With the successful debut of Project Phoenix on Kickstarter many have been wondering why the developer Creative Intelligence Arts is negotiating for a PS4 and PS Vita version of the game, but isn’t interested in publishing it on Nintendo’s consoles, and in particular on the Wii U. Even on our site we had quite a few commenters wondering about that. Last night I had a chance to interview the game’s Director and Producer Hiroaki Yura, so I just went ahead and asked him directly. Here’s what he told me:
The problem with Nintendo… You know, I like Nintendo and everything…but not a lot of people buy it. I know a lot of fans buy it, but there are so many restrictions with Nintendo, and also the fact that Nintendo in Japan does not accept indie games.
We think Nintendo is taking a wrong approach towards games like ours. I think maybe it has to do with the Kyoto culture…very old companies. Nintendo itself in Kyoto is not that old, because in Kyoto there are companies that survived for hundreds of years, and compared to them they’re relatively young, but in terms of video game industry they are very old. They have a set of rules that does not fit with the core values of our game, basically.
They have interesting hardware, but it ends at “interesting”. It’s not “exciting”.
Our main goal is not to publish on all consoles. Our main goal is to make the best game possible on the best platforms. The reason why we’re going to work on PlayStation 4 is because we’ve been asked by a very small publisher who wants to publish for PlayStation 4, and they’re passionate, and don’t want to influence our creative side. I agreed to that because they understood the intricacies of indie games’ development. That’s how it came to be with the PlayStation 4 and the Vita.
There you have it, straight from the lion’s mouth. Yura-san has a very clear vision of his game and of his development philosophy, and quite evidently it doesn’t fit well with Nintendo’s. Of course it’s important to remember that the deal for the PS4 and PS Vita is not finalized yet, even if Yura-san says it has a 90% chance of happening.
If you want to read the rest of the interview, you’ll find it here on DualShockers tomorrow (Friday) at 10:30 AM EST. Our chat lasted over one hour, so there’s a lot to learn about Project Phoenix.
In the meanwhile, you can pledge your support on the official Kickstarter page. I heard quite interesting info about future stretch goals so you may want to help reaching them.
