Talk:General Discussion/@comment-138.229.17.112-20140915004000/@comment-114.124.6.15-20140916045615

The future of Kancolle as a browser game is actually pretty bleak, considering that Kadokawa and DMM themselves are already flooding the market with games like Shirohime and OLE Tower. This will very likely lead to market saturation and fracturing of the fanbase.

The income problem is not going away. However, according to industry news, in-game purchases have significantly (and I mean SIGNIFICANTLY) increased since the introduction of kekkon kakkokari, Yes, turns out players WILL pay an arm and a leg to actually marry warships (admittedly I'm just as guilty with a harem of four battleships and counting). Whoever came up with this feature was a friggin evil genius is all I can say. The fact is that people love this game so much they (we) are paying for a totally cosmetic and whimsical feature. What this says is that Kancolle players DO have cash to burn and are willing to burn it, so turning the game profitable is not an impossibility. The question is just how to do it safely. There are sadly other ways to make more money that devs have not started to milk yet. For instance, if they made Hoppo available through in-game purchase, I imagine 90% of the fanbase would instantly hate their wallets. The game is also still purely F2P and not yet P2W, which in a Western company would never have been allowed to continue this long. The draw of Kancolle has always been that we only pay for things we love, so once devs start implementing P2W features, we'll likely see either lower enthusiasm or better finances. In any case, the inherent problem is that to fix the game's own finances devs may have to take steps that would lower the game's popularity. So far they haven't dared, but that may be exactly what Shrohime and OLE Tower are for: backups or room for experimentation. With three such games on the market, it is now possible to test out income-generating features in one game or another without risking total collapse of the model. It now depends on whether they'll risk Kancolle with its already huge player base or start with the new games (which might cause a lag in their growth) to protect the extant fanbase.

That said, it's not like Kadokawa isn't profiting from the Kancolle franchise. All the merchandise out there is generating tons of money. To illustrate the point, Good Smile Company reported that this fiscal year they're expecting to receive nearly as much income from Kancolle as they're getting from Hatsune Miku (of course, this was before nendo Halloween Miku was announced - and that one goes on sale in the US first). Given that Miku is flat-out GSC's flagship product line and easy money generator, that's actually quite surprising. Apparently even Shingeki no Kyojin is not making GSC as much cashola as Kancolle. Well, actually, that part isn't a surprise to me given that I actually bought all the BATH TOYS despite not even having a bath (I let them swim in a little bucket).... obviously no Titan can beat a paddling Shimakaze. The prevalence of Kancolle GK figures in the recent Wonder Festival also testifies to the presence of a strong fanbase willing to take things into their own hands and fans willing to cough up cash for same. The franchise is definitely profitable even if the game might not be.

So what happens if and when the browser game winds down due to devs running out of materials to add? Well, make OTHER games, of course. With the wealth of characters and an established universe that is nevertheless still fungible, it's perfectly feasible to expand Kancolle as a game to other media. That's what Kancolle Kai for the PS Vita is supposed to be (or was, given we haven't heard of it for a while), so we at least know that Kadokawa Games already has plans to expand the franchise beyond its browser game origins. The best scenario would be to start dividing up the franchise into other game formats while keeping the contents that make the browser game popular to begin with. Get Kancolle Kai made for the PS Vita as a TRPG, expand its scale or port it to PS4. Make a Kancolle-light with the SD versions of the ships from Fubuki Ganbarimasu or nendos for the Nintendo systems. Develop classes or groups of popular ships separately into their own games (I wouldn't mind a DesDiv 6 adventure game, for instance). Try out totally new or crazy game genres like shooting, puzzle, or even fighting games based on Kancolle characters. Heck, turn Naka into a real idol in her own idol-nurturing game! The possibilities are endless, just as it has always been for the Touhou franchise or old mainstays like Super Robot Wars OG. In the meantime, embrace the doujin culture and keep publishing Kancolle manga and making extensions to the (most likely short) anime. The only thing that will limit Kancolle's future is Kadokawa Games' own lack of imagination. There's a ton of potential here to be explored, and if they screw it up they'd be remembered as idiots.

As for the fanbase, it's pretty huge and as I said before they're already developing stuff on their own for their own consumption, so likely the fanbase will outlive the browser game anyway, especially if Kadokawa takes steps to add continuity. Let's put it this way: Pokemon is still alive after all these years. There's no reason Kancolle can't make it as well.