Level-5 on Yo-kai Watch’s NA sales, Snack World update, future plans and more

Nikkei Trendy published a new interview with Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino. There was plenty of talk about Yo-kai Watch, including the first game’s performance in North America, the next Yo-kai Watch movie, and Yo-kai Watch 3. He also shared a status update on Snack World and what lies ahead for the company.

Siliconera rounded up details from the interview, which we’ve summarized below. You can read their full article here.

Yo-kai Watch sales

– Anime has received favorable TV ratings
– Games are at around 400,000 copies sold in North America
– Hino says that looking at it from a Yo-kai Watch perspective, that’s not nearly enough.
– It takes time for things to start catching on in North America
– Level-5 is putting together a plan of having things bloom like a flower in half a year or a year from now
– Specifics weren’t shared
– Hino noted that the idea is to have North America get content that Japan has yet to see, or some content before Japan, or at the least at the same time Japan gets it

Yo-kai Watch movie

– Third film will have live action and anime parts
– Was originally planned as a full-CG film
– This would have taken two years, which would have been the case for a full live-action film as well
– Level-5 wants a new film each year and thought of ways to make that happen, including its whole story

Snack World

– Lots of information coming at Level-5 Vision 2016
– Anime production has been taking awhile
– Game and anime may release next year
– Considerable progress made with the script

Yo-kai Watch 3

– Set in foreign lands
– Has a renovated map
– Hino isn’t a fan of using the same map for a new RPG
– Yo-kai Watch 3 does have some data from the previous game, but Hino didn’t want to make it using just that alone
– ROM size about wice as big as Yo-kai Watch 2

Smartphone

– With the great success of Yo-kai Watch PuniPuni, Level-5 will focus more on smartphone compatibility
– Hino even goes on to mention that he hopes to see all future titles from the company be compatible with smartphone, meaning he wants all future console titles have a way to be played via smartphone
– Hino expects to have some kind of rule on how these console games will be carried onto smartphone, but he has realized that kids today are starting to play games on smartphone and felt a change in generation when looking back not so long ago when all the boys in first grade would only talk about the Nintendo 3DS

Future

– After the big bang that is Yo-kai Watch 3 in 2016, Hino believes that the rest of the year will see a big pause for the Yo-kai Watch series
– 2017 and beyond will be the start of many new things
– Tokyo Studio opening which will work on voice recording and video distribution
– The voice recording studio will be around the level of a film production company’s
– Hino wants to be able to do all the voice-recording in-house with the new studio
– By doing so, thy can have more freedom in booking voice talents with an in-house voice recording studio
– In-house engineers can also make changes whenever needed or pack in some last minute work, overall seeing a great improvement in quality
– As for the video distribution studio, Level-5 will be able to take advantage of it by having talks about their work and such in programs right after an episode of the anime airs
– Hino wants to have a program that can help the company communicate better with the fans in mind, while sharing the latest on their work