Stephen Kent, the occasional CNN contributor, and a guy known as "the only reporter in the mainstream media who has any clue about anything related to videogames" was recently in Japan, doing research for a new book about videogames, and wrote a series of articles for GameSpy.
The ones lower down the page are the ones that he's done already.
You may recognize the "Nintendo's New Direction" interview with Iwata, where he revealed the N5's latest name of "GCNext".
His interview with Hideo Kojima is pretty cool. Mostly about MGS3, but covers some other stuff. I liked Kojima's quotes of:
Quote "What we did to create the experimental environment was that we went to islands like Yakushima, Amami Oshima, and even places in Canada. These are places with a lot of vegetation, like Japanese jungles. Well, obviously not Canada."
and
Quote "People on my team are masochistic. They enjoy the difficulty of working with PlayStation 2 and we assume that PlayStation 3 will be even more difficult. We know nothing about the system; but it's from Sony, so we assume so."
And I found this line (about the Xbox) in the interview with Famitsu's Editor in Chief interesting:
Quote "It could have reached 2 million. If it reached that much, publishers like Square-Enix would have taken notice and the situation would have changed … drastically. But Microsoft did not reach the critical 1 million sales.
Dragon Quest was a big title in Japan. Executives at Enix said that if Microsoft sold 3 million Xboxes in Japan, it would release an Xbox version of Dragon Quest."
Title: RE:New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Berto2K on April 14, 2004, 07:04:56 PM
Okay so why can't the Cube get a version which has sold thousands and thousands of units? I think that is more backup to the theory that they ONLY made ffcc to keep with the GBA game development.
Title: RE: New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Mario on April 14, 2004, 07:05:09 PM
Quote Dragon Quest was a big title in Japan. Executives at Enix said that if Microsoft sold 3 million Xboxes in Japan, it would release an Xbox version of Dragon Quest."
What the hell? Why isn't there a Dragon Quest on Nintendo GameCube then? Screw you too Square-Enix.
Title: RE:New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Uncle Rich AiAi on April 14, 2004, 07:09:35 PM
Quote "People on my team are masochistic. They enjoy the difficulty of working with PlayStation 2 and we assume that PlayStation 3 will be even more difficult. We know nothing about the system; but it's from Sony, so we assume so."
Hmmmmm.....I didn't think Sony would be even more arrogant and stupid enough to make the PS3 more difficult to develop for. Only time will tell.
Quote Dragon Quest was a big title in Japan. Executives at Enix said that if Microsoft sold 3 million Xboxes in Japan, it would release an Xbox version of Dragon Quest."
That quote is WRONG in every way. Why not on GC then? Money hats? I guess it means Square-Enix don't really care about the GC then.
Title: RE: New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: KDR_11k on April 14, 2004, 10:06:52 PM
AiAi: Cell processor. Nuff said.
Title: RE:New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Ymeegod on April 15, 2004, 03:52:15 AM
Maybe Square/Enix stated that simply because they knew it wouldn't reach those numbers :9.
Title: RE: New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Ian Sane on April 15, 2004, 11:43:19 AM
I agree with Ymeegod. They KNOW that the Xbox will never reach those numbers so they're taking a shot at it. Odds are even if the Xbox reached those numbers in Japan they wouldn't give them DQ.
If I was the head of Nintendo though I would give SE a call and catch them on that quote. "So we've sold over 3 million Cubes. How about some Dragon Quest?" I mean what would they say in return? "Sorry about that we lied"? "We prefer the American made Xbox over the Japanese made Cube"?
"I didn't think Sony would be even more arrogant and stupid enough to make the PS3 more difficult to develop for."
Sure they would. I'll bet the PS3 will still have only two controller ports. And the controller will still have the d-pad as the focus. Sony will only get more and more arrogant with each gen until their empire collapses around them. It's like a rule that the console market leader screws themselves over due to overconfidence. It happened to Atari, it happened to Nintendo, and it will eventually happen to Sony.
Title: RE:New Stephen Kent Articles!
Post by: Uglydot on April 16, 2004, 12:50:08 PM
If the quality of the control sticks was improved a bit, I would love the PSX(2) controller.
