People have been clamouring for news of new RPGs coming to Nintendo's Wii, games other than Square Enix's duo of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Dragon Quest Swords and now it seems their wishes are coming true. Details have emerged from Japan showing that Image Epoch has been busy recruiting high powered members to its small team.
For those thinking Image Epoch rings a bell, well that is because it is the development team that completed the gorgeous Luminous Arc for Marvelous Interactive on the DS recently, a game that is heading to the US in Q3 2007. Anyway, the company has now recruited Kazuya Niinou, who left Atlus R&D 1 in February of this year after growing in stature after working on Trauma Centre: Under the Knife and Etrian Odyssey as director and game designer, both for DS.
In addition to this, the owner of Image Epoch, and director of Luminous Arc, Mikage Ryoei, has brought another project lead to the company - Hiroyuki Kanemaru, who was previously at Telenet Japan and then moved to Namco's Tales Studio, where he worked as scenario script director and level concept designer on Tales of Symphonia.
Kanemaru-san has been put as the director of an original RPG called Project Ray, which he has gone on record as stating will be influenced by old-school RPGs from systems such as the PC-Engine/Turbo-grafx (a format he has worked on in the past).
There are three other projects on the boil, two of which are secret right now, whilst the third is called 'Project Salamander'. Niinou-san is taking the lead on one of these, although it is unknown which one right now. Image Epoch will have a 'Creator's Voice' interview with him on the website in mid-May to reveal more.
Finally, the company is said to be working with Konami and Sega at the moment, and is (most importantly in this context) focusing on the Wii and DS!
RedOctane’s official website has the following statement regarding Guitar Hero 3:
“Guitar Hero 3 for the Playstation 2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii are currently scheduled for release in the United States in Fall of 2007.”
EA Struggles to meet demand for Wii games!
EA continues to be punished for their assumption that the Wii would flop, according to Bloomberg News. EA's sales dropped a whopping 25% this February compared to last year, since they didn't have much to offer the 3.56 million Wii owners in the U.S. and Japan. Finally convinced that the Wii is a moneymaker, EA has recanted and is rushing to get titles out for it as fast as possible, like the recently-released Godfather: Blackhand Edition and Tiger Woods 07. Let's just hope they take enough time to really get a handle on those finicky Wii controls. EA seems to have gotten it right with Godfather, but the jury is out on Tiger Woods.
