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Koei talks Monster Racers, DS market, and MotionPlus
UPDATE - The excerpt about the Wii MotionPlus has since been removed from the article.
“we can’t ignore the success that Nintendo is having with their platforms, and we want to challenge ourselves to release titles for the most popular platform that is out there…I wish they had that feature (MotionPlus) a lot earlier!”
A portion of a Gamasutra interview with producer Hisashi Koinuma and Koei sales and marketing manager Jarik Sikat…
GS: Looking at the art for Monster Racers, there seems to be some Pokémon influence there. Was that an intentional aim to capture that market, or was it a coincidence??
HK: Before, the object wasn’t to make a Pokémon game. First, there was the vision to make a kids game; to focus on games that were more geared towards younger boys. So, when thinking about younger boys’ games, there may be some references to Pokémon.
And, also [with] the fact that this game uses monsters, there is also that overlap in similarity with Pokémon. But we don’t necessarily think that all monster games are Pokémon games, so it’s difficult to make a kids’, boys’ monster game and not have people relate it to Pokémon, so that’s very difficult for the team.
Another historical background of the game is Koei released a title [in Japan] ten years ago called Monster Racer that included monsters. It was quite successful, and is what this game is based off of. An additional reason why Koei decided to make this game is that our Nintendo category is weaker than our other platforms, so this –
GS: …as a developer-publisher, how do you feel about the DS market right now?
HK: In Japan, the DS sales have come to a point where it’s so large that it’s not just a target audience; you can’t limit it to a younger generation or older generation, it’s gone beyond a certain audience, to where they even have a term called ‘touch generation’.
So, it’s something that has become a very commonplace electronic device that can be assumed that everybody already has, and I think that will be the same in US and Europe as well.
So for a device that is becoming not just a game device, but actually a communication tool, as publisher and developer, you can’t ignore that platform and not develop any software for something that is becoming not just a gaming device.