Why Isn’t Marvelous Taking Risks With New Creative Games?

Just a few years ago, Marvelous was taking big risks creating new IP after new IP. Sure, they had Harvest Moon (aka Story of Seasons) as a sure fire hit, but they also ventured into new territory with Deadly Premonition, No More Heroes, Little King’s Story, and Avalon Code. Senran Kagura was also a risk for Marvelous when it was developed in 2011.

Now, the beat-em-up, which was an evolution from the developer’s licensed Battle Vixens video games, is a major franchise. Recently, it seems like Marvelous is focused on sequels rather than developing new games. Is this really the case? We asked Kenichiro Takaki, Producer of Marvelous’ biggest series Senran Kagura, about the company’s strategies.

“It’s not that orders are coming down from above that we have to make franchise titles. I feel that the producers get a lot of freedom to do what they want to inside Marvelous,” Takaki said to Siliconera.

“When we were experimenting with a lot of little titles, the goal was always to find that IP that hit and can be developed into a series. That happened with Senran Kagura, which is why I’ve been focused on that now. I am thinking of new ideas and I would like to try some of those out.”

Takaki mentioned he would like to create a new type of action game when we were chatting.

“The Kagura series really comes from me trying to make a worldwide hit in the past. I wasn’t able to find success that way, so I decided to focus on what I know by a Japanese person for Japanese people,” Takaki said, talking about the origins of the franchise.”

That was the starting concept for Senran Kagura. I don’t want to lose sight of that, but I do want to listen to feedback from Western users. It’s kind of a difficult situation, things like gameplay systems or how the game plays would be easier to adjust.”