Tetsuya Mizuguchi talks Lumines Live!

When it first appeared in the U.S. as a PSP launch title, Lumines instantly became one of the must-have titles for the Sony handheld. Its blend of hypnotic puzzles, soothing sounds, and simple controls made it one of those games that are easy to pick up but incredibly hard to put down.

IGN was recently able to speak with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man behind Lumines and games such as Rez and SEGA Rally. In between talking about the technical issues that the Lumines team faced when creating Lumines Live (“On the data side, we had to fit the game into 50 MB, so we have to include everything in that size”) and valiantly skirting a question regarding which artists he would like to see on Lumines, Mizuguchi-san also answered one of the questions that are on most gamers’ minds: What’s with the marketing strategy behind Lumines Live?

According to Mizuguchi-san, the reasons they split the game into the “Base” pack and the additional Puzzle/Mission and Skins pack are two-fold. First, there’s the aforementioned technical issue. Let’s let Mizuguchi-san reveal the second reason in his own words: “We want people to customize Lumines. We want people to look at Lumines and, depending on the artist, or the season, or the music, we want to give them different reasons to consider buying the game. So, we have two reasons.”

Mizuguchi-san also gave a much more in-depth answer regarding the issue, likening the way that they’re providing the Lumines content to the way people buy music now. While he is definitely aware that there will be some violent reactions to how Lumines Live has been released, he remained optimistic that people will understand that he and Q Entertainment are just “trying to follow a new path” regarding the distribution of content in today’s online world.

Click on the link below to read the full interview. If you have any opinions or thoughts, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

When it first appeared in the U.S. as a PSP launch title, Lumines instantly became one of the must-have titles for the Sony handheld. Its blend of hypnotic puzzles, soothing sounds, and simple controls made it one of those games that are easy to pick up but incredibly hard to put down.

IGN was recently able to speak with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man behind Lumines and games such as Rez and SEGA Rally. In between talking about the technical issues that the Lumines team faced when creating Lumines Live (“On the data side, we had to fit the game into 50 MB, so we have to include everything in that size”) and valiantly skirting a question regarding which artists he would like to see on Lumines, Mizuguchi-san also answered one of the questions that are on most gamers’ minds: What’s with the marketing strategy behind Lumines Live?

According to Mizuguchi-san, the reasons they split the game into the “Base” pack and the additional Puzzle/Mission and Skins pack are two-fold. First, there’s the aforementioned technical issue. Let’s let Mizuguchi-san reveal the second reason in his own words: “We want people to customize Lumines. We want people to look at Lumines and, depending on the artist, or the season, or the music, we want to give them different reasons to consider buying the game. So, we have two reasons.”

Mizuguchi-san also gave a much more in-depth answer regarding the issue, likening the way that they’re providing the Lumines content to the way people buy music now. While he is definitely aware that there will be some violent reactions to how Lumines Live has been released, he remained optimistic that people will understand that he and Q Entertainment are just “trying to follow a new path” regarding the distribution of content in today’s online world.

Click on the link below to read the full interview. If you have any opinions or thoughts, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.