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N-Philes: When you're looking at a title like Harvest Moon for example and see there's something that's uniquely Japanese, do you change that?Markay: It depends. In the beginning, a lot of the stuff was left alone because Harvest Moon was a niche title. It wasn't well-known. It was aimed at a certain audience; a die hard audience. Since the past few years, Harvest Moon has become a tad bit more mass-market, not in the regards of Madden, but more so than it used to be from the initial concept. Because I do also read the message boards and I see what people say,"Why are they changing this?" and "Why are they changing that?" You know, you gotta look at it in terms of the total now.
I have this many people now, whereas this many people know about the original Japanese version and this many people don't. And so, you gotta do your best to try and make both groups happy. I got mothers playing that had no idea that it originally was a Japanese game. So at the same time, we gotta try and make everybody happy in terms of the gameplay. So, sometimes nothing major is taken, but minor liberations are taken at times. Like, for Magical Melody, I took out the wine because I didn't feel it was really necessary that added to gameplay, but at the same time it reached more of a general market.
N-Philes: Do you think it'll be easier to reach the wider audiences with the new [DS and Wii] interfaces?
Markay: You know, Harvest Moon still has that, sort of... you know, people that have never heard of it before still have that quirky look to ‘em when they go, "I'm sorry, what kind of game is it? It's a farming game?" Now, granted, Harvest Moon was out before Animal Crossing, but Animal Crossing did some great things. It reached some new people, and what do you do in Animal Crossing? You basically buy a home and, you know, go fishing, go digging, you make friends, you do errands. Well, that sounds like life. So we've got crossover in terms of audience.
So, I think potentially it will be easier to market to people. Not to mention Nintendo plans on doing that anyway. They're going after the non-gamer. So at the same time, we get that quirkiness where it's like, "I'm sorry, it's a farming game?" but if you play it, if anyone ever just sits down and actually plays it, they get engrossed, even though if you think about it, you're doing chores, you're watering, you're weeding, you're planting. You know, people don't do that in real life, but you'll sit there and do it in the game just ‘because it has some sort of addictive quality, which is kind of a fundamental. Your work is rewarded right then and there.
N-Philes: Has the PS2's large userbase been more attractive than producing a game for Nintendo's smaller audience?
Markay: It really depends. You know, you kind of see different ages; you see the median age of who owns the PS2, the median age of who owns an Xbox, Xbox 360, and the median age of who owns a GameCube, so what it boils down to is - I hate to keep going back to Harvest Moon - but it's always had an extremely loyal Nintendo following. It does have a PS2 fanbase, but, you know, the comments and the e-mails and the things that we see, the Nintendo fans have been there since day one and they just keep waiting for more and more Nintendo stuff.
For us, introducing a new IP, it depends on the kind of property it is. Freedom Wings tends to be a little bit more of a younger skew, so it seems like it's a perfect fit for the Nintendo DS, as opposed to maybe the PSP. Obviously for the PSP you thought we'd put more into it because of the graphics. With this, you're aiming more towards the unique DS features, and at the same time trying to make an enjoyable gameplay experience.
The PS2 market, yeah, most definitely for a company such as ourselves that tries to pick out strategic niches and not try to go head-to-head with obviously huge companies that own markets, we like to try to pick out a market, and the larger install base, obviously the better chance you have of getting that nice, niche market.
N-Philes: So you see yourselves fitting in pretty well with Nintendo's overall philosophy?
Markay: Yeah, most definitely. Natsume's been a big supporter of Nintendo, and that's not to say we're not a huge supporter of Sony either, but if you look at the type of games we put out on Sony and the type of games we put out on [Nintendo], they are slightly different. But at the same time, one of the ongoing messages of our President is the fact that he does want to make everyone happy. So you'll never see just a Harvest Moon game for Nintendo, you'll see it for a Sony console as well, just because we know there's fans out there, too.
N-Philes: Well, I think those are all of our questions. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.
Markay: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you guys for the time. Thank you for the support.
N-Philes would like to thank Mr. Markay and Natsume for taking the time to schedule an interview and answer our questions.
