I don't think the devaluation of games is generally a problem, but I worry about it in situations like this. With ultra-niche genres like shmups, it seems like developers should be charging a premium to offset how small their audience is. But if the race-to-the-bottom encourages that audience to wait for a deep discount... That doesn't seem good for the survival of niche stuff. Boss needs a third yacht, so stop making niche games.
The fact that Degica hasn't released a shmup since 2018 (and only one that year) makes it look like the genre isn't worth pursuing for sufficiently large publishers. I'm still sad that we never saw more CAVE ports from them (and M2's ShotTriggers will never come to Steam
).
Sadly, I think every shmup release on PC is indeed worth cherishing, because it doesn't appear to be worth releasing the "big" titles in the genre, or arcade games in general, on PC.
I always thought that Japanese companies having that idea that people just use MAME, and won't buy their games on PC as ridiculous, but sadly, I'm starting to give them some reason.
The genre is a "niche" genre. No doubt about it. So yeah, sales will always be small.
What they usually do to counter that is having higher prices (so they need to sell fewer copies), and stuff like limited editions (usually with some collector's DLC or limited revision of the game), and fans of the genre pay good money for them. It's a genre were there's few people paying for it, but they pay good money, and they're a loyal bunch.
But, on PC, that's a bit of a problem.
Most "non-fans" are unwilling to pay a decent amount of money for a shmup. Everyone went berserk about the price of DARIUSBURST (which is ridiculous, considering the amount of content included; this isn't a 30 minute game, one of the modes has hundreds of maps, the other thousands of variations, and the soundtrack alone has hundreds of tracks from all entries in the series), despite that being the price most people pay for a retail shmup on a console (or even less).
But then, when price isn't a problem, I find it that the "hardcore" fans of the genre are too tied to consoles (especially physical copies of the games), or arcade PCB's, and basically, PC is for MAME, and no matter the price you try to sell your games, they will always rationalize not paying for a game on PC.
I invite you to check this thread on a shmup forum (especially page 3), about the recent wave of Psikyo games being released on Steam (which are very affordable, and worthwhile releases):
That should give you an idea.
That is the crowd that should be most likely to buy these games.
People ask for shmups on PC/Steam.
But then, when they launch, instead of buying them, many wait, at best, for a heavy sale.
Since we are already talking about an expected small number of sales, having a big portion of these sales at a small price definitely won't have Japanese labels running to place their games on PC.
I mean, look at this bundle:
store.steampowered.com
That price is for 3 shmups and 1 DLC.
On consoles, people who like the genre pay that, or more, for a single game. Yet, on PC, you can't get a lot of people to drop that much for that whole pack, which is a bit disappointing, as someone who would like to see more games in the genre available on PC.
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Degica dropped shmups, and turned to Visual Novels instead.
With no disrespect for the people who buy the games, but Degica can release a game with some semi-naked anime chicks, charge 40-50€ for it, charge on top of that € for artbooks/soundtracks/DLCs (or even, split the games in chapters) and many people won't blink, and they surely are getting healthy sales, since they fully went for it.
It's anecdotal, but I invite you to check the number of reviews the last 2 Cave ports have on their pages:
And now, check the number of reviews on something like:
Or, since we are talking about Degica, this game launched in the same year as the last CAVE ports.
Check the number of reviews (and take into considering that the game costs a lot more than the CAVE games):
Or, since CAVE is a popular shmup developer, and their titles are popular examples of the genre, let's check some random popular Visual Novels, and see the number of reviews they have:
So yeah, it's a genre with a much smaller audience.
And, on PC, much on that smaller audience is unwilling to pay a decent amount of money for these games.
It's disappointing, really.