Koei boss: It'll be years before HD consoles are big in Japan

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."

Full thing through the link.