Yup you’ve heard it right! And nope, you aren’t dreaming! After the long long wait, an official announcement is finally here! Key just made a tweet on their official English account that Little Busters! English Edition is slated for release via Steam on November 1, 2017! And the price? $34.99. Comparing this to their previous releases on Steam, this is a pretty great deal!
My Litbus is less than 5gb, and that’s with extra files in my directory. Probably the engine. Keep in mind Litbus originally ran on the same engine as Kanon, which was heavily based on the engine they used back in the Moon. days. The only optimization that Reallive does is to the BGM and very lightly to images. Compressing the voice files alone could reduce the file size a lot.
I don’t see how they could possibly lower it to 1GB even if they changed engine. I’d imagine 3GB at least. They must’ve used some sneaky programmer magic.
As happy as that price will make a lot of potential buyers, it leaves me a bit skeptical as to whether that is the starting discount price or the full price. 10% off that seems too good to be true.
It could be a stark difference compared to Clannad, Harmonia, and Planetarian’s starting price for sure.
The whole VN was also spoiled by the anime following that logic. And theoretically speaking, unless you know Japanese you shouldn’t have been able to read the VN. The patches made are unofficial.
This release is to be treated as a full product, so 35$ is still really cheap for the content in there. Also, there might be the typical 10% sale that Steam seems to do with many games during the first week.
35$ with potential sales on top of that honestly feels dirty. The EX download edition on DMM(NSFW) is 7000 yen or roughly 60$. It feels like they’re selling it as a loss leader, and that makes me feel obligated to buy multiple copies (Thx Volvo for fucking up gifts btw).
I was thinking it might be too cheap for a while, but then I started thinking about what this version actually does. It is dual language, and it features touch screen support, meaning it is clearly being marketed as both a re-release for Japan and a new release for English readers. They are cashing in on yet another version while getting it out on a new market.
Compared to CLANNAD, which had to make a profit solely from English readers, Litbus has a much higher chance to break net positive. They probably relaxed on the price because of this, attempting to just get it into more hands.
well $35 may mean £30 for the UK at the current exchange rate but since Muv Luv Alternative just cost me £27 I’m happy with that.
