Level-5 talks Youkai Watch sales, focusing on games for kids, interest in comedy
The following comes from a Famitsu interview with Level-5 CEO, Akihiro Hino...
“If I had to split it in two, then it’d be cross-media expansions for children for Nintendo 3DS, such as Youkai Watch and Inazuma Eleven, and then games for a wider audience such as Fantasy Life and Wonder Flick. Each target audience requires a different strategy in terms of hardware approach, so I’d like to think about more plans for that.
Youkai Watch is actually still selling quite well. In the case of Inazuma Eleven, the first game’s opening week saw about 40,000 copies sold, and it ended up selling about 400,000 in the end, and I see Youkai Watch going with a similar flow, so I believe we were able to create another successful title. I believe that we’ll be able to surpass that next time, so I’d like to continue focusing on titles made for children.
Whenever I’m thinking of plans, I always make the assumption of ‘this will be a big hit,’ so when it ends up actually being a hit, I often have trouble answering such questions. Everyone always says ‘monster, monster’ so I thought it’d be nice to maybe call them ‘Youkai’ [Japanese folklore monsters] for a change, instead. It’s actually quite simple, like that.
Honestly, there’s a lot I’d like to work on, but at the moment I’m really interested in comedy. I’d really like to make a game that could make people laugh, I even put a lot of thought into this while thinking of stories for Youkai Watch. One of my ideas involves something different than what’s considered universally humorous. I’m thinking that there could be some kind of funny hint in there."
Link
“If I had to split it in two, then it’d be cross-media expansions for children for Nintendo 3DS, such as Youkai Watch and Inazuma Eleven, and then games for a wider audience such as Fantasy Life and Wonder Flick. Each target audience requires a different strategy in terms of hardware approach, so I’d like to think about more plans for that.
Youkai Watch is actually still selling quite well. In the case of Inazuma Eleven, the first game’s opening week saw about 40,000 copies sold, and it ended up selling about 400,000 in the end, and I see Youkai Watch going with a similar flow, so I believe we were able to create another successful title. I believe that we’ll be able to surpass that next time, so I’d like to continue focusing on titles made for children.
Whenever I’m thinking of plans, I always make the assumption of ‘this will be a big hit,’ so when it ends up actually being a hit, I often have trouble answering such questions. Everyone always says ‘monster, monster’ so I thought it’d be nice to maybe call them ‘Youkai’ [Japanese folklore monsters] for a change, instead. It’s actually quite simple, like that.
Honestly, there’s a lot I’d like to work on, but at the moment I’m really interested in comedy. I’d really like to make a game that could make people laugh, I even put a lot of thought into this while thinking of stories for Youkai Watch. One of my ideas involves something different than what’s considered universally humorous. I’m thinking that there could be some kind of funny hint in there."
Link
