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Square-Enix explains why they offer so little for the VC, how they'd like to make an Actraiser sequel, if they plan on making more WiiWare titles, and tons of FFCC:MLaaK
A portion of a Gamasutra interview (conducted by Jeremy Parish and Brandon Sheffield) with FFCC:MLaaK lead programmer Fumiaki Shiraishi and producer Toshihiro Tsuchida…
BS: Do you foresee Square Enix doing more in the downloadable space for the other consoles, or will it just be WiiWare for now?
TT: We’re definitely looking into all the other download mediums.
JP: You mentioned in your speech that you initially saw the Virtual Console as the main competition for WiiWare. To date, Square Enix hasn’t really participated too much in the Virtual Console. I think you have a few games available for the system. Is that something you’re looking more into, or something you’ve tried to do and Nintendo has been hands-off with it?
TT: We don’t think the games and the IP that we have have lost value yet, so we haven’t decided if releasing them on VC is the best idea.
JP: So you feel that releasing older games for the Virtual Console suggests that they’re not as valuable anymore?
TT: It’s a matter of the package — which is downloading. You look at a game, and you have to decide whether it will be better to be sold in a retail store, or if it will be better for download. We’re making that decision carefully for each of the games that we have. It comes down to the games that we think we could make a good remake of haven’t been on VC yet.
JP: It’s interesting, because the one Square Enix game that has been on the Virtual Console is ActRaiser. This game reminds me a lot of the sim elements of ActRaiser. I don’t know if that means anything, but I am kind of curious about how this became a Final Fantasy game instead of an ActRaiser sequel, because it didn’t originally start out as a Final Fantasy.
FS: I’d like to make an ActRaiser sequel. That would be kind of fun.