During an “Ask Capcom” video Q&A this week, a fan asked what Capcom’s expectations are of Mega Man Legends 3 Prototype Version, in terms of the project being greenlit for production into a full game. If you’re just getting caught up, this refers to some of the development challenges that Mega Man Legends 3 currently faces over at Capcom’s Japan office.
Capcom USA VP, Christian Svensson, took the fan’s question. “I have to be careful on the Legends 3 Prototype side of things,” Svensson said, “simply because I can’t quantify for you what we’re looking for there, but there are some things we’re looking for.”
Svensson also confirmed that the original Mega Man Legends will not be made available on Sony’s PlayStation Network due to property infringement issues. His quote regarding the situation was as follows:
“For example, there are games in our catalogue that have logos or other things that would be identifiable as other people’s I.P. without permission, and either due to historical litigation or fear of potential future litigation, sometimes we aren’t allowed to use those.
“Other things, like for example you had voicework in the game, but the voice actor… Within the scope of the contract that was there, either the contract is lapsed in terms of its term or the contract never defined that digital distribution was an allowable use for their work etcetera. So voice acting, scores, soundtracks, middleware contracts all have to have the same stuff there.
“In some cases, the company that we did things with is gone, but that doesn’t mean that somebody doesn’t own the rights and couldn’t come after us, so in the name of having to protect ourselves, sometimes these things are not going to be able to be put up again, and in the case of the emulations, we can’t make changes to the content, so there’s no way to just sort of remove it and just have it be up there.
“The net result is, in the case of Legends, unfortunately Legends isn’t going to be able to be up there; it failed an I.P. sweep and a contract check.”
Svensson did confirm once again, however, that Capcom still have plans to bring other games to the PlayStation Network. Earlier this month, he mentioned Street Fighter Alpha 3 as one such example.
Published: May 20, 2011 03:36 am