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BioWare busy w/ "something" for Dragon Age; Jade Empire 2 was "certainly" planned in the past, says Mike Laidlaw.
“What we can say is we’re receiving a lot of sketches and proposals around the brand and we’re going to pick one up. I think you will be able to see something, but you will have to wait for that.”
During an interview at Anime Expo, DualShockers asked Sakaguchi-san his side of the story, and how he feels about Final Fantasy XV as the father of the series.
First of all, Sakaguchi-san jokingly mentioned that he’s more like the “grandpa” of Final Fantasy. Then he moved on to talk about Tabata-san’s work in more specific terms through an interpreter:
“About Final Fantasy XV, it was very ambitious at its onset, and there were a lot challenges in the development phase. I think he [Tabata-san] did a really, really good job at pulling everything together, which looking at it from the sidelines was no easy feat.
More so than anything, I have a lot of respect for what he was able to achieve and pull together with Final Fantasy XV. Of course we are friends, so we frequently have drinks together, and he always says “oh you can’t see this, but what I’m doing right now…”
We have a lot of conversations so if I tell you everything about them it’s going to be a huge problem with Square Enix, and I don’t want that… But what I can say is that I think he’s in a really good place, and is is a very talented guy, and the next thing he’ll be working on is going to be pretty good. So you know… look forward to it.”
Yakuza series general director Toshihiro Nagoshi teased in the latest Sega Nama live stream that he’ll have some happy stuff to share about a new Yakuza game in about two months. [Thanks, Hachima.]
Nagoshi-san couldn’t share much else on the new Yakuza game that he’s working on, but he says that he’ll be able to say “something” if we can wait just about two more months. He also added that he believes it’ll be about stuff that’ll make people happy to hear.
When asked to clarify if that means he’ll have more than one thing to say, Nagoshi replied by saying that they’ll have all kinds of information that they’ll be saving up and revealing.
Sony Japan Studio has been on a roll in the past two years or so. They’ve developed and co-developed games like Bloodborne, Gravity Rush Remastered, The Tomorrow Children, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2 and now Everybody’s Golf and Knack 2 are coming up in the next few months.
They apparently want to keep this pace, too. During an interview with IGN, Senior Vice President Allan Becker teased that the studio is just about to start up development for several new titles.
''At Japan Studio I think we have a lot of talented people, but for whatever reason I think we fell behind in terms of technology, and that started way back in the PS2 days and PS3. Japan Studio wasn’t producing that many titles. And so with PS4, we’re really starting to build the technology back up.
Without having to state too much more, with Gravity Rush 2 finishing up and The Last Guardian finishing up, we reached this big milestone within Japan Studio, and so finally we feel like we’re free to do new things. We’re going to finish up Knack 2 as well, so, as for the internal team, they’re much more freed up, so we are thinking about starting up several new titles.''
One of them is, of course, the remake of Shadow of the Colossus, due to launch on PlayStation 4 next year. As to the rest, those have an equal chance of being new IPs rather than just sequels to existing franchises, as President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida explained in the same interview.
''We always wanted, and continue to want, to create new IP and try new things. So from the management standpoint, I like to see pretty much equal effort we make on continuing on popular IPs like Gran Turismo or Hot Shots Golf and the Uncharted series, or to create new IP, Horizon and things like that. We have always wanted to do that, because we are fans of coming up with new ideas and supporting new creatives. So we’ve been doing that for the last 20 years.''
Hirshberg says the firm is always talking to teams (internally and externally), but also told us not to forget the return of Crash Bandicoot.
"We are experimenting with Crash," he says. "We know there's a vocal fanbase that wanted that to come back. But you never know if that is emblematic of a larger audience or just this niche, nostalgia-based community. So far, we are seeing some real passion for it, so that could lead to other things.
"Of course, we are always trying to find the next big thing. But our first priority is to make sure we are servicing the communities that we are already lucky enough to have."
Needless to say, fans have already voiced their desire: to get a Crash Team Racing remaster (or sequel). If done right, this could be a real challenger to Mario Kart’s huge popularity.
I’m excited to announce that as of today, the PlayStation Now library includes PS4 games! This lineup is just the start, as we’ll add more PS4 games in the coming months alongside our regular monthly content drops.