Topic: Lower Budgets Drew Marvelous to Wii

[Kairon]

Marvelous' CEO is interested in the "the more hardcore platforms," but the company has embraced the Wii due to business realities.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=17818

 In a recent interview, Marvelous CEO Yasuhiro Wada explained that his company's projects were very Wii-heavy because projects on the other consoles "require a lot of technical skills" and because his company didn't have "enough money" to pursue them.    

Marvelous, a mid-sized Japanese publisher, is responsible for helping bring gamers the Wii-exclusive No More Heroes. The company is also prepping the sequel, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, and simulation title Little King's Story for release in early 2010 and later this year, respectively. Both games are Wii exclusives.    

But Wada told Gamasutra that he was "very interested in the more hardcore platforms," referring to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, Wada pointed out the difficulties of the videogame business. "I wanted to put a lot of money into development," he explained, "but at the same time, in the business aspect, if we put too much money in, then we can't make money." The Wii is widely regarded as vastly cheaper to develop for than either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3.    

Confronted with the possibility of licensing out their games for development on other platforms, Wada declined. "We want to make it ourselves," he said, pointing out how No More Heroes was loved so much by both himself and co-creator Goichi Suda that they couldn't let anyone else work on it.    

However, Marvelous' Wii success has allowed the company to grow, causing Wada to ponder, "I think we're at the point where we can actually go into it and start thinking that we can actually do it." However, he also assured that "We do have a really good relationship with Nintendo, so we'll continue making games for Nintendo."  Despite his companyÂ’s recent successes, Wada knew that he had a narrow chart to course for the future. "One of the most important things, I think, is not to have one big hit," he suggested, "but to keep having successful titles, one after the other."

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Check it out, Marvelous cares about STAYING IN BUSINESS.

[NWR_pap64]

Check it out, Marvelous cares about STAYING IN BUSINESS.

What? No sarcastic, snide, angry, angsty comment about this company using its Wii profits to fuel HD projects?

You feeling well?

[TJ Spyke]

Is it any real surprise that almost all of the small and mid-size publishers are focusing on Wii most? Crave Entertainment, D3  Publisher, Oxygen Games, Marvelous Interactive, etc. Very cheap to develop and a huge install base. I am glad Marvelous intends to stay focused on Wii.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"good business" is already taboo talk regarding HD systems, sheesh.

[Kairon]

I think it's interesting to see the split between marvelous and Capcom in this case. Capcom's one of the bigger players in the industry, so they're perfectly fine with the higher costs of HD development. Meanwhile, marvelous wouldn't got a snowball's chance in hell of staying in business, in my opinion, if not for the Wii. Sure, everyone wants to make the most graphically powerful games ever, but if that was the only mesaure of success I fear that the creative smaller developers and publishers will be locked out.

[TJ Spyke]

Thankfully Atlus doesn't care about pushing graphics. Most of their PS2 RPG's (even ones released in 2007) look like they could be PS1 games.