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Marvelous trying to localize Senran Kagura, plans for more No More Heroes, Luminous Arc series' future

by rawmeatcowboy
10 September 2011
GN Version 4.0
A portion of a Siliconera interview with Marvelous' Toshinori Aoki, Executive Managing Director of Digital Contents, and Daniel Kurtz, Business Development Coordinator...

S: You know, Senran Kagura has a positive reception on Siliconera. Do you think there is a chance for the title to come out overseas?

Toshinori Aoki, Executive Managing Director of Digital Contents: We are certainly looking to bring this over to America and we’re working hard to do so.

Daniel Kurtz, Business Development Coordinator: With any of our games, if we can find a partner in the West that we can publish with be it Senran Kagura or No More Heroes. If there is somebody we can sell it with, partner with, and find a market with then we definitely want to push forward. Senran Kagura is no different.

S: Marvelous said they want to work on core IPs and strengthen those. No More Heroes is one of those titles that sold well in the West. What future plans do you have for this series?

TK: In regards to No More Heroes, we partnered with Konami to bring the full remastered version to overseas markets.

DK: It’s Heroes’ Paradise in the West, but it’s Red Zone Edition in Japan. It’s nothing like Heroes’ Paradise in Japan. It’s fine-tuned, easier to play with Move, and better looking. That’s in the near term. While we cannot talk about our plans currently, we are always considering it and have plans in the works for it.

S: How about Luminous Arc? Since Imageepoch is self-publishing games is this going to affect the future of this series?

TK: Being a traditional JRPG, don’t you think it will have a tough time with gamers in America?

S: I think there are many types of gamers in the West and there will always be an audience that appreciates JRPGs. Perhaps, that audience shrank from the PsOne days, but there is still a core fanbase that appreciates story driven games like Luminous Arc.

TA: With [Luminous Arc] 3 in particular, it’s a bit tough because the DS market has shrunk significantly.

DK: We very much rely on Western partners to get our games out here. We understand we have diehard fans and we understand our fanbase is large, especially for a Japanese company of our size. I can’t say thank you enough for it. Since we rely on partners they may or may not decide like listen the platform and this timing, this could be a little difficult for you. We would rather pass on it and bring it to a new platform in the future or do a remix series later on or something like that.

S: For the future of the Luminous Arc series, years ago Imageepoch had big plans for it expanding it from a strategy RPG to possibly an action game. But, since Imageepoch is developing titles like Black Rock Shooter, is the series on the hold?

TK: Like you probably know, we are very close with Imageepoch still. We’re not sure what platform we will put the next game on. We do want to continue making the series with them and there will be a possibility to do so down the road.

Full interview here