BANDAI NAMCO FEATURES
MEANWHILE BACK IN JAPAN...
Little Nightmares was recently featured as an Edge cover game.
But, of course, every games company is always convinced it’s delivering the best franchise ever, so what can we expect from Project CARS 2 compared to the previous entry? “So much more,” Kirton answers. “The team has worked hard to improve visuals, add key manufacturers, more disciplines including loose surface, ice, integrated eSports functions, specifics on real-time weather, improved handling in every way and everything you wanted to see from the first release. “Honest to god, I have never seen so much effort, passion, data feedback, recordings, physics
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work, and so on, go into a racing game. This game actually helps racing drivers win races yet sits nicely in the hands of someone that just wants the best-looking and most dramatically exciting racing game ever.” Project CARS was initially crowdfunded (and crowdsourced) via Slightly Mad’s WMD Portal back in 2011. The racing sim suffered from multiple delays, dropped its PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U versions along the way, but it finally hit shelves in 2015, and ended up being a huge success. Slighly Mad has chosen to crowdfund the sequel, too – which could be seen as an odd
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IF Bandai Namco seems to be focusing on the western market right now, there’s no denying its Japanese roots, as it also has a number of home-grown titles in the pipeline. “ Tekken 7 is eagerly anticipated and getting the game perfect and content complete has been our focus,” Bandai Namco UK’s marketing and PR director Lee Kirton explains. “Ace Combat 7 is very exciting and it’s the leader in the flight-action-combat genre. Dark Souls III is important to the company and the new DLC and Game of the Year edition will offer something new to fans and deliver a welcome package to new players.” He continues: “We have more announcements to make soon, but don’t go forgetting the super exciting Ni no Kuni 2. This title made people’s jaws hit the floor when we first announced it in
2015. It’s a beautiful game from Level-5 with some truly dazzling talent behind it.” Kirton is confident about the appeal of Japanese games in the west and upbeat about demand in Japan, too, which has arguably suffered in recent years due to the popularity of mobile games in the region. “I think it’s as strong as it’s always been,” he says. “The market is different with many IPs dominating Japanese charts and trends are different, but we’ve always been supportive to our audience, hence working with them to bring key franchises to the west as close as possible to the Japanese release date. I believe Japanese studios offer some incredible styles of gameplay that the market has been missing for years. Some very interesting, innovative development comes from Japan.”
move considering they had Bandai Namco backing the project as well. “I think it’s an interesting way of involving the community from the start,” Kirton explains. “I think it’s great that a developer builds a racing game the way the fans want it. They know, don’t they? The racing pros know, don’t they? Building a game with over 17 years of history, data, knowledge and involving the community and professional drivers is exactly how a motorsport game should be built. We supported Project CARS heavily and made bold statements. We continue to for many reasons.”
Bandai Namco’s support of Slightly Mad is absolute and Kirton expects Project CARS 2 – which doesn’t have a release date yet – to be another big success. “We have high expectations considering the success of the first release and our plans for the sequel. It’ll be Bandai Namco UK’s largest investment and we have a huge level of activity planned throughout 2017. 4K, 12K, VR, the most realistic racing game, dramatic, beautiful in every way, all major disciplines, manufacturers, intense real-time weather and seasons and so much more to reveal over the coming months.”
March 10th 2017
08/03/2017 11:45