Okamoto on pulling off launch titles

What’s it like to have a launch title? Yoshiki Okamoto, Game Republic founder, divulges his experience with Genji: Days of the Blade in an interview with Kikizo.

“Launch games are more difficult because we cannot change the release date. There’s always the difficulty that it’s a new hardware and not knowing what the full capacity of the hardware is going to be.”

Genji: Days of the Blade was originally a PS2 title, supposedly, but they decided later on to port it over to the PS3 instead. Certainly, there were much to be done given this change. After all, it wasn’t long before they realized that the work that had been done for the PS2 version just wasn’t cut out for the PS3’s technology.

“We wanted to give people great graphics that would say, ‘Yes, this is PlayStation 3. We had to give a little bit up from the gameplay. That was really difficult from the [perspective of] balance.”

But apparently, that wasn’t the only problem that they will be facing. When Sony announced that they will not be continuing with the rumble from the SIXAXIS, they knew that there will be something lost. However, fortunately for them, the game was already in production when the tilt-sensing features were revealed. So, “The game design was not thought out with the SIXAXIS in mind. Yes, we did lose something but we probably gained a lot more,” muses Okamoto.

For the PAL version of the game, what gamers can expect is that there will be a bigger number of languages, totaling 11, as well as the reduced numbers of bugs.

Okamoto is confident that their team has succeeded in showing off the power of the PS3, tip of the iceberg as it may be. And as what all other optimists say about the PS3’s technology, “If this is what we can do at launch, think about what is possible in the following years.”

Oh, believe us. We’re definitely thinking about it.

Via Kikizo

What’s it like to have a launch title? Yoshiki Okamoto, Game Republic founder, divulges his experience with Genji: Days of the Blade in an interview with Kikizo.

“Launch games are more difficult because we cannot change the release date. There’s always the difficulty that it’s a new hardware and not knowing what the full capacity of the hardware is going to be.”

Genji: Days of the Blade was originally a PS2 title, supposedly, but they decided later on to port it over to the PS3 instead. Certainly, there were much to be done given this change. After all, it wasn’t long before they realized that the work that had been done for the PS2 version just wasn’t cut out for the PS3’s technology.

“We wanted to give people great graphics that would say, ‘Yes, this is PlayStation 3. We had to give a little bit up from the gameplay. That was really difficult from the [perspective of] balance.”

But apparently, that wasn’t the only problem that they will be facing. When Sony announced that they will not be continuing with the rumble from the SIXAXIS, they knew that there will be something lost. However, fortunately for them, the game was already in production when the tilt-sensing features were revealed. So, “The game design was not thought out with the SIXAXIS in mind. Yes, we did lose something but we probably gained a lot more,” muses Okamoto.

For the PAL version of the game, what gamers can expect is that there will be a bigger number of languages, totaling 11, as well as the reduced numbers of bugs.

Okamoto is confident that their team has succeeded in showing off the power of the PS3, tip of the iceberg as it may be. And as what all other optimists say about the PS3’s technology, “If this is what we can do at launch, think about what is possible in the following years.”

Oh, believe us. We’re definitely thinking about it.

Via Kikizo