Marvelous interview - Wii, lack of their sales, and more

[Onyxmeth]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

Onyxmeth said:

Marvelous needs to start looking at a worldwide audience for their titles, and not merely a small pocket of the Japanese audience to purchase their games. Start looking for projects that have the appeal in other regions outside of that small group of Americans/Europeans that get off on buying niche Japanese offerings. That market is not big at all. In fact, maybe Marvelous needs to look towards branching out from those super-Japanese centric games and start publishing more western focused titles in addition, or concetrate on those types of Japanese titles that appeal to other regions, like say a japanese racing game or a japanese third person shooter. If they really think they're going to become the next Capcom by publishing Harvest Moon, Little King's Story and Legend of the River King, they're seriously deluded.

WHile they do need to come up with a new plan, just changing the entire focus of your company and trying to make games you think will appeal to another type of gamer (in this way, American and European gamers with FPS/Platformers) is not always the best option.  Look at how well it went over with Square when they stopped focusing on the game series they were known for and tried to make games that 'focused on the American market'.  And many other Japanese companies have done the same, with a similar result.

No, the problem isn't the games as much as the marketing, distrobution and name brand recognition.  As they stated in the article.

What games are you talking about regarding Square? The most western-centric release I've seen them make in a good long while is Kingdom Hearts and that is a raging success. It's exactly that kind of thinking Square needs to do more of.

My point regarding Marvelous is that their hybrid RPG/simulation games are NEVER going to give them the recognition they crave, because that is quite possibly the most upstream of any title imaginable. They need to start looking towards titles with a more global appeal, or even titles with a stronger japanese appeal, because a lot of their games aren't exactly lighting up the charts over there also. The point is to be known for the name, and be able to branch out from there. Look at their model, Capcom, they can make shooters, RPGs, racers, action titles, adventure titles, platformers, whatever and still be entirely Capcom.