http://www.industrygamers.com/news/nintendo-really-wanted-saints-row-on-3ds-reveals-thq/
The 3DS grabbed everyone's attention at this year's E3, but can the new handheld attract more core gamers? That seems to be the plan from Nintendo, according to THQ. In fact, Core Games VP Danny Bilson told us that Nintendo pushed hard to get Saints Row on 3DS to show that they can promote mature content on the new system.
As part of a soon-to-be-published in-depth interview, Bilson commented to IndustryGamers, "Nintendo really wants to launch with a very balanced portfolio. They really don’t want it to feel like a kiddie platform. They were very clear: they really wanted Saints Row on it."
Bilson continued by talking about how the 3DS version is essentially a no-risk initiative for THQ and is ultimately designed to help sell the upcoming Saints Row 3. He elaborated, "Now, we know how those go sometimes: sure, the first party wants it, but is it really going to work? The interesting thing about the game is we were already making it. We were already making it as our Xbox Live game and in 3D also. It’s designed for 3D already. So the 3DS version is an incremental cost. It’s not a big startup cost. Anything in a transmedia play has a column called marketing in it. It’s also a marketing tool. So how does that game model for us? I believe it will do great, especially if Nintendo is going to go mature and really do a big mature campaign on it. It’s a killer game. It’s got all the weird humor of Saints Row, and also its existence is part of the marketing plan to sell Saints Row 3. Also, all these games have hooks where, if you play it, it unlocks things in Saints Row 3. If you play Saints Row 3, it will unlock things in the 3DS game or the Xbox Live game. I don’t know if I was clear about that, but all of our extension properties all connect and unlock things in each other."
When IndustryGamers asked Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime about attracting a mature audience to 3DS, he replied that it's more about "DS Plus," noting that Nintendo would add incrementally. "The way I would describe the market for the Nintendo 3DS would be the launch market that we had with the Nintendo DS plus the launch market that maybe PSP had. And the reason I frame it that way is we will attract all the Nintendo fans and all the Nintendo early adopters with products like Kid Icarus, and then we’ll incrementally add the consumer who loves Metal Gear, or the consumer who loves Resident Evil," he said.
Stay tuned for our full interview with Bilson soon.
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Why do I get the feeling that Nintendo may have a different perspective of what happened? Also, it's nice to know that the game is a port of a XBLA game whose primary purpose is to advertise a separate title...
