Vardest, a prominent member on the official JAST USA boards, recently had a chance to sit down with JAST President Peter Payne to talk about the company and current trends in the bishoujo market industry. Here’s a list of his findings:
Regarding the Milky House Collection: They do intend on getting it set up in download form, but it’s not exactly their top priority right now (Demonbane).
Their relationship with MangaGamer: He said they have spoken and he likes what they have been doing. He also doesn’t really view them as a rival due to the sheer number of titles that have yet to be translated.
Their interest in Eroge with gameplay: While they are definitely interested in getting more games of this type, there are only so many games put out that aren’t standard ADV’s. Considering Alicesoft turned them down and they haven’t spoken to Eushully yet, their options are pretty limited right now.
Regarding the NNL/Minori situation: He doesn’t think that Minori’s initial response was really necessary, but he did say that if Minori and NNL decided that they wanted to work together he would be open to negotiating a deal.
Relations with Crowd and reaction to their recent IP blocking: He hasn’t spoken with Crowd for quite a while and didn’t even know that they had started blocking foreign IP’s. He actually wasn’t even aware if X Change Alternative2 had been released yet. (He didn’t even seem to know about 3 Methods.)
Thoughts on Nitro+ Chiral: While they had tried to get Nitro+ to let them work on two games at once, they have been adamant that they want to see how well Demonbane does before they commit to any other titles. As such while Peter seemed interested to hear about the TL projects for the Chiral titles, right now their hands are tied until they see how well Demonbane does.
[source: JAST USA Message Boards]
