XSeed are the guys that brought JU-ON, Little King’s Story, Rune Factory Frontier, and Fragile Dreams to the Wii. They’re also the U.S. publisher for Retro Game Challenge, Flower Sun, and Rain and the upcoming Solatorobo on the DS. In short, they have the love of videogames and marketing savy needed to take the weird Japanese titles that other U.S. developers don’t have the guts to publish, and make them profitable in the West. If it weren’t for the fact that Pandora’s Tower, The Last Story, and Xenoblade are Nintendo products, I’m sure they’d be working to snatch that gravy up and bring it to the Western Wii audience posthaste.
Instead, XSeed will be keeping a close eye on two other Wii titles; the post apocalyptic RPG Earth Seeker, and Yuji Naka’s next big project, Rodea: The Sky Soldier. I’m really looking forward to playing those two, and as long as they don’t totally bomb in Japan, it sounds like XSeed is feeling pretty optimistic about the publishing the both of them.
The same can’t be said for games on the 3DS.
According to Ken Berry, director of publishing at XSeed “We are looking at some 3DS titles, but for now I don’t think we’re ready to jump into that market just yet unless the perfect opportunity comes by. We’re still sort of sitting back and watching how the market plays out on the 3DS.”Mr Berry sounds a lot more optimistic about the PS Vita- “If we could be there at the launch of Vita, that would be absolutely great for us. It just seems like a natural transition from all of the PSP work we’ve been doing recently to be able to move on to Sony’s next handheld platform.“
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a publisher voice caution towards the 3DS. Failing to hit Nintendo’s projected 4 million in sales within the launch window changed a lot of people’s thinking on the console. It’s worrisome to hear that even XSeed, the masters of publishing risky and potentially unprofitable games on Nintendo consoles, is feeling gun shy towards Nintendo’s latest handheld. I really hope the 3DS has an exceptional year, lest they loose too many publishers to the imposing PS Vita and the budding smart phone market.
Xseed Interview Part 2 – Exceeding The Future [Siliconera]
