Illusion to Illgames

[Winterwolf]

I have a theory as to the re-branding of the company...

So, Illusion games has always had a sort of.. reputation for certain games that they have published.. you probably know the one, and if you dont.. prolly better ya dont lol.

Part of that was the reason they were sort of restricted to japan sales. In fact it wasn't until more recently their games became more readily available to the west and... actually started seeing support for western audiences.

My Theory is, that this rebranding is a way to basically re-organize the company so they can put out more games to the west. Anime/Hentai is thriving with western audiences and I imagine with some of the steam releases for illusion games, they noticed just how much money they could potentially make by spreading out their game sales.

I imagine some legal 'muck' was attached to their old brand name, so rebranding and basically starting as a 'fresh' company allows them to basically get a full restart. They'll have to rebuild their brand from scratch, but they won't have any of the negatives associated with it from before.

There is most likely some other stuff going on too, but this is just my theory.

TL;DR They Rebranded so they can separate themselves from some of the Negative Reputation in the past and potentially not be as restricted to selling games in the west because they are technically a new company now.

[Winterwolf]

To give you a rough idea of what potential sales numbers they're looking at.

Japan has 125 Million people.

The U.S. over 300 Million People.

If just 0.5% of those people buy into the next game... well..

625,000 Sales from Japan alone, compared to 1,500,000 from JUST the U.S. that doesn't even include the EU as a whole which is another large market for Illgames to look at.

So you can see wanting to expand their distribution overseas with a squeaky clean reputation as a new company is definitely beneficial to them and lends some credence to why the rebranding maneuver (Though again, other unknown factors are prolly at play too)

[Dunkler Messias]

If they wanted to be more consumer friendly, they should make the new game more optimized and mod friendly. But looks like the opposite happened, so modders will need some time.

And to your theory: Yeah, well, they should have used another name then instead of calling themselves ill games. :)

[Winterwolf]

Originally posted by Dunkler Messias:

If they wanted to be more consumer friendly, they should make the new game more optimized and mod friendly. But looks like the opposite happened, so modders will need some time.

And to your theory: Yeah, well, they should have used another name then instead of calling themselves ill games. :)

It's more of a technicality/legal thing since they are technically a NEW company, they don't have some of the previous restrictions.

[cyäegha]

i'm like 95% sure that the rebranding wasn't just to shed negative association with, uh, that one particular title so much as a positive side-effect of whatever actually prompted their initial closure (money, or a lack thereof)

when talk of the studio's closure and speculation about acquisition and rebranding manages to hit something as (relatively) mainstream as the hololive subreddit, it's not hard to imagine that illusion's managed to catch the interest of companies much larger than themselves
while i seriously doubt that cover are about to up and admit that they've invested in illgames, it's hard to deny that that one model of houshou marine from the summer festa looks like it's straight out of HS2

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Part of that was the reason they were sort of restricted to japan sales.

Nope. This is standard Japanese licensing. Take a look at any game sold in Japan, not just eroge and you'll see FOR JAPAN ONLY on the box above the barcode. This is also true of games released in Japan by western companies. The only exception is Nintendo Switch releases, they don't have the English phrase on the packaging, but the condition for being sold and used in Japan only is still included in Japanese in the text box to the side of the barcode.

[フライリー]

So is the legal 'muck' attached to their old brand name the NT-*suddenly gets shot*...R..

Its probably that cursed game that ended up being a controversy in the past that will end up rotting their names in other countries policy now.

[血液月 jack]

Good to see they still plan on sticking around, I have been a illusion fan for over 10 years now, artificial girl 2 was my first game lol