Direction of future 5pb ports (if any)

[StarCreator]

I was totally going to post this in the Ketsui thread, but I figured this was divergent enough that I might as well just make a new topic...

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but my observations of what have happened in the last year or two are:

• 5pb licenses DOJBL and Ketsui with the intention of releasing ports to XBLA.  Microsoft shoots them down, so we get full price disc-based releases, years later.
• Despite denying 5pb of their XBLA ports, Microsoft approves Cave's XBLA port of Guwange. (It probably helped they actually finished porting the game before seeking approval.)
• Cave themselves pretty much say via their blog that they're not interested in porting the majority of their back catalog, preferring instead to stick to new stuff.

So with all this, and if (and it's still a pretty big if) 5pb licenses more Cave properties down the line, do you think they should start attempting to get their ports on XBLA instead of releasing them to disc?

I know there's quite a few of you here opposed to anything not released on a physical medium, but an XBLA release would be virtually guaranteed to be worldwide and thus a lot more accessible, and while I love 5pb's presentation (Ketsui is flawless in terms of UI design and speed if not a tad lacking in visual appeal, and DOJBLEX's menus were beautiful even if they took 5 minutes to load and weren't rotatable) I still have a hard time feeling most gamers beyond our niche are going to be willing to continue paying for full-priced disc releases.

[EOJ]

Cave said getting Guwange on XBLA was a big pain in the ass - took them months of negotiations with MS. They probably only got approval due to the great sales of their ports (especially DS), and it could very well be a 'one time deal'.

I don't think we'll see any more Cave ports from 5pb. They have an 'original' shooting game coming up and nothing else announced, which indicates to me that they are more set on making new games instead of porting old ones - after all is said and done I doubt they actually came out with a profit on the Cave ports due to all the money they had to pay Arika for the DDPDOJBLEX port and the development costs involved in the slow and troublesome Ketsui development process. In fact, they may have lost money.

[cstarflare]

It's exciting, but I wonder if either party is really interested in continuing the relationship. The DOJ debacle (still not entirely cleaned up) plus the fact that Ketsui seemed to take a lot of work makes me wonder if they consider it to be really worth it.

I suppose it depends a lot on Ketsui's sales. I'm more looking forward to what M2's doing.

[zakk]

Yeah, I'm not so sure that 5pb is going to be porting anything else soon. While they may have arrived at the end of the journey with a good Ketsui port, they created significant problems for multiple people (and companies) along the way. I agree with EOJ; 5pb didn't come out of this with a financial win. Honestly, I sort of think the fact they finished the Ketsui port and did it well was more of a face saving thing than a 'this makes sense financially' thing. I'm sure they also knew if the last memory everyone had of them was the DOJ port/outsourcing/etc thing they'd never get their 'original shooting game' to sell at all.

I'm somewhat interested in their original game; their arrange modes in both ports seem interesting. I think someone there has a good eye for fun game mechanics; what remains to be seen is if they can create that same thing when they don't have someone else's base to work with.

[Elixir]

5pb's porting something but we don't know what it is. I thought it was going to be that Strike Witches shmup, but apparently that's Gulti's turf. Considering they port a lot of eroge/adventure games to the 360, it might just end up being something that's fairly low budget and by no means difficult to port.

I really doubt they'll be touching Cave's games again. If I were in charge, I'd think to myself: why would we port Muchi Muchi Pork (for example) via 5pb, when developers like M2 and Asada are willing to help towards a game with HD visuals which, in turn, will result in a better profit?

[EOJ]

5pb's porting something but we don't know what it is.

See the two posts above yours. They aren't porting as far as anyone knows.

[Elixir]

5pb's porting something but we don't know what it is.

See the two posts above yours. They aren't porting as far as anyone knows.

They are porting an original shooting game, so it might be derived from some eroge or anim since they've already done a whole bunch of similar ports. Probably not Cave material though.

[EOJ]

"Original shooting game" means just that. It's an original game, not a port of an existing game.

[Kiken]

Cave said getting Guwange on XBLA was a big pain in the ass - took them months of negotiations with MS. They probably only got approval due to the great sales of their ports (especially DS), and it could very well be a 'one time deal'.

I'd say that having established ports helped, plus offering to include 2 additional game modes.  We still don't know if 5pb ever had plans to add their X Modes to the XBLA versions they were originally intent on releasing.  Then again, it should also be noted that Cave's trouble with MS's bureaucracy isn't exactly unique.