Project: Cave on Steam, please help us

[O. Van Bruce]

Some friends and I have started a campaign to get Valve interested in Cave games as a release for Steam, since it's a problem to contact Cave in english. While it's true that the problems that Valve and Cave may have with the issue are important in terms of profit and programming I strongly believe that they haven't considered overcoming those problems mainly because they haven't detected the fan base that Cave and shmups in general have in the west and the possibilities the genre has on steam being Cave more than a indie or doujin developer.

Valve has been interested in promoting doujin and alternative gaming since some years ago and along that line of business they have contacted Japanese doujin developers to distribute games that wouldn't be able to be sell commercially here in the west without Valve's approach. The genres released on steam are varied: shmups, platformers, RPG'S... and most of the products released have sold well and established a solid group of customers interested in Steam Indie releases.

Now, we have Cave, best developer of shmups on the last decade, and with a proper marketing and mouth to mouth campaign, the games would sell quite well among anyone interested in Japanese games.

But that's not the important issue, we should leave all the development and marketing to then if Cave and Valve reach an agreement, BUT, that contact and agreement will never happen if us, future customers don't move and put the credit that may bring Cave and all their awesome games to a broader audience here in the west.

We are not asking from Cave to go Full Digital distribution nor to stop selling and developing their console ports, there are a lot of games released on Steam that also have physical copies on the market. I'm also an owner of and XBOX 360. But, as one of the employees of Cave mentioned (please excuse me for not remembering his name) “focusing on a sole platform has lost its meaning (...) we are going to focus where the customers are”.

Go ahead and visit this thread and if you want, leave your own ideas and vote in it so people can consider then when e-mailing Valve and later, Cave.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=41182

Discuss here also.

If you want to help us spread this message to every shmup board, forum, IRC you may know asking then to participate in this brainstorm. When you get all the info you need to know we may start sending the e-mails

Thank you for your time.


PD: Remeber what happened with Dark Souls so it IS possible we can do this if we get enough support.

[Nemoide]

My issue would be that I generally don't like playing shoot-em-ups on my computer.

[ZenErik]

My issue is that I want physical releases. I would hate if they went digital ONLY but have no problem if they go digital in addition to the physical releases..

[Erik_Twice]

My issue is that Cave may very well be full of morons for not doing this already

No, seriously, I'm not kidding. Cave knows how many people want to play their games in the west, they are tired of telling MAME developers not to emulate their newest games, and titles like Jamestown, which is mediocre at best, are selling very well.

So I would gadly support an initiative to bring Cave games to Steam. It's doable, good for everyone involved and should have already happened.

Also the guys on that thread are morons.

[DinnerX]

Why not GOG?

[Opa Opa]

Why not GOG?

DRM-Free, soundtracks, and other goodies?

Sounds too awesome. They wouldn't do it.

[Erik_Twice]

Why not GOG?

It would be a good choice but Steam has a wider audience and is more well-known.

[MrPopo]

Why not GOG?

It would be a good choice but Steam has a wider audience and is more well-known.

Plus, as mentioned, Steam already has a foothold when it comes to doujin games.

[Dylan]

Also the guys on that thread are morons.

Dear Lord, that thread is bad. This is my favorite post:

well its only speculation since we dont know any salesfigures but,
arcadegames:
moderat development cost
no licensing cost
extremely high revenue per item sold
low sales

xbox360/ports:
moderate-higher development costs (hd graphics etc)
high licensing costs
very low revenue per item sold
moderate sales