In an exclusive interview with Cubed3 that will be published in the next day or so, Nintendo-owned Monolith Soft talks about Disaster on Wii, the game's performance and the future of Baten Kaitos.
First up some bad news: Given how Reginald Fils-Aime does not seem to be Disaster's biggest fan, waiting on sales of the game to come in before green-lighting a US release, the obvious question had to be about how the game has performed so far. Sadly Hitoshi Yamagami, Producer at Nintendo, confirmed many people's worst fears. Unfortunately it seems that the game is "performing lower than expected". He did go on to state that "Regardless of the region, "'DISASTER' can be enjoyed by any consumer that loves 'disaster' style movies." So perhaps Reggie should take that into consideration and appease those in the US grieving over the possibility of not getting their hands on such a highly entertaining game.
There is some hope for the future of Disaster, with fans potentially set to see Raymond Bryce make a return. Whilst discussing the Day of Crisis' various gameplay approaches, Keiichi Ono, Director at Monolith Soft, let the following slip, "...there were so many wonderful options [ in the game ]. We would like to see the possibility for them, if we have chance to develop the sequel..." Interestingly enough, Ono-san also mulled over the idea of a DS version when asked, responding by saying the team "can consider [ a DS version ] if we have many requests." He did say, however, that the game is obviously more suited to a home console because of the grand nature of its premise, but at least the suggestion was not completely dismissed. Do you feel there is potential for the game to be scaled back and put on DS to appeal to a wider market or should it remain on Wii with future sequels?
Yamagami-san later went on to confirm that a concept for the sequel is already in place (Disaster: World at Crisis anyone?), yet it will go no further than that early stage unless fans raise their voices and gamers rush out and buy more copies of the original. So you know what to do…
Finally, it was hinted at that Monolith has more than one Wii project underway, plus the team is "willing to start developing Baten Kaitos" when given the go-ahead. More details will be revealed when the full interview goes live in the couple of days. In the meantime, do not forget to read Cubed3's glowing review of the game and pick up a copy today!