Re: want a hentai game translated? now's your chance with mangagamer!
J-ast once stated that voice licensing is like dealing with a mafia group. The prices for voices are ridiculous for some games, and all the top rated games everyone always asks for? Those have some of the top voice actors that cost the most. Shin Koihime has around what? 30+ characters all with different voices and most of those being well known actors? H game voice actors charge a premium for h scenes, and Shin is long. There is no way in the current market for that game to profitable outside of steam.
More or less, long games= horrible gains. They take more work, cost more due to line count and voices, take longer to release so less time is devoted to other things, and don't actually sell better at all. In the time it has taken to translate and release DC3, Mangagamer could have gotten 3 or so other titles done by that translator, all that would have probably earned them more money then DC3 would get them.
People don't like MG because they have a lot of nukige, but that's what the market supports. People actually buy 10-20 dollar cheap porn games, they don't buy average to long *good* games. Yet again, steam has reversed this some, but medium length to short length titles are always going to be better for release then something long, because steam users only buy stuff that's cheap. Managagamer and J-ast are businesses and long games don't make business sense to do.
The last thing is they can't prove to Japanese companies that a long game would sell, so none of them will give them longer titles. All sales data points to long story titles don't sell well, so they aren't worth it. Medium length nukige actually seem to be the best titles to sell outside of steam, and short 10 dollar stuff seem to be the best for steam.
Actually Japanese companies are one of the biggest issues. They don't care about the west for the most part. Type Moon doesn't care. 5pb won't give anyone their allages versions and their original versions(leading to a bunch of licesning issues making several games just not worth it). Eushully doesn't care. It doesn't matter how much money you bring them or promise them, they don't care about coming to the west.
My last point is that I would prefer 2 or three games the length of Shuffle or Da Capo 2 over something like Baldr Sky. I want more titles total, not just the best things. Would Baldr be cool? Yes. Would it take 6~ years to be complete? Yes. Could they do 3-6 games in that time that would overall be more profitable? Yes. Would I enjoy those 3-6 games more? Probably.
(Yes, I know Sky is technically 2 games. That would still come out to 2 games(1 story) versus 3-5 games.)
As for the just "do popular games, those will sell" argument... well sure, they sell better. By about 1-200 copies better. I mean, Gahkthun is steampunk, one of the most praised series in the west. It sold like ~500 copies. Eroge has sold probably in the 2,000-3,000's at this point. Shin Koihime would need 6,000 $90(I remember now, it was all three arcs for 30 and 2,000 sales each, or the whole thing for 90) sales to break even. Unless that fan translation comes through, is of acceptable quality, and they give it to Managamer for free, its not worth releasing officially.