So some news, rather about the industry involving NTR itself and the effect Marina has had from a friend who works at a very well known company. We haven't talked for ages and he actually randomly hit me up on ICQ of all things haha, anyway we caught up and HE mentioned/asked if I played the Marina series. I told him I have - big fan. He told me I'm not the only one.
Apparently Marina has shaken the foundation of eroge developers who make NTR themed games, mostly because its sales are crazy good - not only per game but as a series overall. In a way no NTR game has ever done and the FIRST thing other developers take note of is the netorase theme.
More so Marina 3 sold incredibly well for the developer with nearly 80% of its sales made digitally on release causing its servers to crash and still managed to make sales rank 18 for the month for the physical copy. Which is also interesting because usually this would be much lower because it had no bonus physical content like telephone cards, ect that usually push physical sales.
We talked about this for a while, and he thinks that netorase is a more natural "happy" state of NTR, where NTR in its purest form is basically about causing the player pain - but netorase is about receiving feelings of jealousy and worry - while secure in the couples relationship. Most ntr happens behind the players back or as a "punishment" to the player - Marina is clearly not about that. He thinks this a more healthy form of NTR that would also appeal for a larger player base which its proven to have done.
I also pointed out this isnt just for japanese eroge, on amazon kindle the most popular wife sharing books are by authors that don't use the word cuckold in their title or as a strong theme. I also pointed out though that its easier to search for cuckold then wife sharing as a term better known in the genre just like ntr is vs netorase. So they don't properly represent themselves - I might argue they are entirely two different fetishes.
While the industy itself obviously does well enough to create NTR games, no game has done sales anywhere near Marina 3 let alone strong enough to stand as its own series. Part of this is cost, obviously a "full" 8000 yen game vs a 3200-4000 yen game is a tougher buy - but overall players who buy the marina series have spent more on it as a whole then they would have for a single larger game. Plus it allows for the unique opportunity to advance the plot by years by game and re-explore Marina's past in gaidens.
So ya Marina series is selling very well, theres a reason why most of its games come up as first results when you search NTR on getchu for example - sales.
I asked if he thinks more netorase games are going to be coming, he said thats hard to judge. A lot of ntr developers KNOW netorare, they don't know or might not even understand netorase. Heck I even found the Marina series stumbled trying to understand it and actually makes Kenji appear to have a "problem" in Marina's eyes - rather then a healthy sexual kink (like wife watching or swingers do)
Anyway I just thought it would be fun to share that the game series has done very well and NTR developers are taking notice.