I've got a big backlog of stuff here:
Asked about if they can gives hints towards any future games ala Ask Capcom, reply:
I'm sorry but I can't comment on Marvelous titles that have yet to be announced for the US by us and Marvelous Entertainment USA. As you stated, Marvelous is showing a lot of love to the Wii so good chance that anything they showed at TGS that we haven't announced for the US yet may make it's way eventually.
Asked about if their workload maybe too much on their shoulders:
In terms of our workload at XSEED, yes, it's pretty staggering how many titles we have this year for a company with just 11 people - it's almost more releases than we have employees. We love games, but we can only take so many consecutive late nights and working weekends... We'll see if we need to add some more team members later in the year.
(Already resolved now) I asked if they knew of anything about Kizuna's troubled situation:
To be honest, I have no idea what's going on with Kizuna now. A lot of publishers had expressed interest in that beautiful looking title, but I haven't heard anything since the whole news about Jaleco getting out of the game business. Sounds like you may know more about it than I do.
Asked more about localization details:
Japanese title names are a tricky situation, we take it on a case by case basis. For example, for a title like "Muramasa: The Demon Blade", we left the very Japanese "Muramasa" in there because it fits in with the theme of the story based on Japanese folklore and there's a ton of untouched Japanese names in the game anyway. But when the Japanese title is kept in solely for the sake of name recognition with the hardcore crowd that's been following the Japanese release, we may sometimes change it to make more sense to a wider audience in the US. This is one of the reasons we changed "Game Center CX" to "Retro Game Challenge" as more casual gamers will instantly know what the game is about, while the hardcore people follow the news closely enough to be aware of the title change (most of the time).
Same goes for the package design - if it makes sense for the US market then we'll keep the Japanese design, but we may also try a different approach as well. For our Victorious Boxers: Revolution package, we used our US-created design, but printed the original Japanese design on the inside so that people could flip it over and see the Japanese design if they preferred after they purchased the game. If you look at any of our past releases, all of our manuals are in full color, no black&white. It costs much more, but we think it's worth it to create a better package and to provide better value to the gamers that support our games. I don't know about other publishers, but we always provide a full color bilingual manual that's packaged within the box to our Canadian customers.
Asked about that connectivity bonus between RF Frontier and RF2:
I'm not really sure what the connectivity between Rune Factory 2 and Rune Factory: Frontier in Japan was, but yes, it makes it a bit tougher to leave in cross-game functionality when the North American publishers are different due to testing, regulations, etc. I think it was more like a bonus feature than anything else, but I'll have to confirm on the status.
Asked about how much money they get from each copy sold:
Can't really disclose what % of the retail price goes to the actual people behind the games, but I can tell you that every single sale counts. Total copies sold are always a great indicator rather than the specific revenue breakout of each game.
Asked about why Little King's Story keeps getting delayed:
Little King's Story has a very accomplished team behind it, they are trying to do a lot of ambitious things with the title and that always adds to the development time. With that said, they are doing everything they can to try to finish the title, but at the same time don't want to compromise any quality while doing it.
Asked about Muramasa's Japanese box and if they'd need to change it:
First time I've seen the Japanese boxfront, but it looks pretty sharp. Don't see why we'd have to change it for the US (other than logos, of course).
Asked about the mistranslated codes in RGC:
Regarding the codes in Retro Game Challenge, I asked our lead editor on the project, Mike, and he's going to address it in his next blog on 1UP. Keep an eye out on his blog, it should be updated soon with that answer.
Asked about their opinion on the sales of RGC at the time:
We've been happy with the sales and enthusiastic response from gamers for Retro Game Challenge, so off to a good start but only time will tell how the overall sales will be. More sales always help, so hopefully word will continue to spread and drive sales even more.
Asked about why MMV USA's website had been lacking in any updates for like, ever:
Good call on the Marvelous Entertainment USA website, you probably want to stick with our XSEED Games (
www.xseedgames.com) website for regular updates on our co-published titles.
Asked about how the localization of their games are going:
Localization on all our titles is going smoothly, and Rune Factory: Frontier is scheduled for a March release. We should be announcing the exact date very soon. I'm not that familiar with that title, but all the anime cut-scenes are voiced as well as some voice during conversations, if I remember right.
Another Kizuna status question and who's choice was it to not localize Shiren 3:
I have no idea on what's going on with Kizuna, and not sure if Sega would allow someone else to publish it but it's our decision not to pursue Shiren. There may be a small vocal fanbase for roguelike games, but we would surely lose money on it.
Asked about any possible content cuts in their upcoming games:
No significant cuts in any of our upcoming games that I know of - we always try to keep it as close to the director's original vision as possible.
Asked about if all of their MMV Wii games support 480p, 16:9, etc:
Looks like the MMV Wii games are all shooting for 480p, but they won't know for sure until each game is complete. I believe everything I've seen so far also supports 16:9.
A burning topic, I asked about any possible slowdown in Muramasa ala Odin Sphere:
Know what you're talking about with the slowdown in Odin Sphere, but I'm happy to report that we have yet to see any slowdown in Muramasa (granted, only short playthroughs of the first couple levels or so). Not sure about the exact framerate, but everything's looking really smooth so far.
Asked about all of those pre-order bonuses for MMV's Wii games:
We will be announcing a pre-order bonus for Little King's Story shortly, and will always try to match whatever Japan makes available when possible (sometimes soundtracks can't be done due to licensing issues outside of Japan, etc).
Asked about the layoffs happening at MMV:
Afraid I can't comment on anything that's a Marvelous internal matter, but I can tell you that Yoshifumi Hashimoto is one of their senior game producers. He's the producer of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and he also created the Rune Factory series as well as Avalon Code. Very talented man, as you can imagine.
Asked about the newly rated Drill Sergeant Mindstrong for Wii:
Yeah, that's some good detective work Spencer at Siliconera did with the ESRB, but Drill Sergeant Mindstrong has nothing to do with Discipline. That's all I can say for now, but the official announcement will be coming within the next couple days so you can see for yourself what the game looks like then.
And I of course reminded him that he said XSEED doesn't do casual games:
Huge difference in costs and risk associated with putting out a game on DS versus making it a download only game. We are much more willing to experiment with downloable games than a packaged product.
Again about the layoffs:
And again, I cannot comment on any internal Marvelous matters, only the stuff that pertains directly to us here at XSEED.
DONE!