What do people think of Idea Factory setting up a US office?

http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2013/10/idea-factory-internationals-ceo-on-sony.html

This news surprised me a lot - Idea Factory and Compile Heart are the nichest of niche developers outside of Japan, but they seem to take the US/ Europe market quite seriously....

I hope it means more localisations. As a fan of Compile Heart I hate having to wait and see if THIS game that I'm interested in is going to be localised or not. Still have no idea of the Hyperdimension games on Vita will make their way out west, for instance.

It did strike me as odd. Personally, I would love to see sales figures/profit reports from the games they choose to localize, though the gaming industry isn't really known for its transparency when it comes to financials.

I think you know how I feel about it.

Shaan Joshi wrote:It did strike me as odd. Personally, I would love to see sales figures/profit reports from the games they choose to localize, though the gaming industry isn't really known for its transparency when it comes to financials.

Well, it hasn't been Compile Heart that has localised the games. It's been NISA. And Compile Heart apparently won't be localising games still - this office is just for marketing - to promote Compile Heart games... apparently?

But Compile Heart's market is so incredibly tiny (given that, frankly, the people that are inclined to enjoy these games already buy them), that I can't see Compile Heart increasing the market for its game.

So what's the office going to do? I have no idea. It seems like a very strange business decision to me. I can only assume one of two things:

1) An Idea Factory employee decided to move to the US, but wanted to keep his job. So they set up this office to allow him to do that (it happens all the time).

2) Idea Factory is not happy with the work that NISA, Ghostlight and Aksys have done, and so are taking on the job themselves. I hope to high heaven this isn't the case, because it's bad news for NISA, especially, if that's the case.

3) NISA, Ghostlight and Aksys have decided to stop localising Idea Factory titles because they don't perform well enough in the market, and Idea Factory is now desparate to find new partners. I hope to high heaven this isn't the case, because it's bad news for Idea Factory and means that there is literally no chance for a Monster Monpiece localisation.

I was surprised, but it was cool all the same. I had never heard of Compile Heart or Idea Factory before getting into Record of Agarest War. I loved the first two games (struggling a bit to find my footing with Agarest 2 however). Unfortunately Matt, while Scenario 1 seems like the best one overall, it's most likely 2 or 3 on some level. Hope not, but you never know.

Yeah, I do find myself questioning this move from a business perspective. Scenario three there is particularly concerning on a personal level since they've published or developed a few titles I'm rather fond of like the latest Generation of Chaos game. I'm hoping things don't end disastrously, but hey, maybe there's something we're not seeing and this turns out fine.