This focus on story had led to whole subgenre about "crying ero" (don't remember the right term)
Nakige, meaning crying game.
As the sex scene actually reduce the market, they are not there for selling.
I don't think that's quite true.
You can divide the market into people who'd rather have sex scenes and the people who are put off by them. The latter is more people, yeah, but they tend to buy fewer games, less variety, have higher expectations for quality, prefer familiar IP, mostly want games on console, etc. so it's riskier to target them.
A game can keep risk lower by being released as an eroge on PC, then later as a console game with cuts. (To Heart 2 went the other way: the console release was followed by the "X-Rated" PC version which probably even got extra sales from people buying both versions)
Another thing is that for eroge, being able to have explicit sex scenes after hours of building up a character is like a USP that gives them a raison d'etre compared to other otaku mediums. Anime and manga can't do that: if they have those scenes at all, basically every episode or chapter gets dominated by being an excuse for that.
(the other advantage bishoujo games, otome games, etc. have compared to anime, manga and light novels with similar appeal is that the interaction allows the story to branch and focus on a particular character, usually so the perspective character can form a relationship with that character. That avoids various problems common in the other mediums, like harem series where the protagonist has managed to attract many characters, but no one makes any real progress until the series has to end)
But I also don't think it's entirely a sales motivated thing. The developers of these games are generally making games according to their own tastes and they're likely to be fans of eroge.
i hate knowing this but tsukihime isnt really a ero game
its NOT A GAME >8 | *elitist nerd* its just a visual novel aka a book with pictures
there are some choices I guess
they're not game-y choices
and as far as i know the point isnt sex, its a ridiculous story about how nvrqnsr is the coolest character
there are sex scenes but its like a sex scene in a action movie
it doesnt make it a sex thing
The Japanese count visual novels as a type of game. Actually most of what we call visual novels in English, aren't under Japanese terminology: visual novels have text that can cover the whole screen (Tsukihime and F/SN are like that), the ones with the text in a box at the bottom are less specifically adventure games (AVG), but that's a difference in presentation (which allows for a different writing style) rather than interactivity.
But, yeah, it's true Tsukihime isn't a sex thing.
December When There Is No Angel is the only good game I know of where sex is central to the story, but I'm not knowledgeable, so I assume there are others. I don't think many people would find it a sexy game though. Probably only otaku with quite a dark mindset would be able to enjoy it...
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