If you weren’t aware, D3 Publisher, the house of Earth Defense Force, Onechanbara, and Ben 10, is now a fully owned subsidiary of Namco Bandai. Unlike the Banpresto acquisition, D3 wasn’t absorbed into Namco Bandai. D3 still acts as a publisher in Japan and North America. This year, D3 USA is expanding their reach by handling projects originally published by Namco Bandai Games Japan.
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow, a Nintendo DS game developed by Mistwalker and tri-Crescendo, falls under this category. We spoke with Joe Fletcher, Associate Producer, about the partnership.
“The opportunity is definitely there with Namco,” Fletcher said encouragingly. “They’ve come to us quite a few times and said, ‘hey our bandwidth is a little bit tight right now. We want to get this game out are you guys interested in like, you know, working on it?’ Like God Eater, which we announced.”
D3 USA, not Namco Bandai Games America, will publish the hot selling God Eater in North America. Namco Bandai’s Monster Hunter inspired game is slated for release on PSP in the third quarter of this year.
“That’s exactly the kind of opportunity. It’s not something they [Namco Bandai] said ‘you know were not going to bring it out over here.’ It was more, ‘hey, here’s an opportunity for you guys, we’re kind of tapped on our QA so if you guys want to do it here you go.’”
Check back next week for more on Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow where Fletcher discusses the game’s localization.
