streaming-only games from earlier systems. Can't count those really, but let's look at Disgaea 4. It had a bunch of DLC that would have totaled probably about 40-50 bucks (20 things listed not including the season pass, a couple of those are free etc, but the costs of them are between 1.99 to 3.99 or something. So we'll assume about 40 bucks.
The Season pass is 24.99. All the DLC listed falls into the Bad Categories. Ripped out jobs/classes, special characters, and episodes. Disgaea games tend to flow like an episodic game although traditionally you at least get all the episodes as part of the purchase on the disc.
Oh, and to help encourage season passes, one of the special characters which I guess they feel is desirable by the fans more than others, is only available if you buy the season pass.
Their Disgaea Complete games seem to have no Bad DLC although they certainly have a hell of a lot of $0.99 avatar pics to buy. Some only as a batch. I wouldn't bother counting that against them, but you'd have to remember that they have the DLC bundled in here. I assume. They do mention in the desc about what DLCs are added to the Complete edition but I'd have to look at a physical edition of the game to find out if that DLC is actually on the disc or given via a one-use DLC coupon. I can't even say for sure that "Well it's not listed separately as DLC on PSN so obviously it's baked into the game itself!" because I've seen instances where a free DLC coupon for a game wasn't otherwise listed in the store. You either had a coupon for it or you did without.
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, NIS sucks. Sad to see devs lose their jobs but if they're good at their job they'll be able to find work easily elsewhere or even start up their own new group. If NIS actually focused on developing complete games all this time instead of almost leading the charge on nickel and diming the masses they'd probably have more than enough fans left to buy up their new releases each time to keep the money flowing. Lord knows I was eager to buy up anything with NIS on it in the PS2 era, and I was -just- starting to order directly from their online shop for collectors editions of just about everything when the DLC shitstorm hit.
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Date: 2019-05-22 06:46 pm (UTC)But then, I'm still (futilely) hoping for a full industry-wide crash that would wipe out all of the bad actors. E.g. EA (and BioWare), Activision (and Blizzard), Microsoft Games (or, hell, just Microsoft in general), etc. May their rotten, bloated corpses fertilize the ground for the growth of hopefully better, less scuzzy, less anti-consumer companies to follow. It'll never happen in my lifetime, though, I'm sure. ¬_¬