2015 In Review

yearinreview

What an exciting year 2015 was for us! We brought thirteen excellent titles to the English market last year with eight of them also available on Steam and added a number of very successful third-party titles to our growing catalogue of visual novels. Our audience continues to grow thanks in no small part to Steam and a greater awareness of visual novels in general. With the successful release of our first BL game (the first in the English market in nearly a decade), we’re also reaching a broader audience than ever before. Without further ado, let’s take a look at how things ranked this year!

Blog_Evangile

For our first-party titles, the 2015 ranking looks like this (excluding Steam and bundle sales):

1. Princess Evangile
2. eden*
3. No, Thank You!!!
4. Imouto Paradise
5. Eroge! Sex and Games Make Sexy Games
6. Demon Master Chris
7. euphoria
8. Sweet Sweat in Summer
9. Ultimate Boob Wars!
10. Higurashi Hou Ch. 1 Onikakushi

Fun fact: nearly everything in the top 10 would have outranked 2014’s first-place ranking title!

While nukige still take up the majority of slots again this year, story-focused titles are gaining ground, taking the top three (by a significant margin at that). ClockUp seems to be the favorite developer this year, with NTY!!!, Eroge and euphoria all making it into the top 10, but MOONSTONE isn’t far behind with both their titles ranking and Evangile taking the top spot. Every day we’re getting closer to the next milestone in the minori funding project thanks to eden*’s success both on and off Steam.

For the third-party titles the top five are:

1. HuniePop
2. Beach Bounce
3. The Menagerie
4. Divine Slice of Life
5. Sakura Santa

Interestingly, while HuniePop would outrank our first place first-party title in terms of copies moved, it would only place fourth if we ranked the titles by gross revenue. We’ve been pleased to see the growing ambitions of English-speaking visual novel developers over the past year and can’t wait to see what they have in store for us this year.

On the more internal side of things, our staff has continued to grow and we’ve been more committed to producing releases of the highest quality than ever over the past year. From the poll results we can tell you’re all very excited for much of what we have in store for 2016 (that you know about so far at least~), but that’s for another post!

If you entered the best-of-2015 poll drawing, check your e-mail to see if you’ve won!

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22 Comments

  1. Beach Bounce #2 of third party titles? WTF!? If that is the case then it must only be cause everyone went and bought it on steam expecting something when it turned out to be shit. Seriously, I’m looking at the poll right now, the voting graph says 1.76% out of 100%. Where are the Sakura games, freaking “Highschool Romance” got a higher vote. Am I missing something in what constitutes that? The game wasn’t complete when it launch (and no body told us this), the story was cut TWICE. And now the entire development has cut. Promising a remaster however, but who knows if that will actually happen.
    “Our staff has continued to grow and we’ve been more committed to producing releases of the highest quality than ever over the past year”.
    I sure hope that is the case, cause you all really fucked up with that one. It makes me miss the days of Softhouse Seal, at those those games knew what the hell they were doing and what they were. They were “actually” erotic and made it so you could get some shit’s and giggles with the deal.
    It is great that you work with at home developer to get English out there, but you at least could do a fucking quality check to make sure customers

    • I’m fairly sure that outside of the recent sakura * titles(which they’ve supposedly lent their editing staff to), mangagamer doesn’t have anything to do with third party titles beyond offering a place to sell them uncensored. I’d just avoid anything that isn’t a first party title or a developer that you trust.

    • Except for Sakura Santa, all of those games offered uncensored adult versions through MangaGamer. Most Sakura games are “all ages” (despite being quite ecchi) so there’s little incentive to buy from MangaGamer over Steam. Also I think you might be confused as to what “third party” means – third party games are developed exclusively by a non-MangaGamer party (third party) and MangaGamer’s involvement is simply offering a storefront for it to be sold from.

  2. Great to see the MOONSTONE titles listed so high. They are easily my favorite company MangaGamer works with and I’d love to see more titles from them.

    HuniePop placing fourth by gross revenue – for a ten dollar title that a lot of people bought without going through MangaGamer – that is an incredibly high revenue number.

    I’d love to see a top ten list of the top selling games since MangaGamer started. It seems like Eroge! and Demon Master Chris just never stop selling.

  3. I agree with JJ, MOONSTONE is definitely the best of the affiliated companies. Princess Evangile not only takes top spot of favorite VNs, but was probably my favorite out of anything I played in 2015. The only downside (which is my main excitement for PE w Happiness) was the lack of a route for Kotori. There’s some good stuff coming down the pipeline. I’d love to see this kickstarter for Libra of the Vampire Princess really take off.

  4. And with perfect timing for this, my Princess Evangile bundle just arrived today. ^_^ The huge envelope may not have been the best way to package it, though, as the wallscroll had managed to rip open one of its corners by the way it got here and the slipcase had acquired some creases as well, but all in all, it arrived safely and that’s what’s most important, especially with this being your first time to do such bundles. Definitely very happy with it despite the minor troubles, thank you!

  5. Given that Imouto Paradise was 2014’s top title (here: https://blog.mangagamer.org/2015/01/26/look-back-at-2014/), this means that Imopara sold more copies in 2015 than it did in 2014? That’s … very unusual. And good news for Imopara 2.

  6. It’s really great to see No, Thank You!!! be in the top three. I hope we’ll hear of some more BL announcements from MangaGamer soon, particularly of the bara variety.

  7. I think mangagamer is kind of underselling how big 2015 was for them. They sold more in 2015 than in every single year prior combined going by order numbers.

    • They had a number of bundles this year that sold for pennies on the dollar and had more sales than prior years. The revenue from these thousands of sales would be much lower than the usual full price sales.

  8. I am kinda surprised that Go Go Nippon didn’t make it in this year after being in the top 10 for the past 2 years and getting an update this year.

  9. Interesting to see how titles did thanks for posting.

  10. Kara no Shoujo 2 deserves much more love…

    • This! I just hope they made something on it, at least enough to consider licensing a sequel if/when InnoGrey get around to it.

  11. I’m pretty satisfied with the first three places, especially with Princess Evangile and Eden taking top spots. Maybe there’s a brighter future for quality moeges now than in the nukige dominated recent years.

    Still, seeing the three biggest nukiges from the last years in the top ten again is a strong indicator what our ‘new friends from Steam’ were going for. They should have gone for Koihime Musou – so much better! At least Boob Wars 1 didn’t make it into the top ten again – that would have given me a sleepless night.

    Having the scat & torture nukige Euphoria outsold by three titles from recent years is a bit of a relieve even if I would have preferred to not see it in the top ten at all. But having it beaten even by cute little Demon Master Chris already feels like a triumph.

    Kara no Shoujo 2 not making it to the top ten was to be expected. It’s a petty, but it doesn’t hurt as much as Cartagra last year considering it was Innocent Grey’s weakest title so far.

    The titles last year could have been better though. IMHO only Eden deserved to be called ‘good’, the rest of the titles was average at best. Except ‘No Thank You!’ maybe, but I didn’t play that. But since I’m also reading Japanese titles now, it wasn’t a big problem because I was able to pick better alternatives.

    • Even if KnS2 was the weakest title of all Innocent Grey’s catalog, it would still be WAY MORE BETTER than Princess Evangile and co. moeshit. The real reason why it was expected was because of people shit taste. Period.

  12. I loved A Kiss For The Petals. Hope that more titles of the series are coming next.

    And I’m really eager for Kindred Spirits. Can’t wait to make a Yuritopia!!!

    Besides that, I only played Demon Master Chris. I would love to see more yuri titles.

  13. The list is okay. Could be better. Could be worse. I really liked Princess Evangile, so I’m quite happy that it did so well. I also like the higher quality nukige titles like Eroge! and ImoPara. The only one that I’m disappointed that it’s on the list is No, Thank You, but that’s because I don’t like BL.

    The real good news is that it sounds like sales are increasing.

    The list reminded me that I still need to pick up eden* and euphoria sometime.

  14. Very interesting, thanks for posting this.

    Seems like euphoria did well, considering it came out at the end of November. I’m relieved, because I believe that variety for different audiences is good, and it keeps it interesting. Seems like 2016 will have that variety,.

    Euphoria was my first purchase on mangagamer, and it let to others like gahkthun. Can’t wait for the new releases!

  15. Hope the success of so many Clock Up games gets us Eromanga! and Maggot Baits and maybe convinces the creators of No, Thank You!! to make a sequel or fandisk (we do have three unwinnable guys I wouldn’t mind seeing routes for)

  16. Euphoria taking 7th and having only 2 months worth of sales is good, and hopefully an indicator that we may get more extreme games. *coughmaggotbaits*

    Looks like Sweet Sweat was a little too niche for some people, but the statement that most of the top 10 outranked last years number 1 is reassuring.

    Kudos to Moonstone for making 2 of the top 4. Myself didn’t pick up Evangile, but I did get ImoPara and look forward to (hopefully) playing its sequel.

  17. 2015 was the best year for eroge ever (and VN in general.) Been reading for about 10 years now.
    I’ve been following and supporting Mangagamer since before they released for 64bit OS (a DRM thing I think.) and while it’ll probably not be possible to come out of the closet during my lifetime, it’s exhilerating to know this kind of immersive fiction is really starting to take root in the west.

    It almost seemed like a joint effort when Mangagamer and Jast released a full on japan-calibre hardcore title this year (Euphoria & Starless), which was before now unseen in my opinion. Okay we had tentacles and raped some queens, but they were never anything like what I’ve been reading under license and officially translated this year. I’ll be more than thrilled if 2016 holds something similar in store.
    Don’t get me wrong I like and buy moe just as much, but it would be nice if the community would recognize that hentai has a pitch black dark side that’s very much worth exploring if you can stomach it.

    I’m looking forward to 2016 with high hopes all around. New players joining on all ends and hopefully an unseen increase in titles to buy and enjoy. I never would have thought it would come this far but it did and I couldn’t feel better about my support to this site and others.

    Got a 3d party pre-order for Princess Evangile hard copy that I’m really looking forward to, so with that said: congrats on the great sales!

    Thank you for enabling me to quit mainstream gaming.

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