I appreciate the advice; and you’re right. I don’t care about the goofy front page or their questionable kanji learning methods (thank you WK!); the present lack of SRS for grammar isn’t a dealbreaker for me either.
And you’re very correct about the old price. That’s one reason that makes me think maybe they’re not joking about the sale. And even if they are just trying to boost sales, as long as the product is high quality I’m unconcerned.
I was impressed (from the outside) with the old NihongoShark content so why wouldn’t I be with the supposedly new and improved version? (Right?)
IMO, any company that has a Discord server as one of their main way of contacting them (and a public server at that!) probably isn’t going to be all that great quality. You can tell that WK puts effort into making a safe, secure forum platform that they pay for. WaniKani is solid, they’ve been around for like 8 years. But that’s just my 2 cents.
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Are they stating this as plans for the site, or actual content they’ve prepared? It sounds like it could be interesting, but it also sounds like lofty goals, so I’m curious what their team is like that’s creating it. That’s not to say that they can’t do it, just that it’s a LOT of content to get together, have audio for male and female voices, have a grammar dictionary, etc.
Something that I’m seeing ignored on this thread that you brought up here is that NihongoShark has been around for years before this rebranding; this lends a good deal of credibility to NativShark in my eyes. Or at least makes it seem not all that sketchy.
I’m thinking about going ahead and getting lifetime for this…
Anybody have new or second thoughts after Kumirei’s reconnaissance on their Discord?
“we don’t have shit for content yet, but we promise to deliver in the future. buy our lifetime only NOW, this is your ONLY chance. we’re totally not vaporware”
I’m not interested in trying it out, but I’ve been following this thread with interest. They seem very legitimate and it looks like the product has a lot of potential or at least ambition, but I guess I just don’t understand the sale. It’s not that it seems like a scam exactly (although holy cow it’s just expensive), but it seems… disingenious, to essentially ask people to buy a product that doesn’t really exist yet.
Sure, it’s insanely discounted as a result, but I almost feel like it would be more honest to do this via Kickstarter or similar. You’re basically asking people to invest, rather than actually selling them a product. At least by crowdsourcing it would be more apparent to the consumer that their “investment” might not pay off.
Or am I off-base in what you get right now? Someone up the thread mentioned PDFs? Damn, I don’t know, $250 is a hell of a lot for some PDFs.
Edit: okay, in light of drewbob01’s comment, it seems like you do get something in return for your money. I still feel like doing this via a crowdsourcer would make fewer people’s alarm bells go off / hackles rise, but that seems more fair (although again, are these lessons just downloaded as PDFs?).
Only they do have content now; they have all the lessons from the old NihongoShark platform available for download immediately after purchasing lifetime. And like they’ve said in the discord messages @Kumirei posted, those are the lessons some of their students have reached fluency with (according to them).
I get where you’re coming from and I think your skepticism is healthy. I’m hoping for the best with the platform but there’s absolutely no guarantee it’ll turn out.
For me at least, the only thing that’s really making me doubt the platform is other people doubting the platform.
Update: I definitely agree that they could be doing this more smoothly if it really isn’t a scam (for instance, why launch now if the content is supposedly only a couple months away from being ready?) As for the format of the old lessons, I sent them an email asking about that and am awaiting a response.
I actually just tried signing up to see what I would get and realised you can’t actually buy a subscription yet? That makes me feel quite a bit better; it sounds like they’ll be launching subscriptions at the same time as launching some content, and the signup message makes it fairly clear that they’ll be rolling material out over time, which I also previously felt they were being a bit sketchy about (the website makes it look like it is already fully populated with content).
I actually quite like the look of what they’re trying to do - it’s literally just the way they’re handling the sale / pricing etc. that makes me uncomfortable. also being called a cess pit
I do object somewhat to this statement though: “But you cannot go a single day without visiting NativShark and taking a look at what we have prepared for you that day.” Like, guys, chill. Way to make me feel like a failure just because I couldn’t face learning Japanese the day of my dad’s funeral or whatever.
Why did no one tell me? Can someone provide a link? /s
