In an issue of Famitsu's XBox Magazine, they interviewed Masaki Sakari of 5pb, the company responsible for porting two immensely popular top-down shoot-em-ups: DoDonPachi Daioujou Black Label X and Ketsui X (More info) to the XBox 360. The catch? These two games are being ported to the 360 as a retail product.
As to why a retail product instead of XBLA? Sakari had this to say:
quote Masaki Sakari, 5pb
"Our initial plan was to port lots of good arcade titles to XBLA. We talked to IP holders of these titles, and persuaded them. We secured these licenses, and finally talked with Microsoft. There they rejected all of our proposals saying, 'We are going to cut down faithful arcade ports.' We felt so frustrated. We wanted to show them that their decision was wrong. So we switched our two most promising projects into retail."
Long story short, Microsoft rejected every single one of 5pb's proposals to bring Cave's shooters to XBLA, with the reason given that they wanted to cut down on faithful arcade ports. In order to show that their decision was wrong, 5pb decided to switch their two top projects, the aforementioned DoDonPachi Daioujou Black Label X and Ketsui X, to retail.
For those who don't know, Cave is largely famous for its insane manic shoot-em-ups, more affectionately known as Bullet Hell shooters. Many of the top Bullet Hell games are made by Cave, some of which include DoDonPachi, Ketsui, and Mushihime-sama. By denying these releases on XBLA, the potential for these games to outreach to new gamers decrease, and the cost increases due to the switch to a retail product. Hopefully these two games will see release stateside.
DoDonPachi Daioujou Boss Play:
Ketsui:
In a recent issue of Japan's Famitsu Xbox magazine was an interview with Masaki Sakari of 5pb - who are currently porting over two very popular Cave top down shooters Dodonpachi Daioujou Black Label X and Ketsui X to the Xbox 360 as a retail product. In the interview Sakari has a short vent about why they went for a retail product:
"Our initial plan was to port lots of good arcade titles to XBLA. We talked to IP holders of these titles, and persuaded them. We secured these licenses, and finally talked with Microsoft. There they rejected all of our proposals saying, 'We are going to cut down faithful arcade ports.' We felt so frustrated. We wanted to show them that their decision was wrong. So we switched our two most promising projects into retail."
Cave are creators of classic scrolling shooters - known mostly for their notorious "Bullet Hell" style games. There is a fairly large fan base for their games out there, and would have made an excellent addition to the Xbox Live Arcade.
It appears Microsoft's XBLA restraints are becoming a large problem for many developers wanting to get into the downloadable service - and in this case 'break' into the Western Markets with their niche titles. Let's hope they hear the cries of fans from around the world and perhaps loosen the restraints a bit.
Big thanks once again to Rmk106 in Japan watching out for new XBLA news! the original article can be viewed here and here.
I can see why MS rejected this game. The Arcade is all about accessibility and putting the most cheap and unfair game on the planet on XBL just because a bunch of Wapanese idiots wish it so is asinine for their business strategy. It would bomb since no one fires up the Arcade and plays a game that is this cheaply difficult for 10 hours just to beat the first level.
Complete waste of time. Games like this were designed solely to suck the quarters out of people's pockets at arcades, not to be played at home where fun is a real factor and not the high score.
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Complete waste of time. Games like this were designed solely to suck the quarters out of people's pockets at arcades, not to be played at home where fun is a real factor and not the high score.