The Famitsu issue of 19th May 2016 features Interviews with the brand leaders of Koei Tecmo. BlackKite was so kind to translate some pieces of the interviews on Twitter. I will summarize it here.
First up was Kenichi Ogasawara of Omega Force which have Brand IPs such as the Warriors series, Toukiden, Dragon Quest Heroes and more. They used to be divided into DW, SW and Other team but now they’re all a unified team so they’re able to create games with more efficient gameplay systems. It was said that they put much more power on making Dragon Quest Heroes II in order to surpass the expectations of the consumers.
Ogasawara thinks that they didn’t have much evolution (or innovation etc.) when they went from DW7 to DW8, so when they are going to reveal Dynasty Warriors 9, they want to make sure that it has a huge impact and a reveal that’s more than Fans expected. Furthermore Ogasawara laments that he won’t get a chance to be involved in making a new Nobunaga’s Ambition as he’s the brand leader of Omega Force, since now the brands are only working on their intern IPs and not on the IPs of the other brands.
Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and Toukiden have their own IP producers which are also looking forward to take on new challenges. Omega Force wants to ‘release new contents’ with “‘collaborating with popular IPs users have long awaited for’ for this fiscal year. Lastly Omega Force mentioned a collaboration project between Koei Tecmo IPs that could also draw new consumers into the Fanbase.
Next in line was Koinuma of Gust who has been building bridges with the company together with CEO Erikawa/Shibusawa. IPs of Gust are for example the Atelier series, Nights of Azure and more. The Gust brand is supported by the Koei Tecmo development team in Kyoto. Koei Tecmo allocated more staffs on the team because the Gust team lacked in manpower but now they have a proper development line. Keisuke Kikuchi is handling the transition in Gust team and also handles localizations while Yoshito Okamura works on new Atelier entries as Producer and Akira Tsuchiya is currently working on a new challenge which will be a brand-new IP. He also is the Director of Ar Nosurge.
There aren’t any new games announced for this fiscal year but they confirmed that they are making console and smartphone games. Additionally they can’t say anything about next years 20th anniversary of Atelier, yet but they’re considering to show something somewhen.
After Koinuma was Yosuke Hayashi of Team Ninja. Team Ninja has IPs such as Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden, Fatal Frame and more. They’re mainly making Action and Fighting games, but some of their staffs also worked on entries of Fatal Frame and Deception, so they want to utilize the knowledge from those in making new games. Staffs who worked on non-Team Ninja titles have been transferred to the respectative brand teams for now.
Team Ninja is aiming to continue releasing games that users actually want. They’re currently working on NiOh and aim for it being played by many people worldwide. The game was praised by a lot of hardcore players but has some parts in its gameplays system that were hard to understand, so they are looking into improving the pointed aspects like camera and controls.
Lastly they talked about their Dead or Alive plans. Dead or Alive 5 Core Fighters F2P has reached 6 million downloads but Team Ninja has yet another big surprised up their sleeves on that title. Finally Team Ninja is considering more new things to Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 like adding VR compatibility once the Playstation VR released and is available.
The next leader is Kazuhiro Fujishige which is the leader of Kou Shibusawa Productions which have IPs such as Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the three Kingdoms. They’re aiming to enlarge their brand in consoles and smartphones. The producers aim to establish their IPs, the existing ones (such as Nobunaga’s Ambition) and also new ones. Currently Shibusawa Productions want a big successful smartphone title so they firmly plant themselves on the smartphone game market.
The last is Mei Erikawa who is the leader of Ruby Party, which got IPs like Angelique and more. Before becoming the leader of Ruby Party, Erikawa used to supervise creative aspects and visuals for contents that aimed for girls as audience. Ruby Party plans to expand their existing IPs Angelique, Harukanaru, La Corda d’Oro and Geten Hana with Spin off titles, phone apps and media mix. There will be a Playstation Vita version of Geten no Hana, which is a PSP title, with new contents and a chinese localization of La Corda d’Oro 4. Of course they also still plan for new IPs in Neoromance series and outside of this series, meaning new titles, and lastly want to make new IPs which aim for male audience.
These are all Tweets of BlackKite summarized in one flowing text. Thank you for the translation to BlackKite and the Permission to make this. You can view the timeline of these Tweets here: https://twitter.com/bk2128/timelines/732581055253774337
