Otomate Is Coming to Nintendo Switch
The Bishounen Are Coming
Y’all let your imaginations do the rest of the work here and picture me as Ned Stark with Ice on a hill as a bishounen/white-walker army heads in my direction. Trust me, it works.
Nintendo has been breaking news for over a week now since the announcement that Shuntaro Furukawa would be the next President and Representative Director (think Chairman of the Board) of the company. Today, the visual novel developer Otomate, a subsidiary of the publishing house Idea Factory, announced that they were bringing their library to the Nintendo Switch: expanding from their current position on PC and with Sony. The company is starting with twelve titles: four of which will be released this year.
Currently, Otomate and Idea Factory are planning to keep this titles exclusive to the Japanese audience with no announced plans of localizing them for North American and Europe. In my opinion, it’s an eventuality, but it will be determined upon past performance of the titles they’ve already released in the West. In other words, if the games in the current lineup has already been financially successful here, they will localize them on the Switch here. If they haven’t profited from said titles, then why waste their time? It’ll be interesting to see how that unfolds and it pleases this one to see Nintendo building a market for visual novel fans as a whole. It is a smart way to build their catalog for the system and continues the legacy of the previous handheld generation.
So currently, it’s all good news with the caveat being if the West will see a localization effort for them anytime soon. Regardless, here is the current planned lineup Otomate intends to start with:
- Hakuoki Shinkai: Fuukaden| Release date: September 6th
- Code: Realize ~Bouquet of Rainbows~ | Release date: September 13th
- Nil Admirari no Tenbin: Irodori Nadeshiko | Release date: 2018
- Cendrillon palikA | Release date: 2018
- Shiritsu Verbara Gakuen: Versailles no Bara Re*imagination | Release date: TBD
- Norn9: Norn + Nonette LOFN| Release date: TBD
- Amnesia | Release date: TBD
- Reine des Fleurs | Release date: TBD
- Birushanah Senki: Genpeiden | Release date: TBD
- Sengoku Night Blood | Release date: TBD
- LoverPretend | Release date: TBD
- New entry in the Hakuoki series | Release date: TBD
We’ll talk more of Nintendo’s strategy and how visual novels fit into it in the near future. For now, you can get more information on the Idea Factory website. Also, check out the original news article for this announcement right here. JP3: OUT.
