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How healthy (in the fiscal sense, let’s leave the social aspect sleeping quietly in it’s sunny spot by the door) is the ero game market? From insanely limited antecedal observation, from what I see on getchu/galge and the CG rips I peruse (complete with pipe and smoking jacket), the market has been in decline. At the very least, ‘production values’, in terms of creative (in a good, dirty sense) and artistic (also in a good, dirty sense) output, is way down compared to a few years ago. I don’t see much from heavy-weights of ecchi cheescake like Taichi Kiriyama, Happoubi Jin, Ino, etc. Old stand-by’s like the various Atelier brands (if you know them off the top of your head give yourself a hentai no-prize. It comes with equal parts pride and shame) are sub-standard compared to their digital glory years.

Expensive to produce (lot’s o pricey variables-Game/software development, artists, writers, testers, tech/software support, all before you even get to standard marketing/advertising costs), and an ever-shrinking niche market attached to their equally-shrinking buying budgets. In terms of margin/overhead for a producer/manufacturer, banging out plastic cuties is potentially a hell of a lot more attractive proposition than hitching your wagon to the PC game world. Though not my preferred area of erotic collection, models do appear a lot more accessible and ‘mainstream’ (relative) then ero PC game-ship).

The PC market, again in my highly un-scientific sampling, looks to have followed otaku-oriented anime. Cheaper with a massive helping of Japanese geek fetish-fulfillment. Because I’m an art/print/visual kind of fossil (oh, kids today with their gel-boob mousepads and pornographic pillow-covers. I remember when…), I’ll miss the age of appealing, ‘mainstream’ PC art of the ‘Boins’ or ‘Aisaigers’; but from a business person’s perspective I can easily see how models/toys are a lot more appealing in terms of bang-for-production buck in a shrinking market.

The slow disappearance of artists like Happoubi Jin or Sumeragi Kouhaku from the PC scene is like a canary in the coal-mine. When you see two tiny feet pointing to the sky, you know there’s a dangerous lack of money in the air. Cheapened product aimed to move ancillary high-volume, high-margin merchandise is step two.