Ignition on who they'd like to work with, 3DS support, and why certain DS games didn't get localized

A portion of a Siliconera interview with Shane Bettenhausen from Ignition Entertainment…

S: The number of options is shrinking, but what other Japanese companies are you looking at working with?

SB: There are guys I would love to work with like Q? Entertainment or iNiS.

S: iNiS is here [at GDC]. They are looking for someone to publish their stuff!

SB: We’re meeting with them. There are even little guys, the guys who made Tatsunko vs. Capcom, Eighting. When I met with them the dude was sitting across from me made my favorite shooter of all time, M.U.S.H.A., literally my favorite shooter of all time. You made my shooter, would you make another shooter? And he’s like “who wants a shooter?” [Bellows, in a stern voice] I want a shooter!

If I can ever convince him to make a new M.U.S.H.A…. I got to meet with Treasure. They don’t have any availability right now, but just the fact I got to sit across from Maegawa-san and talk about what kind of games he would like to make, if he could make any game he wanted for us. Those are the guys, people who have been making games for years and years, but who are a little undervalued these days. Really, these are super talented people.

S: Do you have any plans for the 3DS?

SB: Yeah, we actually have some things already in the works, but I want some really cool Japanese games. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get things from Japan before the end of the year. But, it’s going to be a big fight, as you mentioned. Whenever a good game gets announced from an untethered publisher or developer in Japan it’s going to be a mad pile on to try and steal it.

It sucks because on DS especially, there are so many really good games we could have tried to bring them out. I was thinking 7th Dragon or Solatorobo. These are great games. I played these games and I wish that they were feasible in today’s market. But, the DS market just went south.

S: You don’t think those kinds of games could sell?

SB: Not for the price that they cost. The problem is the developers and publishers in Japan they think “OK, this is a great game, you should give us this much money to bring the game to America. Because we think its going to sell this many copies.” If you go back to them and say as good as your game is, the DS market being what it is, you can’t sell that many copies. But, they don’t believe you. So, it comes down to, well, sorry this can’t work out. Unless you want to take a loss and spend millions of dollars on a cool DS game you think is cool. But, when you put it out it only sells 5,000 copies you didn’t really help anyone out. So, it sucks.

I wish Nintendo in the future will have some download thing for the 3DS where you can bring out these old titles. Maybe or something, but there are so many good DS games that are not going to make it out here. That bums me out.