2016 in Review

2016inreviewHappy new year everyone! With a brand new year ahead of us (and our 10th anniversary approaching––yes, 10th!), it seems appropriate to take a moment to look back at the last year.

2016 was quite a year for us. We got off to a rocky start with fraudsters targeting Steam keys crippling our website for a terrifying couple of weeks! But we came back from it and we came back strong getting Kindred Sprits (and later Gahkthun too) released on Steam uncensored and putting out 19 games, including not one, but three games from our new partners at Alicesoft, and our first otome game in addition to––in an entirely new category for us at that––four drama CDs this year! We also announced seventeen new games from seven new partners this year and brought three amazing guests to Anime Expo.

Without further ado, what you’ve all been waiting for: the 2016 top 10s!

beatbladesharuka-onsale

First Party Titles (MangaGamer.com, excluding bundle sales)

  1. Beat Blades Haruka
  2. Funbag Fantasy
  3. Imouto Paradise!
  4. Rance VI & 5D
  5. Princess Evangile
  6. euphoria
  7. EROGE! Sex and Games Make Sexy Games
  8. Kindred Spirits on the Roof
  9. Ultimate☆Boob Wars!!
  10. NO, THANK YOU!!!

Alicesoft’s titles are off to an extremely strong start along with our first Waffle game. A number of old familiars remain extremely popular as well––it’s getting hard to imagine a year end top 10 without Imouto Paradise, Eroge and Ultimate Boob Wars.

Meanwhile in our growing third party catalogue we see the return of a few familiars from last year in addition to a number of newer releases:

Third Party Titles (MangaGamer.com)

  1. Negligee – Adult Deluxe
  2. No One But You – Adult Version
  3. Orc Castle
  4. HuniePop
  5. Club Life – Adult Version
  6. The Menagerie
  7. Detective Masochist – The Case of the Femdom Torture –
  8. Beach Bounce – Adult Version
  9. The Stargazers – Adult Version
  10. Busty Maid: Creampie Heaven!

And now that we finally have enough titles on Steam to have a meaningful top 10 ranking, here are the Steam standings!

kindredspirits-on

Steam Releases

  1. Kindred Spirits on the Roof
  2. OZMAFIA!!
  3. Umineko Question Arcs
  4. eden*
  5. Higurashi Hou Bundle
  6. Tokyo Babel
  7. Higurashi Ch. 3 Tatarigoroshi
  8. Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning
  9. The House in Fata Morgana
  10. Higurashi Ch. 1 Onikakushi

The flavor of the Steam standings is a bit different, with a number of games that didn’t even make it to the top 10 on our site showing up, like OZMAFIA!! finding it’s way to the number two spot for example. Kindred Spirits was also a big hit on Steam, proving that there really is a place for visual novels with a more mature take on sexuality in that marketplace.

We have a lot in store for the coming year too, so we hope to enjoy your continued support! Be sure to keep your eyes peeled next week for the launch of our 2017 licensing survey!

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38 Comments

  1. Wow, did sonohanabira really sell that badly?

    Thats really disappointing to hear…

    • It’s been on the chart for a while. Even if it’s not in the top 10, it should be doing okay.

      I get the feeling it would have been on there if Rance didn’t show up at the last week of December.

    • I agree that’s definitely disappointing. I hope it doesn’t hinder future titles and the numerous untranslated ones.

    • It was just recently released, so it didn’t have much time to make an impact I guess. On the other hand, it was rather highly requested in the surveys, so initial sales could have been expected to be better. At least Rance sales were pretty strong despite it’s short time on sale.

  2. I’m just hoping this year is not sequels but different titles. So many non-funbags games by Waffle that looks amazing. I also hope we get Shuffle Essence+ because Japan need to figure out that they are off market with that on Steam.

  3. why the hell everyone loves nukige? too bad a good story vn is didnt sell well
    im sad

  4. Damn, Rance raped his way throughout the competition in only a month (and that’s only if you include the preorder period).

    Imopara being third is impressive, but Rance will probably rape them next year, gahaha.

    • YES!!!! Tired of all these soft non-gameplay titles. Need more Alicesoft. NEED MORE RANCE!

      • Preferably Rance QUEST and IX! I really hope Mangagamer won’t waste time and money with a title that’s already been translated like Sengoku Rance. The sales will be drastically inferior in comparison to the other Rance titles. And in this period where Alicesoft is still judging the market, sales are most important!

        Oh well, my message is probably too late either way. The next Rance title has probably already been selected, being among the 5 secret projects. Maybe Mangagamer will be kind enough to deliver two titles at once?

        • Lord knows I want me some Rance Quest, but I’d love to see Daiteikoku released as well.

        • We are going to get Sengoku. The translator’s that have worked on Alicesoft stuff are huge into lore and the proper experience so no way they’ll skip the not consistent translation best game of the series. And I think Alicesoft are done judging the market now that both of their games are in the top ten.

        • Sorry but I seriously doubt that an enhanced version of the most popular Rance title would have “drastically” inferior sales. There are some people that are new to the Rance series that aren’t going to hunt around for a fan translation, as well as some that played it before and want to purchase an official English localization but don’t even know Sengoku Rance is part of a series of titles (so they won’t be purchasing other Rance titles until they find Sengoku Rance on MangaGamer). Also there are many people (myself included) that have played Sengoku Rance and are very eager to purchase an official English localization in both digital and physical.

          But even if you are right MangaGamer would be excluding 1 out of 10 Rance games for no reason other than saving time (since there is virtually no chance of Sengoku Rance not at least breaking even), which ironically skipping Sengoku Rance would actually not do anyway because the translator for Rance Quest is unavailable to translate it until the Sorcery Jokers translation is completed. There is also the problem that there is no low price version of Rance Quest available in Japan yet, so the option of localizing it may not even be available to MangaGamer at this point in time due to cost.

  5. Any updates on BokuTen?

    Its been pretty long since I last heard an update for it.

    • Hi, Bokuten’s translator here. The game is still in porting, but we’re still hoping for an early-ish 2017 release. Once the port itself is done and the game enters beta testing, we should be able to give a more reliable estimate on when it will be released.

      • Ah! I’m glad to hear that, I’ve been looking forward to BokuTen for quite a while. It’s just, the premise of the game and the characters really make it sound like it will be quite amazing. An asexual protagonist who believes in neither love nor happiness meets an angel who was born to bring both those things into the world… Sounds like a pretty good setting for a story if you ask me. Thanks for translating it!

        By the way, do you know how If You Love Me, Then Say So! is coming along? Is that one just a plain visual novel, or does it have dating sim elements or other gimmicks attached to it?

        I’m looking forward to anything Alice Soft related as well, especially anything to do with Rance. Perhaps Evenicle will get translated at some point too.

  6. Nice to see eden* still doing well on Steam. Any chance this could help it (well, Mosaic Plus, really) to get a hard copy release as well?

  7. Hope this means prospects are good for more in the Kyonyuu Fantasy series (and other Waffle titles)

  8. The audience for steam is pretty interesting. I guess this means more games like kindred spirits and more otome games being translated.

    • Ozmafia selling well on Steam is interesting. I wonder if it’s because women are more willing to buy on Steam or if it’s simply because the Steam version had trading cards unlike the MG store version.

  9. Are steam sales excluded from the First Party Titles toplist?

  10. Still holding out hope for more Lilith. Although OrcSoft’s games are slowly becoming popular nukige.

  11. I’m not really happy with the separation of First Party titles and Steam titles, because it now makes it almost impossible to compare them to each other. Technically we now got a top ten list of nukiges and a top ten list of all-ages story titles. The top ten lists in previous years were more useful because both were merged together.

    • Okay, apparently Steam titles were not included at all so this is probably better than before.
      Still, wouldn’t it have been possible to merge those two lists with a bit of Excel-Fu?

  12. Happy to see NTY in the top 10 still. Please bring us some bara games in 2017.

  13. Great to see Moonstone titles still selling well. Also, what an amazing showing by Kindred Spirits – making both lists. Very strange to see Higurashi Ch. 3 and Ch. 1 but not Ch. 2.

  14. People just wanting to check Higurashi out are going to start at chapter 1. Chapter 3 is more recent than chapter 2; people who want chapter 2 are more likely to already have it.

  15. No updates on kuroinu?

    • It was announced almost 2 years ago. For a game that was split into multiple parts it’s sadly taking a long while to get released.

      I’d hate to see how long it would’ve taken if it wasn’t split.

      • I know… but on the project list, it showed 100% translated a month ago so I’m surprised they haven’t posted anything about it being beta testing or porting.

  16. Any word on when the licensing survey will be available?

  17. It did lose a translator at one point as well as that translator doing another project while on Kuroinu but yeah, that projects taking its sweet time.

  18. I’m just glad to see Clockup still doing well. Those games are the best for high quality story while still being high quality eroge

  19. I’m impressed that Rance VI was released a few days before the end of the year and made it into the top 4.

    This basically means that it sold more copies in a few days than most titles throughout a whole year. And as a fan of Alicesoft games, this makes me extremely happy ~

    😀

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