Nippon Ichi has posted a 97.5% decrease in operating profits, and trading in its shares has temporarily been suspended due to their value plummeting 19.34% in a single day.
According to their own financial statements, the company’s performance has been dire:
In the second half of the year, titles like Antiphona and La Pucelle performed drastically worse than anticipated.
Orders for 5 titles last quarter were poor.
As a result, planned development of two titles for release next term has been suspended.
We intend to announce a careful focus on a few select titles.
Due to these results, [and the down-valuing of titles in development by ¥82,000,000] operating profit is now ¥4,806,000, a 97.5% reduction on the same term last year.
Whilst still not making an actual loss (barely), market confidence in the company’s recovery is evidently not high.
With the company reduced to recycling old games onto the PSP and producing risible PS1 era games on the PS3, the future does not seem bright for the once esteemed Nippon Ichi.
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I liked every game I played with NIS' name on it, with the exception of Cross Edge and I can't wait for Last Rebellion. Plus I'd rather play a good game with 2D graphics (Disgaea) than a shitty one with "good" graphics (Alone in the Dark 5). I luv 2D graphics!
Disgaea Hours of Darkness and Project Diva are the best PSP games I have without any doubt, and the two most games I have played on my PS3 are Valkyria Chronicles and Disgaea 3 (all games original).
How comes N1 are failing so hard? even Mana Khemia were good games, what about my Disgaea Infinite loops now, dude?
This is very suddenly, yesterday, everybody were talking about how cool was Etna and prinnies, even an anime was made, and today everyone says "N1 gets what they deserves", WTF?
have any of you ever become addicted to any Disgaea games? the metahumor, infiniteless possibilities, infinite strategies, the item world, the oh so many classess, the otaku references, the item descriptions...
I don't think N1 will fail at last.
Be open minded about evilness anon.
Disgaea Hours of Darkness and Project Diva are the best PSP games I have without any doubt, and the two most games I have played on my PS3 are Valkyria Chronicles and Disgaea 3 (all games original).
How comes N1 are failing so hard? even Mana Khemia were good games, what about my Disgaea Infinite loops now, dude?
This is very suddenly, yesterday, everybody were talking about how cool was Etna and prinnies, even an anime was made, and today everyone says "N1 gets what they deserves", WTF?
have any of you ever become addicted to any Disgaea games? the metahumor, infiniteless possibilities, infinite strategies, the item world, the oh so many classess, the otaku references, the item descriptions...
I don't think N1 will fail at last.
Be open minded about evilness anon.
Hatahs gunna hayt
and every disgaea they made looks and plays the same . it might have been a good idea to upgrade their system and develop their target populations , systems
having HD sprites would have removed 80% of the critisism for disgaea 3, the latter 20% being for the game´s cast of unlikable heroes.
Only that princes was silly enough to work ironicly as shes one of the only 2 humans in the game.
i 3rd it!!!
Nippon Ichi used to produce a lot of quality titles. Emphasis on "used to".
Disgaia 1 and 2 were fantastic, enjoyable games. La Pucelle tactics was likewise enjoyable. Disgaia 1 didn't need to be rereleased on both Nintendo DS and PSP. Neither did Disgaia 2 need a PSP release.
These guys produce good, but NICHE MARKET titles. They don't get to do re-releases like Square-Enix. They need to realize that before they go under.
Barely making a profit is not a good sign for a studio which traditionally has had a very high profit margin.
If they want to keep making their 2d or other graphically not so impressive games (Last Rebellion) like they have been doing, they need to switch to a online distribution model...selling games on PSN or Live (possibly pc as well) Their prices should also be more reflective of the quality of their product...
I don't know if you've seen it but they do sell quite a few of their games online for relatively cheap prices. PSN, specifically. Plus if they should sell games based on quality of the product then the games would be a lot more expensive. These things usually entertain for 50+ hours and that's not even counting their Disgaea franchise which can entertain for 150+ hours.
You are forgetting that 130 out of those 120 is thanks to random generated content. by that argument windows spider solitaire has 60 hours of playvalue because the cards are shuffled differently every time.
Of course you must take it into context of a console game and not a game that barely outranks Tic Tac Toe in terms of purpose and gameplay. And so what if some of its extensive gameplay comes from the item world or grinding? If it works, it works and it clearly has with the Disgaea series which shows how to make these things fun.
Just hating to hate aren't we?
They need to stick with their good games. The Disgaea style type like phantom brave, makai, heck even soul nomad, stay away from things like ar tenelico(?) and the ilk. Also concentrate on sony, that is where their audience is. Hopefully Disgaea Infinite will be a winner.
Ar Tonelico (2010) sold well. And it isn't a Nippon Ichi title anyway. They wish it was theirs though.
I sense an infidel here somewhere.
Bring on the cake...Netherworld, Human, and Celestial cake...Lots of it...With a side or waki~
Then, and only then will NIS rise up...
Games suck in general nowadays, Scamco's reaping what they've sowed and Nippon Ichi is following the same path. This should be a wake up call to all these other companies who think past glory or fan nostagia is going to save them this time around.
Games do NOT suck in general today. I don't know what world you are living in, but 99% of games I have seen are worthy of a play..... that's been true since the Nintendo 8-bit days.
this is what happen when you forget the importance of storyline
Im gonna eat shit if atelier rorona and mana khemia 3 doesnt come out
At least GUST is doing well.....
-_-
Don't over react they're not making a loss.
This is actually good news.
They're still making a 2.5% profit after all their expenses.
>implying that barely making profit is good news.
It's not worth anyone's time to run a business with such low profit margins.
And operating profits don't account for overhead costs.
Wow what a horrible understanding of economics in the short run and long run. Most places will stay in business even if they are not turning a profit. The only way they close down is if that minimizes any loss more than staying open. In the long run all companies will experience a return to scale and make zero profit, so turning any kind of profit is great.
I guess that just kills any hope I had for Ar Tonelico 3 being released in my continent.
Good I hope this joke of a company falls flat on it's face, and goes out of business.
It couldn't help that one of their games was called "the worst of 2010". If you want to succeed, guys, stop making stinkers.
Wise words to live by.
"If you guys don't want to suck stop sucking!"
I really liked a lot of their older titles, but this is really justified. They have only released a hand full of good games in years, and they haven't released a single great game since the First Disgaea.
Disgaea isn't from Atlus?
Atlus U.S.A. published Disgaea: Hour of Darkness in North America, but the title has always been a Nippon Ichi property.
Well, only one thing left to do: license the Last Rebellion adaptation rights to Gonzo.
Well if they made a good game then they'd be fine.
wow what a bullshit comment, its not like there is some magical formula to what makes a game fun.
The point is they stopped trying.
so whats the big deal they still made a PROFIT of 5 million yen
that's just around 50,000 dollars. barely enough to keep the company growing.
This doesn't surprise me. I once hailed all that was the glory of Nippon Ichi. They gave me La Pucelle, Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, and so much more; one great title after another. And then, they just stopped giving a rats ass. Every Disgaea game was a recycle of the last, just as all their new games were recycles of their other games with a few new twists. And rather than get better, their graphics got worse. Oh, and then there are the remakes on top of remakes on top of remakes on top of remakes, alongside platform jumping to spit on avid fans who already back the system with the most Nippon Ichi for their buck.
I haven't bought a Disgaea game since D3, and D3 is the weakest of the Disgaea games as far as story and characters go. Toss on a heaping helping of the grind to level 9999 with over 10 thousand stored levels for over 100 characters, plus transfering skills and evilities, etc, and I never want to play another Disgaea game, EVER!!! Nippon needs to tank now or modernize.
Hardcore Disgaea is hardcore. I haven't even hit lv. 500 in part one on the PS2 yet, but then again there is a HUGE jump in levels in the extra stages, causing you to grind...
Nippon Ichi also needs to stop making their crappy cellphone games.
What are you talking about? There isn't any other Disgaea titles to buy if you've already bought all 3. I don't count the silly Prinny spinoffs, since the gameplay is nothing close to Disgaea.
Serves em right for not releasing the Disgaea 3 trophy patch in Europe.
That's why it is a better idea to just focus on their great Disgaea. La Pucelle is only good because of Priere.
Well, I guess it's time to go to Nippon Ecchi instead...
I would kill for a disgaea eroge.
Eroge with Takehito Harada's designs would be wonderful.
i 2nd this!!
I lawled
Yeah, carry on porting and re-releasing the same rehashed shit.
Yeah, A Witch's Tale sucked... hard.
NIS is pretty much a smaller version of Square-Enix. I pity them though, they used to produce great games.
If you have a psp it's not like the ports are bad, but they're not really worth buying if you've already played them.
Also stuff like disgaea 3 was just lazy and ridiculous to even be a next gen game. Graphics looked like any of the past ones on ps2, and there was nothing new or interesting.
Disgaea 3 was honestly sad. Even the 2D graphics weren't HD.
true, if at least they werent 32bit sprites that you hardly can make out on a HDTV I wouldnt have one problem with it./Big Fan Here btw/
So do a square tactic? But it worked for square soft.
Other game companies please take note.
This is what happens when you rehash the exact same games over and over, eventually your fan base gets tired of it and moves on.
The only reason it happened so fast to Nippon Ichi is because of their niche market targeting.
Mkay, now I'm confused.
Anonymous 22:58 - Rehash is bad mkay? (Good +0.7)
Anonymous 23:15 - Yeah! (Neutral +0.2)
Anonymous 00:11 - Yeah! Other game companies, beware. Rehash is bad mkay? (Bad -0.4)
They're all on the same argument. Why would the last one get a smack down?
If you're going to re-do an old series, it's simple. Don't be lazy about it. Which is me looking at you Squeenix and your remake of FF6 and Chrono Trigger...
C'mon! Look at Romancing Saga 1 for Snes and Romancing Saga for the PS2. We know you can do better then a 2d port!
Hm? You talking about the Chrono Trigger port on the DS? That one was done great, picking it up and playing it after all these years felt just like it used to. No touch screen gimmick bullshit, no "graphical enhancements" like some of the FF ports on DS received, and as far as I can tell, no difficulty scaling to make the game more playable by today's "casual gaming" crowd, it's just Chrono Trigger as it was meant to be. When re-making something, it's important not to alienate the gamers who made the game a hit in the first place, because what they're looking for is that sense of nostalgia, and large changes in a re-make just kill that entirely.
but... the future refused to change...
Chrono Trigger was great, but I played the exact same game 10 years ago. Sure they added an extra dungeon, but that's pretty much it. The Chrono Resurrection project a while back looked awesome, and nobody thought it would suck if it came out. Updating shows that they actually put effort into it, otherwise I might as well play it through an emulator. That said, I don't need any of the touch screen gimmicks either.
That's what happens when you don't adapt to new times...
It's pantsu + petanko + loli + ero games time
Do you even know what Nippon Ichi makes? They make Disgaea! You don't get much more petanko than that. Their newest game for the psp is "Prinny 2: Dawn of the Great Pantsu War"
waaaaaaaiiiit doesnt this mean its development has been suspended?
nippon ichi is the one-hit wonder of the gaming world, in all the games they've made the only ones that bacame popular their disgaea series...
and la pucelle. That game was amazing when I first played it. Disgaea though definitely wins.
Poor Disgaea...where is 4?
Nippon Ichi will always be one of my favorite gaming companies...even once they are long dead. Disgaea for the win.
At least Gust my second favorite has not yet fallen.
Disgaea will be sold off and SOMEONE will take up the series, it's too good and good a game selling name to lie fallow for long.
not really into AT3.
prefer mana khemia, got nice soundtrack
Anyone ever heard of AT3?
Seriously, it sounds as if you guys didn't knew NIS
They just take any shitty generic idea and go with it, or port some game that was once okay. I guess this explains all the overpriced DLC bullshit
Well, it's still profit... You can't expect 90%+ growth each year eternally.
Upsetting news is upsetting D:
"Upsetting news is upsetting D:"
QFT!!!!!
YukitoOnline:"Nooooooo, what will happen to my fav Disgaea series!!!!????
They had it coming... seriously =/
I just got Disgae 2 on PSP a little while ago. So imo that's indication they should keep
a) porting, and
b) keep milking the same franchise for a bit til they come up with a new (awesome) idea.
Perfect name for their fail.
Nippon Ichi... from the bottom...
Disgaea 3 on the PS3 still has slowdown during geo effects if thats not a sure sign of how shitty this company is i dont know what will.
Dont get me wrong i love the disgaea games own all 3 console titles and the 2 psp ports but next to that they have a dozen more games all using the same outdated PS1 engine - what the hell were they doing with all that money they were earning???
buying crack, obviously - you can see the decline in intelligence and competence as time goes on. D3 was a serious freaking disappointment. They didn't even try.
I just hope that NIS America won't die too, since all localized GUST games coming from them.
Same.
Ar Tonelico is the one I care about at the moment no matter how questionable its quality might be.
Wow thats a sharp drop... Hope they'll be able to make a comeback...
Shit doesn't look too good for the japanese gaming industry this days.
It may start as simple low grade rpg's and re-used game ideas over and over, but soon it'll be all of gaming.
Suddenly there's a ton of hate for this company? I was too busy playing other games back when Disgaea and the ports first came out so the remakes on PSP were awesome. It releases a ton of good games period. Each disgaea game provides a huge amount of content and then adds a new plot, new classes, new gameplay, new music, new abilities, new items, new world, new bonuses.
It's like calling FF games or Resident Evil games or even sequels merely repeats of each other just because they follow the same basic formula. Talk about a hate machine
No, it's because Disgaia 1 has already been ported twice, once to the PSP and once to the DS.
It's great that you never played the games. I have. It's kinda maddening for the company to just crap out ports (they've really been releasing a LOT) when they could spend their time working on new titles. The problem with producing a port is that sometimes, they have to rebuild large amounts of the game from the ground up.
Which is fine, except that I'm not going to play through Disgaia 1 or Disgaia 2 again. Those games are fucking LONG. It's simply not feasible to play through a Nippon Ichi game twice. So when a re-release comes out, even one with a few new features, I don't buy it.
I want to buy new games. You know when the last time they released a new game in North America was, that they actually developed? That'd be Prinny, Can I Really Be The Hero? Nearly a fucking YEAR ago. Before that, the last new, inhouse title they released was Disgaia 3, a year and a half ago.
Compare that to the four rereleases they've issued and five titles they've published, but not developed. And the fact that the only title they've got in store for the future is... Another Prinny title and the Absolute Hero Modding Project.
Let me contain my excitement.
Guess I shouldn't argue with you then. You've been around since the beginning. But it doesn't make sense to do ports unless they make money and they must be since they've ported so many. Then again for a niche company they must be making niche money so I'll agree with you.
My main concern is about how people are hating the company and its games, talking like they wanted the company to die this whole time and that the games suck. Really shows that hating is just something casual to do for these people. I'm pretty excited about AHMP but they can keep their prinny games to themselves.
I hope NIS is able to pull out of this nose dive. I liked a lot of their stuff.
Delicious Archer's flat chest..
with squareenix failing FFXIII, everything else is falling apart. but at least they can bounce back with how popular they are. but NI has to pull some great shit out thier ass this time.
Sow, I didn't even realize. BandaiNamco I'm happy to see go, but NI? I admit haven't played any of their games except for Phantom Brave, Disgaea, and Disgaea 2 for PS2 simply because I couldn't afford to get many games until very recently.
It's a big upset for me because a lot of their games I would like to get and I didn't realize the more niche companies were suffering so bad. At least we got the majority of their games realized here unlike Bamco. There had better not be a heading of the Atlus company dying. I will lead a revolt in the streets
I have only enjoyed two Nippon Ichi games: Disgaea Hour of Darkness and the lesser known Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.
The rest are just boring and suck ass. The way they keep recycling stuff, they should just rename themselves to Endless Nippon.
Oh! Rhapsody! That was a game I liked. Wish they'd release a port on the PSP... But with the way things are now...
endless Japan?