With all the positive buzz, Muramasa: The Demon Blade is going to be a surefire hit for whoever publishes the game. Unfortunately for Xseed, they aren’t handling Muramasa anymore. At E3 I asked how Xseed felt about losing the title.

“As much as it hurts to lose Muramasa that does open us up to give more resources to other titles. That gave us a little more energy to focus on securing Fragile and other titles as well,” said Ken Berry, Director of Publishing at Xseed. In addition to picking up Fragile Xseed also worked out a deal with Gungho to publish Lunar: Silver Star Harmony and Ragnarok Online DS. According to a financial statement from AQ Interactive, Xseed’s parent company, Xseed will publish more titles this year than ever before.

“In the end when it comes down to the consumer they are still going to play Muramasa. It’s still going to come to North America. We’ve gone out and gotten a title like Fragile, which I doubt any other publisher other than Namco Bandai USA themselves could have licensed for the US.”

Since Xseed previously held the rights to publish Muramasa I asked if any of their work will be used when Ignition releases the game in North America. “We just started translating so, there wasn’t that much to hand over anyway,” Berry clarified. All of the translation and localizing work for Muramasa: The Demon Blade will be handled by Ignition.

Source

Best lost ever!

hip hip...

As long as Muramasa is published with devotion and attention to detail, i'll be happy.

For us yes it is a good lost, but for them no because there is no way Fragile will ever get good sales because if xseed is handling the game will be no marketing behind other than the internet while muramasa will get a couple of commercials.

Shane bettenhousen was a big influence for ignition to steal the rights from xseed. I can't wait to play this game, i just wished it was priced at $39.99 instead of $49.99

For those of us out of the loop on this, what is the issue here?

Yup because 2D Wii games arent worth full price. =P I dunno if you pay full price for your 360 games but w/e..

OT: If them losing it means they can bring over Fragile then Im all for it.

That sounds like a load of bull to me. They would have gotten Fragile anyway. This is just xseed damage control.

Unless something more compelling came along, then they might have skipped Fragile altogether.

surefire hit? I really doubt that... I will be surprised if it sells well.

(not saying that game is bad, just that it wont sell)

I just hope both of them will be great titles, from the looks of it they will be, but so have so many otehr games and then we know what happened...