Chitika

Sunday, February 6, 2011

How NISA can bring their profits up.

NIS has been in sort of a slump as of late.
Mainly losing profits each year due to a lack of sales. And it seems that the only time they are able to make
any sort of profit is when they release a new game that is part of their main tier series Disgaea.


[NIS (Nippon Ichi Software) is a Japan base video game developer known for their 2.5D
SRPG's (Simulation/Strategy Role-Playing-Game).
Their most popular series is 魔界戦記ディスガイア also known outside of Japan as Disgaea. See trailer below]
When it comes to making Disgaea games NIS puts about three or so years  into making each game (not including ports). Each Disgaea game (ports included) are stacked to the brim with content. So much content that it could send your number of play hours into the quadruple digits. Not to mention everything in each new Disgaea game is always very high quality. From the  character sprites, to the menus and interface, everything is very eye pleasing, and on top with that the games are extremely fun to play.

But NIS being unsatisfied with just only one series has tried to branch out and create new series
with new gameplay elements. These games have ranged between different type of games 
from OSPRGs (Open Simulation/Strategy Role-Playing-Game) to platformers, to classic turn based RPGs,
to Rouge-Likes, and even to Visual novels. Their most popular Non-Disgaea game is Phantom Brave,
which had already had two ports. One for the Wii, and one for the PSP.

As you can see, the game is similar to Disgaea, but has many different gameplay elements.
Most noticeably its open movement system. But other than that the game is lacking in many 
area's where Disgaea accel's, and vise versa.
Another extremely noticeable difference is the quality of sprite work, this is the same for all games by
NIS that are not Disgaea.
For example, lets take Ash The second protagonist from Phantom Brave. And compare him graphically
to his Disgaea counterpart. Ash's Phantom Brave sprite is on the left, where his Disgaea sprite is to the right.
As you can see the Disaea sprite for Ash as a significant amount of more detail compared to that of his 
Phantom brave sprite. Also things  that are extremely different that are not shot in the above picture is 
his movement and the way his interacts with his enemies and holds his weapons.
In Disgaea Ash holds his sword in a readying position and stands still waiting to strike down his enemies.
In Phantom Brave Ash holds his sword up with no sort of style, as for his standing animation, all he does is just march/walk in place (this goes for everyone else in any NIS game that is not Disgaea as well).

There are MANY more noticeable difference between Disgaea and other NIS games,  but I'm not going to go into that because that is a lengthy list.
But with all these games getting getting such high scores, why does NIS continue to lose money?
Well it's simple really. They never take time when making non-Disgaea games.
How can they fix this? Simple. Make every game with as much nurture and time as Disgaea.
Make better looking sprites and maps, and a nice eye catching interface. Games such as Phantom Brave
have the ability to be just a good, popular, and fun as Disgaea, but end up failing do to the developers not
caring enough about the game.

Now what can NIS do to improve Disgaea. Well there is not much, other than some small things.
But I think the game would be much more fun to play than it already is, instead of using a grid-based movement and attack system not not use an open movement and attack system like Phantom brave does.
Also getting rid of the portrait cut scenes and replacing them with animated one's would be nice as well.

In short is NIS made and nurtured all their games to Disgaea quality and stopped releasing ports
of their older games (Disgaea included). Then their prfites would not drop every year.

These are just my thoughts.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting points you made.

    Following!

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  2. that was a really well written article, i did not know they tried to produce more outside of disgaea

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  3. I've been a fan of the Disgaea series and I agree completely that they need to start putting more time and effort in their games.

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  4. I liked La Pucelle. Infact, that was what got me into Disgaea.

    But yeah, aside from Phantom Brave, I don't really know what else they did, aside from Pucelle and Disgaea.

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