sai

Currently marathoning Kuroko no Basket. Finished the first season today, can't wait for summer holidays to watch the rest!

Perhaps the title is a bit misleading as this isn't really going to be a VK vs. non-VK thread, but after reading the NB thread I figured this might be an interesting point of discussion, so I'm making a thread for this instead of going off-topic. Anyway, the main question is why are the prices of Visual Kei CDs higher than non-Visual Kei CDs? In order to keep it a fair discussion, let's say that when we'll be comparing artists we'll make sure these artists are either both major or indie and play around the same size of venues. I myself always thought the price difference was because of the amount of money that's put into hair, make-up and costumes, but that would be plausible for indie bands who have to do lots of that themselves. There are plenty of major bands who still charge these prices even though they get that stuff paid for them, so where's the difference?

I haven't been to a lot of concerts of Japanese artists, but Boris was definitely the best one I saw so far. The entire venue shook when they were playing and I even got to attend their soundcheck

Yes! I still have to crack my PSP but I can't wait to play this I have started Bioshock Infinite, though it's been a big neglected ever since I bought a PS3 a few days ago. It came with a free game of The Last of Us so I've been playing that one ever since I got it. So basically what I've been doing/wanting to do in a small list: Currently playing: - Bioshock Infinite - The Last of Us - Pokemon Diamond Games that I still need to finish: - Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (I don't think I will though, I don't like it ) - FFXIII: Lightning Returns (this game was fun for the first 15 hours, after that it gets incredibly repetitive. Boring characters, zero character development, the same side-missions over and over again, etc. If you didn't like XIII-2 I definitely would not advice you to buy this.) Games that I still need to start/buy/wait for release: - FFVII: Crisis Core - Uncharted series - KH 1.5HD - KH 2.5HD - FFX HD remaster

I agree with rsasai that CD sales can indeed be a big indicator whether or not a band decides (or their management, tbqh I have no idea who even makes the final call) to tour abroad. After all, if a band sees they've got quite a bit of CD sales in some part of the world, it might be worth it to tour there. CD sales do not make everything though; I've seen indie bands who play even smaller venues than Nocturnal Bloodlust come to Europe, bands that gathered audiences on a regular concert of only about 200-300 people in Japan (and only about 30-40 in Europe) and yet decided to tour this continent more than once. I'm pretty sure even less people in Europe bought the CDs of these bands than the amount of people who bought Nocturnal Bloodlust's latest release. Sure, these bands are cheaper to bring over, but hey, if bands like DIR EN GREY and the GazettE can be brought over (who are probably a lot more expensive than an indie band like NB), I doubt costs would be the main problem, even with these indie bands. I consider piracy with visual kei fans a two-sided problem. First, you have the fact that a lot of visual kei fans do not buy the CDs of their so-called "favourite" VK band (whether or not you dislike that mentality isn't really relevant to my argument so I'm just letting this for what it is) because they feel like they're not the target audience anyway, and it's not something that will hurt them. AGAIN, THIS IS PURELY HYPOTHETICAL AND DOES NOT REPRESENT MY OPINION ON THE MATTER. I mean, if they really DID want to target the fans abroad, why do their official webshops not ship outside of Japan? Why are their releases only on the Japanese iTunes? Why do I have to order the CD from Japan and spend a fortune on shipping costs (and perhaps taxes and customs) to get that CD here while I could have free access to it with the click of a button? This isn't going to hurt the band! If they really wanted to target me, they'd attempt to reach out more! Why would I put money into something that's only going to be used for promotion in Japan? The other side is that the slight amount of people who DO buy CDs do not make up enough people for the band to take their audience abroad seriously. I've read a couple of band interviews where VK bands were confronted with the question of how they felt about having fans abroad. Some of them seemed suprised, others said "oh that's nice I guess". For my hypothesis NB is actually a really good example because they seem to be willing to come abroad. They put their music on other countries' iTunes stores, they have an official YT channel that ISN'T restricted to Japan alone and some of the members even tweet in English. "Why don't our fans see this, we're trying!" Like in my personal opinion I think NB is a terrible band but that doesn't take away the fact that they are trying. So on one side you've got fans thinking they aren't reaching out enough, on the other side the band thinking that they DID do enough. The current business model is outdated and forms a big part of this problem. There are plenty of things bands could do next to what they're doing now to promote themselves more to foreign audience if they actually wanted to/could. NB wants to, we've seen it in their efforts. They could, smaller indie bands with less sales have done it without going bankrupt. What's stopping them? The amount of people who download their stuff? Like Zess said, how many people would've actually bought your CD if they hadn't found out about you through illegal downloads in the first place? This doesn't take away the fact that it's still illegal and that fans should definitely chip in where/if they can (and if they don't, they're just a pretentious freeloader), but the music business needs to evolve and use piracy to their advantage instead of desperately trying to fight it. This band has every right to speak up about something that is illegal and "fans" who feel offended but never actually buy something even though they could buy it as a luxury (and then I mean that you have everything necessary provided for) should really stop being so incredibly entitled. On the other hand, NB can't expect to sell tons of albums abroad because a) the attitude of many vk fans is completely opposite of theirs and b ) not enough people enjoy their music. But for the love of god, if you really enjoy this band and you can afford it, buy that fucking new album they're releasing is2g. sorry if this is too long and makes no sense but i hope you guys sort of get what i mean whoops

Yeah my apologies for the bad wording (got a bit too emotional there), they obviously can (as they did with Aveline de Grandpre), it's just that they decided not to at the start of development for a reason that seems a bit odd to me. I understand that you can't just change the gender of one of your protagonists when you're halfway in production, and perhaps it WOULD take them more time to do so because of stuff they want to re-use, but what I don't get is why they say that while they obviously have female character models, from both Aveline de Grandpre as the female models for AC multiplayer. Aveline's model was even transported from handheld to console (ACIII Liberation HD) so you could assume they have at least one female model they could use. I mean, the new character (male or female) would've needed a person for the mo-cap and Ubisoft is known to use parts of older games for their new titles (for example, Connor Kenway and Edward Kenway move exactly the same), so it's only natural to bring that stuff over to the next-gen games as well. I understand why Ubisoft did what they did, but I cannot understand why it would take more time, because the way I see it, they already had a base they could've imported to the next-gen too. Besides, their initial idea was to use a female character, but it was scrapped because it'd take too much time even though they REALLY wanted it. Too much time for what? We know Ubisoft's release schedule for AC games is one new game each year, something a lot of people recently have started to criticize. Would it really have killed them to spend an extra year (or two) on development? The reason why they didn't go through with at least one playable female character is because it didn't fit into their business model, at least, that's my hunch. That's business, harsh and true. Of course, if someone has enough knowledge on development and who can show me some valid models or articles as on whether or not this would make much of a difference time-wise, I'll acknowledge Ubisoft's reason as valid. I don't mind having another male protagonist because so far I've liked 3/4 male protagonists in the AC games, so I'm not mad at the fact that they did not include a female one (they did include a female, but she's not playable, as far as we know). The reason seems valid enough too if it fits their business model. My problem at this point is just that I can't see at this point how much of a time difference it could've made. But like I said, if someone who knows this and can link me to some articles/interviews, I will look deeper into it. This is how I see it with the information currently available. Edit: Some tweets surfaced from Jonathan Cooper, who is currently an animator working for Naughty Dog and who was the Animation Director for titles as Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Assassin's Creed III. I think his professional opinion is probably one to be valued considering he worked on quite a few titles, and he says this: "Fun fact #2: Aveline de Grandpre shares more of Connor Kenway's animations than Edward Kenway does." "In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations". Source: twitter, here they are in one image:

Ubisoft has said that AC Unity would originally have a female lead, but they changed it to a male because animating women would "cost too much and isn't in their abilities": http://www.videogamer.com/pc/assassins_creed_unity/news/no_female_leads_in_assassins_creed_unity_unfortunate_but_a_reality_of_game_development_ubi.html I can't fucking believe this. If you can't animate women you obviously don't have the right job. Women are not mystical creatures that are impossible to animate. Like I'm not even mad they put in white men with stubble all the time (though it IS annoying), I'm mad because of their horseshit argument they clearly pulled out of their ass because they animated a woman before! Aveline de Grandpre was even remade for a HD version for new consoles, so don't tell me you can't animate women BECAUSE YOU CAN. You just don't want to.

fuck swarm lags lmfao I saw it today, loving it so far! Can't wait for this game to release, seems like I need to put November 21st in my agenda ;3;

Yoshi's Yarn tho. On another note POKEMON OMEGA RUBY/ALPHA SAPPHRIE FOOTAGE AAH. @style Yes! I watched both this morning. I'm agreeing with Disposable when I say that pretty much the core problems of the last two games still haven't been fixed. Unity still seems like your basic AC game with a different world, more side missions but nothing new or exciting.

I was personally quite disappointed with Sony The only thing they offered that impressed me were The Order 1886 and Uncharted 4. I didn't watch the conference as it was in the middle of the night for me but I reviewed the highlights, and well, Microsoft DID have Tomb Raider and AC Unity Not that Microsoft's conference was great, it hit the wrong spots plenty of times but in general I was more impressed about what I saw there. Speaking of AC Unity, I'm not convinced this is going to be a very good game, because the modern day timeline story has basically stopped (AC4 was kind of eh anyway) and out of 4 men I was hoping we'd at least be able to have 1 woman in the Brotherhood.

That's okay! Opinions differ! Even though I don't like the design that much (but I personally think it's not because of the outfit, but because of the somehow odd way the eyes are drawn) I love it too that they kept the hat. Now you can actually see that it's a hat and not his hair (I only found out this was a hat like 7 months ago LOL). I am very nostalgic about May because Ruby was the first game I played and I of course played as the female at that time, so that's probably why! The redesigns seem to be closer to the Emerald looks than the Ruby/Sapphire looks though! I'm kind of sad they didn't keep Emerald's storyline of having both villain teams in each game, so I'm going to have to choose again

THE HYPE IS REAL OMFG. I'm not too big on the boy figure, but I really like the girl's redesign, the new hair accessoire is adorable. I wonder if Nintendo will be revealing more on their E3 panel this Tuesday?

If Square isn't showing anything from FFXV I'm going to hope they spend it on Tomb Raider. I need a new Tomb Raider game ;___;

Can't wait to pirate this

Not a lot of artists I like, but aaaah 9GOATS ;_____; Definitely going with them 1. MBLAQ - Rolling U 2. Within Temptation - Let Us Burn 3. fox capture plan - 衝動の粒子 4. BUCK-TICK - 月下麗人 5. heidi. - フリーダム 6. cinema staff - 世紀の発見 7. Card - NaDJa 8. アルカラ - 藤壺のキミ 9. ONE OK ROCK - Be the light 10. SHINee - Excuse Me Miss Pretty good list overall, but going with fox capture plan.

1. NEGA 1. RADWIMPS 2. Lynch. 3. the Novembers 4. MERRY 5. Plastic Tree 6. Sadie 7. D.I.D. 8. GLAY 9. NIGHTMARE 10. Megaromania

Alright, thanks. I wanted a source because everyone's been saying different things so I'd like a source before I believe anything atm. But quite a bummer, I was really looking forward to more FFXV news. I really don't know why there's nothing about the game at E3, could that mean it won't be released before 2016?

^ Do you have an official source for that? Because I read Nomura has announced that there would be FFXV news during E3 (possibly a release date).

I'M SO EXCITED FOR THIS. I haven't listened to the previews because I'm waiting for my copy but I've been checking the tracking code every hour or so lmao.

I do agree on the fact that 256 AAC is better than 256 mp3, but I can still hear the difference when using my headphones; the difference isn't a lot, but I like to get the full experience while listening to music and for me that equals good gear with high quality audio files. This does not include all iTunes files, but I've heard iTunes purchases that SHOULD be sounding like a 256 AAC sound like someone recorded it with a potato, while a CD rip of that same release in 320 kbps sounded just fine. I've seen this happen multiple times and I'm just in general curious as to where that difference is coming from. But nevermind this, it's a bit off-topic when it comes to the original debate about piracy.

^ No, that's not what she's saying. That's what the BAND says according to her interpretation. The band states that people who don't buy are toxic and ruin the band itself, and if you can't buy the CD you have to buy the iTunes version (which is total bullshit imo because there's only a price difference of like 10$ and if you don't have the cash 10$ isn't going to make such a big difference). Which brings me to my next point; I understand digital files are cheaper because they don't have a CD case or a booklet that needs to be printed, but why is the quality of the audio inferior to that one of the CD? Like I am paying less because of the CD case and the booklet but why on earth should I, because I can't afford the physical version, settle with a less quality rip of the same CD. If there's anything you shouldn't touch it's the quality of the audio files. Now iTunes only offers 256kbps, which is bullshit in itself, since if I bought the CD itself I would've been able to get a 320 or even Lossless.

Welcome to the forum, enjoy your stay! (and like Jigsaw said, yay BUCK-TICK!) If you have any questions about the forum in general, don't be afraid to ask people with a blue or red name.

Nope, Nocturnal Buttlust was basically your average non-VK metalcore band who (according to Zess, Deith, and other people who are familiar with the genre) actually produced pretty neat stuff. They then decided one day to go VK (and lost a lot of their previous fans because of it, mostly because the material afterwards is said to be really inferior to their non-VK music). I also heard the current VK NB is trying to be either similar to DEG or wants to get to their level, not completely sure about that (someone told me they said that so I wouldn't really put it as a reliable source). No idea why they decided to go full-on VK though. They seem to be appearing over the internet a lot more since going VK (since the VK fanbase is more active on the internet than the non-VK fanbase, or so it seems from my personal experience), but I'm not sure if their fanbase has increased because of it. They lost a lot of their old fans and got visual kei fans in their place, but I don't really think they gained a lot in the end. I'm not sure how popular the metalcore scene was in Japanese indie-music, or how many indie fans liked them before going VK, but I can't really think of a solid reason for a non-VK band to go VK all of a sudden. Nocturnal Buttlust before they turned VK (as a reference):

I don't think the bugs itself are the problem, each game has its bugs after all (even AC2 and ACB has lots of bugs but they're still considered amazing games). I think the main problem here is that Ubisoft said Watch Dogs would be a representation of "the new generation of gaming" and that it would bring a revolution to the genre, going as far as some statements saying it would replace the GTA-franchise. The fact that it looks so unpolished and that the graphics aren't as good as they were in the last few gameplay trailers is what disappoints people, as Ubisoft promised something big but didn't deliver in the slightest.