Actually, Battle Stance is the expanded version of Valhalla Knights 2. Think of it as the Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite to Monster Hunter Freed 2. It was released PSN only in North America.
As well, I must be an anomaly, as I buy most of my PSP games on PSN. As I suspect since 2009 that any future backwards compatibility would be on PSN, not UMD. It's also a tonne more convenient carrying around 20 games at once rather than switching a bunch.
I though you guys had given up on the NDS... what's going on here? I suggest a DS title not too long ago and it was implied that I should just forget about mining for older titles.Originally Posted by Wyrdwad
We haven't given up on it... it's just a bit of a hard sell, that's all.
The right game is the right game, however, regardless of what system it's on. If it's fun and interesting, we can get the rights to it, and it isn't going to make us go out of business... we'll take it!
-Tom
Last edited by Wyrdwad; 06-15-2011 at 08:02 AM.
To elucidate on the specific problem with the NDS: it is impossibly expensive to manufacture games for. The software doesn't have to be that complex due to the simpler hardware involved, but because the NDS uses ROM chips instead of CDs, the manufacturing costs are much, much higher - especially if you have to play it fairly "safe" and do a not-huge first print run. And there's no digital alternative like there is with the PSP, either. Games for the NDS can get to the point where a fifth to even a quarter of the retail cost is tied up in manufacturing alone. It's that bad... if you can't get economy of scale going and manufacture a million units.
That's one of the reasons developers have been souring to the NDS as of late, and why I suspect the 3DS' reception has been so lukewarm; games for the NDS can make a ton of money if you control the ROM chip design and can manufacture hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of copies of a single title and ship them all with a reasonable expectation of selling them. When you're a third party who has to buy the chips from Nintendo and can't risk making a million units of Nora and the Time Studio or 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors... it becomes substantially less attractive, and I get the feeling it's bred a bit of resentment on both sides of the pond. Meanwhile, the PSP either offers digital directly or you use UMDs, which have a number of drawbacks when it comes to the actual PSP hardware but have the distinct advantage of being much cheaper than NDS ROM chips. Now that the PSP is an actual, viable alternative in Japan, it's a much more attractive platform to develop for.
This is why I was a little surprised to learn the Vita would use ROM chips, although ultimately from a pure hardware perspective it's a much better design choice than using an optical drive in a portable device (with all the potential for disaster that being "portable" entails). It'll be interesting to see just how many developers go "digital-only" on the Vita; I suspect it'll be a popular option, given how crushingly expensive the ROM chips are likely to be otherwise.
But yeah, an NDS game isn't utterly out of the question for XSEED or anyone at this point; it's more a question of "can it sell well enough to actually turn a profit in the face of the staggering manufacturing costs?"
Last edited by SpaceDrake; 06-15-2011 at 08:53 AM.
SpaceDrake: that was pretty depressing. Going by everything that you said, Aksys should have already gone out of business with '9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors'. Most Western gamers only play dead brain shooters. Aksys could not have sold 'hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of copies of a single title'. But this is also the reason why I like Xseed, Aksys, NISA and ATLUS. They are catering to a niche market. Yes, it's sad that Nintendo is putting so much pressure on the little guy, but somehow it has to be done. I won't accept a world filed with Call of Duty and Gears of War. I love NDS games. I love adventure games and JRPGs. Phoenix Wright, Jake Hunter, Riz-Zoawd, Radiata Stories have made me play exclusively on the NDS. It is also the reason why i never bothered investing in an HD console and probably never will... well, that could change is someone were to localise a Visual Novel for these systemsWhat I'm trying to say is, there are still some good NDS games out there and hopefully they won't be overlooked.
Last edited by Adrian-kun; 06-15-2011 at 03:19 PM.
Aksys has been super damn lucky that 999's done as well as it has, actually. It's still possible to make a profit on smaller print runs of DS games, remember - it's just that the manufacturing costs make the per-unit revenue razor thin. With the word of mouth 999's been getting, though, I'm pretty sure it's been a success for Aksys.
Still, the DS is built around selling a lot of copies and is not an easy market to break into for smaller titles - which has always been kind of weird because the hardware favors strange design like Phoenix Wright or Radiata Stories more than blockbusters, but the way the manufacturing and distribution model is set up makes the DS actively hostile to such games in many ways.
Is Solatorobo: Red The Hunter your mystery title? I'm really glad that NA is receiving it as well, but why isn't Nintendo of America handling this one?
Just popping in to say that I love this game so, so much.
The mystery game is reportedly a PSP horror title, so Solatorobo wouldn't be it. Could be a different XSEED project, though!
Yeah, we tend to work on multiple projects at once, even if we only release one game at a time. That's how we manage such crazy turnaround times every now and again. (:
-Tom
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