Type-Moon and Leaf Featured in PUSH!! Magazine

The August issue of bishoujo game magazine "PUSH!!" went on sale on 6/21. As previously reported, the magazine has a special cover featuring Saber from Fate/stay night by Takeuchi Takashi and "Konomi" from ToHeart2 by Mitumi Misato. The special featured article is titled "The Law of Hit" (rules for succesful hits) and is about Type-Moon and Leaf. Below is a translation of the Akiba article on this feature:

At the main store of GAMERS, the cover is put on a signboard that says "Hey, this collaboration ... It's great! Shinyuusysa-san (publisher) did a pretty good job! What is being featured? It won't matter! the cover art alone is enough reason to buy it!"

The special featured article,"Rules for Successful Hits About Type-Moon and Leaf", estimates the No. 1 bishoujo game in 2005 was ToHeart2 XRATED, and No. 2 was Fate/hollow ataraxia. The magazine article analyzes how both games sold so many copies.

The article states that the reasons of XRATED's success: "Transition from the consumer version," "Reaching outside of the bishoujo-gaming crowd," "New elements," "Consumer friendliness", and "Advertising."

As for Fate: "From doujin to commercial," "The popularity of Tukihime," "The performance of itself (a fun game)," "The effect of word-of-mouth was more influential than expected," and "Female customers."

PC-NEWS, Messe-sanoh, Toranoana, and a director of middle-classed game maker also provided analysis.

PUSH!! concludes that the laws of popular games were "multimedia plans targetting the consumers outside of the gaming industry," "utilizing words of mouth," and the most important, "performance of oneself (to be a fun game)." The article showed bulletin boards, weblogs, and MIXI (a kind of membership bulletin boards) as examples of the way to apply "word-of-mouth".

Translated by T. Ohara