XSEED on its Wii support, Pandora’s Tower sales expectations, no Retro Game Challenge 2 for the eShop, more
XSEED VP Ken Berry opened up on a number of interesting topics in an interview with Digital Trends. Berry discussed its support of Wii, its “deal” with Nintendo for The Last Story, the company’s sales expectations for Pandora’s Tower, and Retro Game Challenge 2 localization.
Sadly, XSEED has no plans to localize the DS title – nor will it consider an eShop release. The first game “was an incredibly expensive project”, but it didn’t sell well at all. As a result, XSEED can’t take a similar risk with Retro Game Challenge 2.
Head past the break to read up on all of Berry’s commentary.
Berry on why XSEED has stuck by the Wii…
“We have to be platform neutral and willing to publish the best games available to us, no matter what the platform. With that said, we’re especially proud of the titles we’ve published on Wii since so many of them are category leaders or significant in some way—Victorious Boxers: Revolution was the first boxing-dedicated game, Sky Crawlers was the best flight sim, Fishing Resort was the best fishing game,Little King’s Story was arguably the best strategy game (or whatever hybrid genre it would classify as), Rune Factory: Frontier was one of the top ten most played games on the system for a very long time. Ju-on: The Grudge was… well, let’s not talk about that one.”
Berry on why publishers are so reticent to continue publishing on platforms like Wii and PSP when they have big audiences…
“It’s a combination of retailers not wanting to stock software for older platforms as they reallocate what precious little shelf space they have to software for new hardware, lower anticipated sales volume and lower sales price for each unit sold. All the excitement, and higher price points and profit margins, are with the new hardware so focus shifts quickly for both retailers and publishers. A platform isn’t truly dead until all new software ceases to release on it, which in this day of digital distribution could take a very long time.”
Berry on how XSEED has stopped publishing DS games and its support compared to the Wii/PSP…
“Cartridge-based media is much more expensive than disc-based, plus with the PSP we had the great additional revenue from the PlayStation Store digital sales as all new UMD releases had a digital version for sale from day one.”
Berry on why he thinks The Last Story was so successful and thoughts on Pandora’s Tower sales…
“I think it was successful mainly because it was a fantastic game with a great pedigree of [Final Fantasy creator Hironobu] Sakaguchi-san and Nintendo behind the development. Informed gamers had been tracking it since its first public appearance in Japan and knew that this was a gem to add to their gaming collection. We do not expect Pandora’s Tower to match its sales as we will be even farther along the Wii’s lifecycle by the time it releases, but we do still expect a strong showing thanks to the great support from the fanbase for these JRPGs on Wii.”
Berry on whether he foresees being able to continue working with Nintendo on projects for the 3DS and Wii U…
“I can’t speak on behalf of Nintendo, but I think this is more a special one (or two) time deal rather than any kind of trend. We had special circumstances for The Last Story where our president at the time had a very good working relationship with Sakaguchi-san from their days together at Squaresoft, and our parent company was involved in the programming for that title. Getting The Last Story to market for us was a very smooth process, and since it worked out so well for both us and Nintendo, Pandora’s Tower was just a natural extension of that ‘one time’ deal.”
Berry on whether XSEED will consider publishing any additional Wii titles before leaving the system behind…
“I think I’ve said this before in a previous interview, but I really mean it this time when I say that I think this will be the last Wii title we publish. Of course things could change if a great Wii title were to fall upon our lap or digital distribution for that platform took off, but as of right now Pandora’s Tower will probably be our final Wii title.”
Berry on whether XSEED considered localizing games for even older consoles and on the possibility of localizing a SNES or PlayStation game…
“Afraid not. There is a limit to how far back we can go when localizing games, mainly due to the technical side of having access to the original source code and development team in order to implement the localization programming. Even if the technical side worked out somehow, the challenge then becomes the business side as games that old would likely sell for $4.99 or $9.99 tops, meaning that we would have to sell hundreds of thousands of units to justify the costs and manpower. Too much allocation of resources for too small of a payoff, so our time and energy is better spent on more recent releases.”
Berry on why XSEED won’t be localizing Retro Game Challenge 2 for the eShop…
“I think you’re asking the wrong people. We loved the original game so much that we really went way above our comfort zone on the investment it took to bring the game over here. It was an incredibly expensive project due to multiple IP owners and the extensive localization programming necessary as it was never intended to be sold outside of Japan. Our love for the game blinded our business reasoning as it was about three times as expensive to license as a typical DS game at the time, and it came back to bite us in the end when sales didn’t live up to our expectations. Even if the IP holder was open to us licensing the sequel, we can’t go into a project knowing that we’re going to lose money, no matter how much the gamer inside us wants to.”
