Koei to announce PSP titles at TGS; hints at reason for Tecmo merger

Koei has announced that it will be announcing several new PSP titles at this year’s upcoming Tokyo Games Show. Koei’s president Kenji Matsubara also explains some of the challenges third-party devs experience in Japan, possibly suggesting why Tecmo chose to merge with them rather than Squeenix. Read about it in the full article.

Koei has announced that it will be announcing several new PSP titles at this year’s upcoming Tokyo Games Show.

Although no explicit details were given, it was hinted upon that these games will have emphasis on team play.

Now that’s all we got about Koei’s upcoming games, but for those who take an interest in the business world of gaming, you can read on as Koei’s president Kenji Matsubara explains some of the challenges third-party devs experience in Japan, suggesting why Tecmo chose to explore a merger with them rather than Squeenix.

Matsubara explains that the Japanese market is quite different than in the West, saying that it’s “very tough for third parties like us to do our business.” This suggests that it probably is better for smaller developers to team up, rather than disappearing into the folds of larger companies.

Because the handhelds are much more popular than consoles in Japan, it’s easier for third-party devs like Koei to penetrate the handheld market. It’ll take a few years before the consoles can be a big market for third party devs. Owing to the Wii’s popularity, he expects that the it will soon be more available for third party devs.

As it is though, third parties still need to develop for consoles:

In the PlayStation days, the platform was only one, but the competition was so high. For PlayStation 3, we have to spend huge resources. In the PlayStation 2 days, we could just focus on one platform.

but these days, we have to spend resources on handhelds, popular consoles like the Wii, and high-performance consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3. It means that we have to spend too much money and many resources. That’s a challenge for us.

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Related Articles:

• Tecmo rejects Square Enix acquisition offer, plans to merge with Koei
• Square Enix withdraws from Tecmo takeover proposal
• Koei reveals remaining games list for 2008

Via Gamasutra