Red Steel 2 creative director talks hardcore Wii sales, feelings about the first game

The Official Nintendo Magazine recently conducted an interview with Jason Vandenbergh, the creative director of Red Steel 2. You can check out the full interview here, but we’ve posted two interesting quotes from the interview below.

ONM: There’s are quite a few hardcore games for Wii though – Madworld, Dead Space etc…

JV: They sold nothing, right? In each case we’ve seen so far we have other circumstances that have to be taken into consideration. I don’t know, I’m no statistical marketing expert. I’m an expert on player emotion. But you look at Madworld. If you make an ultra violent game where you’re shoving signposts through people’s heads as a core mechanic – I have no problem with that. I played it and I had a great time but if you do that you’re going to sell 10%. You’re cutting out 90% of your sales because that offends 90% of gamers.

ONM: What did you think of the first game?

JV: I was really excited about the first game. As a game developer, it was hard to play. I could see the team’s experience. Even before I knew the team I was like ‘Oh God… these guys just needed an extra three weeks.’ They were right there. There were issues with the controls schemes and it just wasn’t done. It wasn’t really finished. They didn’t need much time but they had to do it for launch so the ship date was the most important thing. They did a great job getting it out there. It was popular and it set us up for this. It was a nice introduction to the Wii – it was a little disappointing on the swordfighting front.