“Sony has been compiling a list [sic] based on fan tweets and requests for three months now. Final Fantasy Type-0 is on there. So is Yakuza. And Shenmue. And many, many others, compiled when Sony’s Giovanni Corsi started asking fans to submit requests.
Sony’s goal: to bring as many of those games as possible to PlayStation platforms and, if they were never released outside of Japan, to bring those games West.”
Today Kotaku’s Jason Schreier spoke with Sony’s Adam Boyes (Head of 3rd party developer relations at Sony) about what his team does for developers and why he’ll soon have good news for Japanese game lovers.
It’s a fantastic interview that really gives you an idea of what Sony is doing to help localization efforts. The biggest news here is that the top requested games are; Yakuza, Shenmue and Final Fantasy Type-0.
Schreier: With the caveat that this is all up in the air, this is all in negotiations, are there any that you guys have in mind that you would really like to bring over here?P
Boyes: I think a lot—we get a ton of requests for Yakuza, a ton of requests for Shenmue. We see the lists. Like everything that people have tweeted Gio, literally we have a person that compiles those lists and prioritizes based on how many requests we’ve gotten. And I think to date there’s well over 10,000 mentions across like forum threads and stuff like that. So those are the ones we’re focused on.
I love Shenmue and I can see the people who want FFT0, but, let’s face it PSP is dead and Shenmue 3 isn’t even in the pre-planning stages. Yakuza 5 is ready to go on the most popular video game console around and there’s a huge market of very vocal fans!
Lastly is the big question, “Is it commercially viable?”. Sales of previous titles do help but only if they’re New sales;
Schreier: That’s good to hear. When you say that you’re targeting games in Japan, you mentioned Yakuza, you mentioned Shenmue—those are older games. Are you looking at PSP games? Are you looking at PS3 games?
Boyes: You could imagine that every piece of content that’s come to those platforms over in Japan, we’re looking at bringing over. It’s also a balance of like, is it gonna be commercially viable if there isn’t some sort of HD remix, should it come just as the native version, should we port it up? And so those are conversations, again—I worked at Capcom, now I work with Sony, so this is my second Japanese company. It’s about trust. And it takes a long time to have those conversations and make sure everyone feels comfortable, especially ‘cause it’s like, we haven’t released it before in America, how’s it gonna do and stuff like that.P
So it’s a long process. But I’m very hopeful. The whole reason we started the group is to bring great content that you love back over here.P
Don’t buy a copy of Yakuza used and think it’s helping Sega’s bottom line or decision making. Buy new. If Yakuza 5 does make it here preorder and buy asap. Don’t wait around for a price drop. Yeah you can grab Dead Souls for $10 now but Sega needs to see that fan hype in sales numbers and preorders day one! Especially if we want to see Ishin!
Keep tweeting Giovanni Corsi and let him know you want Yakuza 5 localised!