What an exciting year 2015 was for us! We brought thirteen excellent titles to the English market last year with eight of them also available on Steam and added a number of very successful third-party titles to our growing catalogue of visual novels. Our audience continues to grow thanks in no small part to Steam and a greater awareness of visual novels in general. With the successful release of our first BL game (the first in the English market in nearly a decade), we’re also reaching a broader audience than ever before. Without further ado, let’s take a look at how things ranked this year!
For our first-party titles, the 2015 ranking looks like this (excluding Steam and bundle sales):
1. Princess Evangile
2. eden*
3. No, Thank You!!!
4. Imouto Paradise
5. Eroge! Sex and Games Make Sexy Games
6. Demon Master Chris
7. euphoria
8. Sweet Sweat in Summer
9. Ultimate Boob Wars!
10. Higurashi Hou Ch. 1 Onikakushi
Fun fact: nearly everything in the top 10 would have outranked 2014’s first-place ranking title!
While nukige still take up the majority of slots again this year, story-focused titles are gaining ground, taking the top three (by a significant margin at that). ClockUp seems to be the favorite developer this year, with NTY!!!, Eroge and euphoria all making it into the top 10, but MOONSTONE isn’t far behind with both their titles ranking and Evangile taking the top spot. Every day we’re getting closer to the next milestone in the minori funding project thanks to eden*’s success both on and off Steam.
For the third-party titles the top five are:
1. HuniePop
2. Beach Bounce
3. The Menagerie
4. Divine Slice of Life
5. Sakura Santa
Interestingly, while HuniePop would outrank our first place first-party title in terms of copies moved, it would only place fourth if we ranked the titles by gross revenue. We’ve been pleased to see the growing ambitions of English-speaking visual novel developers over the past year and can’t wait to see what they have in store for us this year.
On the more internal side of things, our staff has continued to grow and we’ve been more committed to producing releases of the highest quality than ever over the past year. From the poll results we can tell you’re all very excited for much of what we have in store for 2016 (that you know about so far at least~), but that’s for another post!
If you entered the best-of-2015 poll drawing, check your e-mail to see if you’ve won!