Marvelous will be published as separate labels in North America, where the Marvelous USA and XSEED Games brands were previously all published under the XSEED Games label, following recently announced organizational changes. To talk more about these changes, Gematsu spoke with Kenji Hosoi, executive vice president of Marvelous USA and XSEED Games, at PAX West 2024, where both brands are showing off various lineups.
Get the full interview below.
First, what was the reason for splitting XSEED Games and Marvelous USA into different publishing labels?
Kenji Hosoi, Executive Vice President, Marvelous USA / XSEED Games: “I think it's always been a little bit confusing for our fans since we're both XSEED Games and Awesome USA. Even in online comments, sometimes people would refer to us by both names in the same sentence, so the brand separation was mainly to clarify which titles belonged to the Awesome category and which belonged to XSEED. The awesome side will consist of titles developed in-house by our awesome development team – like A Story of Chapters and Rune factory series as well Daemon X Machina and others. Titles we license from third-party developers and publishers, such as indie titles Potionomics, Sakuna: Rice and ruinand Freedom PlanetIt will fall into the XSEED category.”
I understand differentiating Marvelous content from third-party content, but you still have Marvelous Europe, which publishes that third-party content in Europe, and Marvelous, the parent company, which still publishes in Japan. So why is Marvelous USA moving forward as opposed to just publishing everything in North America?
Hosoi: “Unlike Marvelous Europe and Marvelous Japan, our company originated as XSEED Games and many of our fans have been with us for decades bringing games from Japan to western audiences before partnering with Marvelous. Many people still think of us as XSEED, so we thought the easiest way to represent both sides of our business was to separate the brand name based on the two titles we handle (external or internal development).
So what opportunities do these changes present for XSEED Games in terms of expanding your game lineup? As a result, will we see more third-party game announcements from XSEED Games than usual?
Hosoi: “The unbundling of the brand is specifically to clarify which titles will fall under which brand name, so other than that, our business itself will not change. Because every game we consider for a publishing deal is different, we will continue to source third-party titles that match our target audience, expected game quality, and how it performs in our internal title evaluation process. If we get lucky and get a wave of XSEED-branded titles, then we'll have more to publish, but if we're unlucky in any given year, the same logic applies.”
XSEED Games already has a number of upcoming third-party projects. Will these changes affect the way the company approaches future partnerships?
Hosoi: “No, not at all. As mentioned earlier, there are really no operational changes and we will continue to do everything we have done for the last decade.
XSEED Games has published third-party projects from developers big and small. What is the brand's process when it comes to actually discovering these games?
Hosoi: “There are many ways we discover titles. Occasionally, we receive direct emails or submissions from industry friends, which is a common process for many third-party titles developed by larger companies. Occasionally we will receive offers through our website, although we have not had one that we have completed publishing. Other times, we'd find potential titles at game shows like PAX, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and BitSummit. The cookone of our indie darlings, was actually discovered by our president Ken Berry while visiting PAX East and then brought to our Marvelous Europe office for publishing. Ken's meeting with developers Edelweiss at BitSummit also marked the beginning of our partnership Sakuna: Rice and ruin.”
Does fan demand or feedback play any role in determining which projects XSEED Games decides to sign?
Hosoi: “100 times yes! Like many things in our lives, feedback is one of the most valuable pieces of information we receive. The more fan love there is for a title, the easier it is to decide. The first step of measuring market demand is easier to do if there is a large demand that can be easily measured, such as Steam Wishlists, social media, Kickstarter pledges. If it's easy to prove market demand, it's easier to prove to decision makers why the game is “good”. The process of convincing someone that a game is good enough to pay for the risks inherent in publishing is actually quite difficult, and fan feedback brings a very important piece to the table that is easily digestible for everyone.”
Can you talk about how your PAX West 2024 lineup differs from previous events with this new difference between Spectacular USA and XSEED Games?
Hosoi: “On a fan/attendee level, the booth experience will be the same, except this time we have a lot of staff! On the publishing side, this helps us bring more titles than we have historically, including creating booth experiences for upcoming Marvelous USA titles Farmagia and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azumaas well as a playable demo for Guitar death. These join our lineup of playable XSEED Games published titles Corpse Party II: Perversion of Darkness, The cook, Moonlight Peaks, Potionomics: Masterwork Edition, Slitterhead, The Big Catchand Ys Memoir: Oath in Felghana it made it a bit difficult to fit them all in one stand, but that's something we were keen to tackle to make sure fans had the best possible experience when they stood up.”
XSEED Games once ventured into the visual novel genre London detective mysteryhowever, we haven't seen any visual novel releases since then. Will XSEED Games consider localizing more visual novels in the future?
Hosoi: “As someone who is really pushing to buy the PlayStation 3 version 428: Shibuya Scramble In the past, I personally wish we did more visual novels. Unfortunately, this game genre is very text heavy and their localization takes a lot of time. We are working on many text heavy games like A Story of Chapters and Rune factory series, and we simply don't have enough resources to pick up visual novel titles on a regular basis. If we grow our localization team exponentially in the near future, it's certainly possible, but at this point I don't see how we'll be able to handle frequent visual novel releases.
With the popularity of Vanillaware titles, XSEED Games would consider remastering at some point Muramasa: Demon Blade or History of the Great Knights for current generation platforms?
Hosoi: “This is a question that is often asked on game shows. I truly wish we could! We're all Vanillaware fans, as everyone should be, and both titles mentioned would be great additions. It would be a fun party for us if we ever get the chance!”
Are there plans to localize future projects into more languages such as Brazilian Portuguese and LATAM Spanish?
Hosoi: “Brazilian Portuguese is definitely a language we get asked about every now and then. Given that some of our games have a lot of text, I'm not sure if it's profitable enough for us to keep BP as the default language for all of our games yet, but we do have a few titles. It has included BP as a localized language, so we will definitely be looking more at LATAM languages as the next expansion in our localization process.”
Looks like we're out of time. Thanks so much for talking to us and enjoy the rest of PAX West!