Speaking to Gamasutra, Koei boss Kenji Matsubara has explained the need to get into bed with a firm like Tecmo, saying it’s going to be years yet before PS3 and 360 are a stable business in Japan.
“I think it will take some years [for PS3 and Xbox 360] to be a big market,” he said.
“The DS is big enough, but the DS has already established a market for third parties. Two or three years ago, only Nintendo could make a business in the DS market, but these days, third parties can make a business. We expect the same situation for Wii.”
It’s not like it was back in the day, said Matsubara, where you could bang out PS2 games willy-nilly and swim around in your money bath.
“It’s back to surviving the market, I think,” he added. “In the PlayStation days, the platform was only one, but the competition was so high. For PlayStation 3, we have to spend huge resources. In the PlayStation 2 days, we could just focus on one platform, but these days, we have to spend resources on handhelds, popular consoles like the Wii, and high-performance consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3.
“It means that we have to spend too much money and many resources. That’s a challenge for us.”
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Blerk said:
I’m not sure it’ll make it at all this generation. I think Japan’s all set to go its own way again.
Tonka said:
Damn the Japanese and their slim line versions of everything!
Blerk said:
Here’s a related story to add to the Japan-o-doom-n-gloom.