Dear Reader:
PM Studios speaks of piracy levels on DS, troubles of porting DJ Max Technika to DS
A portion of an Escapist interview with Michael Yum of PM Studios. This interview obviously took place before PM Studios confirmed the DS version.
TE: Has that become a problem (lack of DS multi-touch input screen)? Or was Technika developed with the thought of, “Well, this is just going to remain in the arcades.”
MY: Yes, exactly, we started developing DJ Max Technika even before the iPhone really took off. We didn’t even think about Nintendo DS. There’s a lot of piracy in Korea, especially for the Nintendo DS. Sure, it’s bad with the PlayStation Portable as well, but not nearly as so on the DS. In Korea, a lot of the hardcore gamers have the PSP, but there are also lots of people buying them to watch movies on the subway, or television using the TV tuner, stuff like that. But with the DS, even the most casual users are buying these R4 chips and bootleg games.
There is a possible port of DJ Max Technika coming in the future though. We’re currently developing a title for the Nintendo DS and experimenting with the iPhone as a possible device. Should everything work out then we could have a universal ranking system for Technika. Maybe some players will want to play it in the arcades because they can pull off the chains better than on their DS, stuff like that. We still have a lot of work to do on figuring it all out as with the Nintendo DS, it only allows for one touch at a time. The screen is also very small and everyone is worried about how the graphics will turn out. We don’t want to dumb down the game or anything like that, so we’ve got some work ahead of us.