Interview with NISA team about EU bussiness

Versión en castellano | English Version

We were with our friend Jack Niida (producer in NIS America) and we talked with him about their interest and changes on their bussiness now that they have started to keep in mind the EU market. We don’t have a NIS branch, but technically we do have it thanks to their support on EU countries working with people like Namco Bandai or Reef Entertainment.

Q. You’re working with licenses for only Europe (Way of Samurai, Persona 4 Golden) and it’s a Continent with a lot of different countries, with different cultures and languages. How do you focus your efforts to have covered each country with a distribution net? Could you tell us how different is to work for Europeans and Americans?

In America, distribution is quite simple. You have the publisher that sells their games to a distributor, and the distributor will sell the game to retailers around the nation. It’s essentially a single channel that funnels merchandise into every state. In Europe the situation is quite different. We still sell the game to a distributor like we would in America, but there is a distributor for every country that we deal with. This means that the game will be distributed by a different company in France than in Spain, for example. This makes accounting for things much more complicated, but the end results are the same.

Q. Do you have plans to include subtitles on other languages that are not english? Maybe french or spanish?

This is a tough question. Because RPGs have so much text, it is extremely difficult to even break even on the cost of translation. Therefore, if we’re able to do multiple languages, it would have to be for big titles that can sell a lot or small action games that have little text to translate.

Q. Europe has a financial crisis at this moment, especially mediterranean countries, how is this affecting to NISA games?

We believe the financial crisis has an effect on everybody and every industry. The gaming industry is no exception and there has been some impact on us, too. Fortunately, the effect has been minimal for us, but we are all hoping that the situation in Europe will improve soon.

Q. You’ve never closed your doors to importation from your online store. How many percentage of people are Europeans who use that to get premium packages or extra goodies?

As for specific numbers offhand I’m not too sure, but on the whole it’s safe to say that European customers account for at least 10 percent of our online store sales when it comes to limited editions!

Q. Your kind of games is always japanese with manga influence. Is it growing your fanbase at Europe?

Thanks to supportive press like you, we are growing our user base in Europe and we are very grateful for it. The manga/anime genre has always been a niche market, but there are so many hardcore fans that are so dedicated we feel like we need to help fuel the crowd and make these fans happy. If there are any titles that you might be interested in, please let us know!

Q. When you started on America, Atlus helped you with the distribution in there. But now you’re working with them for Europe (we have seen this with Persona 4 Golden). Do you have plans to continue your relationship with them and to establish something like a NISAinEuropebringsAtlus?

We definitely plan to continue our great relationship with Atlus and hope to bring more titles to Europe for them.

Q. Atlus is a company who is very popular in Europe, but we don’t have an Atlus branch. Now that you have released Persona 4 Golden, could you say us if the people from here is so passionate like it seems or all that passion does not accompany the sellings at all?

We’re quite sure that Atlus is happy with the European market. It’s just that it is very difficult to establish a new company in a different country, so they might be a little more cautious in moving over. We’re very happy with the performance of Persona 4 Golden, and Europe has proven that they have just as many passionate and supportive fans as anyone.

Q. Can we wait any surprise from you for Europeans soon?

We have quite a few titles planned for the coming year, so please look forward to our announcements.

Q. We know that there are Europeans who visit your store to purchase games. Is this working good with anime too?

Although all our anime is coded in NTSC/North American formatting, we do see some sales going
overseas for our anime titles as well! Our anime business has been getting bigger and bigger so it’s
definitely really exciting!

Q. Spanish is one of the languages more spoken by people in the world and there are a lot of persons who talk (or know at least) this language in NA. Have you ever think that it would a good idea to include spanish subtitles to your anime?

We always want to provide as many options to as many fans as possible. That being said, similar to the issue of cost with multiple languages in games, it can get very expensive to add multiple languages to an anime title. Many of our anime titles are meant for a niche, hardcore audience, and so we have to be aware of our costs to make sure we can at least break even. Of course, if we ever do get a title that we think will be popular enough to support a bigger audience, we will definitely consider the possibility of adding more languages.

Q. Do you have plans to start working with anime distribution on Europe too?

We are constantly looking into new opportunities. When we think it is possible we will definitely let you know.

Q. If you bring anime to Europe, will it be with different subtitle languages?

Since we don’t have any plans for European anime right now, it’s a little too early to answer that question. We would definitely consider our options very carefully with our fans in mind if we did decide to do something like that.

Q. NIS has different manga published and serialized on magazines and tankoubon. No one is working on this for the West, are you going to edit this series?

Unfortunately, we currently have no immediate plans for localizing magazines and tankoubon, because we are already so busy localizing games. In fact, we have so much on our plate right now, we are trying to figure out how we can finish! We are grateful though to be so busy.