Reports starting to come out that NIS is not able to pay the salaries of its employees & have resorted to a MS (Moving Strike) Warrant as a last resort. otakomu.jp/archives/17696…
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News of Disgaea smartphone RPG reveals NIS is in financial hot water; not able to pay employees.
- Thread starter Sagadego17
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Reports starting to come out that NIS is not able to pay the salaries of its employees & have resorted to a MS (Moving Strike) Warrant as a last resort. otakomu.jp/archives/17696…
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They release new JP games at a pretty ridiculous clip, and all of them have been selling terribly (from not charting to ~3000 copies) for years. I figured the American branch was keeping them profitable or something.
EDIT: Including ports, they released 12 games in 2016, 13 in 2017, and 15 in 2018. I think wiki is missing a couple too.
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Oh shit, I hope this they'll pull through this. :( Sounds like they bet it ALL on Disgaea RPG for who the hell knows what reason. Unless it was a do or die situation where they were in dire straits but we didn't know?
And if anything happens to NIS, what will become of NISA? Or will they be the ones to bail them out?
Uh-oh. I would be concerned about the state of NIS at this point. Of course, what happens to NISA?
Considering how it's using reused assets, it's more like they just don't have many resources at all. They tried to launch various original franchises and just had failure after failure. Disgaea was kind of saved by Western sales, but also had very weak sales in Japan lately, which is probably why they wanted a new franchise.
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I'm guessing NISA will spin off into a separate entity. but without games from the mothership to publish, that will really hurt their output
I would hope NISA can either help them or if the worst happens, that they just split and work as things were or something. If NIS were to shutdown, where would that put Disgaea and whatnot? Someone would have to buy the IPs or maybe Niikawa can just form a successor with the IPs in hand?
Wait, wasn't Sony company Forward Works responsible in making the game, and not NIS, or am I remembering things wrong.
Jeez this really blows. Really liked NIS, and people being out of jobs is terrible too of course. If this kind of news ever hits Level 5 idk what I would even do.
I went to their company website, and noticed these 4 pdf files posted there
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_01.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_02.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_03.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_04.pdf
Can't read Japanese, but they're probably related to this.
I sure hope nothing really bad happens to the company, but it's hard not to be anxious about the situation
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_01.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_02.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_03.pdf
http://nippon1.co.jp/news/pdf/2019/20190517_04.pdf
Can't read Japanese, but they're probably related to this.
I sure hope nothing really bad happens to the company, but it's hard not to be anxious about the situation
I don't think I'd go that far. Even if I don't really like any of the new IPs they've put out outside of Coven and The Labyrinth of Refrain (Rose in the Twilight games seem to have a decent reputation too), they've definitely been trying really hard to land on something new.
Feels like Galleria's delay plus the (at least initial) lack of a Switch version was just plain done very poorly. Honestly if they played that right it could pull them out of this jam.
Disgaea 6 also should've been made by now. It doesn't have to be yearly, but clearly folks want it.
I'd say their output hasn't been inspiring. they felt like they were indie games in budget. they needed to spend some more to make their games look more bombastic if they wanted to cast a wider net. something they only did with Destiny Connect (which bombed and had poor word of mouth apparently) and Disgaea. Labyrinth of Refrain did well but the sequel got delayed, so...
The problem is that the main Disgaea team is the Coven team. So while that game sold a lot better than their other new IPs, I'd imagine the opportunity cost was still pretty big.
Exile Election and Shin Hayarigami had pretty decent production values for their particular genre, but both of those under-performed too. I agree with you when it comes to Penny Punching Princess, The Princess Guide, The Longest 5 Minutes (though that one wasn't so bad) etc, but I don't think making those games better looking would have saved them.
NIS is guilty of just making some very low budget and not all that interesting stuff as of late IMO. They're coolest work is stuff that tries to really work within the limitations like Liar Princess and such, but also stuff like Ys 8 on Switch and when NISA works on a bigger game (like Ys 8 again and SNK Heroines).
I don't know. They needed a legit breakout hit. Disgaea 5 Complete must've been a godsend for them. The constant bombas obviously hurt them a shit ton also.
I don't know. They needed a legit breakout hit. Disgaea 5 Complete must've been a godsend for them. The constant bombas obviously hurt them a shit ton also.
Yeah it's weird when the western branch carrying them. Disgaea 5 bombed in Japan, but succeeded in the west. All these new IPs are nice to see, but no real runaway hits.
Hope NISA still somehow stays afloat, especially simnce they take care of so many publishers to localize from, and are the hub for collector editions in the store.
I don't think most of them are worth much, other than Disgaea. Most of their games sell either modestly or flop, lately.
I really hope we get To All Mankind localized, at the very least.
Well this would be a bummer. I used to love almost every NIS release and they are responsible for some of my favorite games, from Disgaea to ZHP to Prinny to Phantom Brave to Disgaea 4 etc. Their output recently hasn't grabbed me as much unfortunately but I'd be sad to never play a new NIS again.
disgaea 5 was really successful - did about 500k in the us/eu. the game also first released about 4 years ago. nis hasn't produced something similar since.
not sure. they haven't really been relying on nis's output to remain profitable. i haven't looked to see if nis had reported fy18's financials, but as of fy17 it seemed they stopped reporting nisa and other subsidiary earnings separately - and that might be due to nisa earning a lot or it could be the others earning very low. nisa was/is really profitable, and that's largely on stuff outside disgaea, although every now and again an nis title can find an audience (refrain, liar princess). if this is a big problem then they might downsize and focus on fan-favorites.
i didn't know that the japanese branch was in such a tight spot. they've been spinning their wheels for a really long time, but to get to this level with no plan to get out of it is kind of crazy. compile heart had the good sense to at least run neptunia into the ground, but nis never leveraged its major properties properly and just kept doing weird random stuff.
Huh. I completely forgot D5 is so old. D5 Complete is always popping up in the news so it's always pretty fresh in my mind. Let's hope NIS can turn this around.
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Isn't the Disgaea smartphone game co-developed with Forwardworks? Have they had any successes? Sony should probably leave smartphone games to Aniplex.
I hope NISA survives. They're not the best but there are a lot of games no one else would localize.
I hope NISA survives. They're not the best but there are a lot of games no one else would localize.
Everybody keeps talking about the Disgaea RPG and the sad information. Where's the information? Can somebody post a link, a image or something?
at this point, disgaea 6 should be out on ps5. if sony launches ps5 like they did with ps4, that means a 2021 release. that would put it out six years after disgaea 5 launched. in the six years before disgaea 5 you had disgaea infinite, disgaea 4, disgaea d2, prinny 2, and ports of disgaea 2, 3, and 4 to psp/vita. they really dropped the ball on this franchise from a planning aspect.
Well, uh... I'm not sure if you're aware, the game launched with so many problems, it was pulled and delayed indefinitely, until they can resolve issues. They initially blamed the issues on foreigners and IP blocked, but the issues continued to persist.
Either way, NIS would've still payed money into the project. With the launch being a massive failure, this had to hurt NIS and other parties involved, badly.
I feel like the thread title is underselling the situation a bit? At least in my mind the bigger story here is NIS being in such a bad state, rather than the smartphone game.
That's really sad to hear, anyway. It always seemed like NIS was trying pretty hard, so it's disappointing to see them like this. Though I never really found any of their games appealing and never bought any, so I guess I'm a part of the problem :/
That's really sad to hear, anyway. It always seemed like NIS was trying pretty hard, so it's disappointing to see them like this. Though I never really found any of their games appealing and never bought any, so I guess I'm a part of the problem :/
that area is fairly competitive. you'd see spike chunsoft, xseed, and aksys pick up the slack. atlus and idea factory wouldn't though because they only focus on their own games.
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Atlus has admittedly picked up third party titles from time to time, but they were always very selective about it.