NIS America President Takuro Yamashita found himself in hot water recently over some comments made about Sony in an interview about SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy with MCV.
In the MCV article, Yamashita discussed reasons for why SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy will get a physical release exclusively for the Nintendo Switch:
What is your strategy for Europe moving fowards?
Takuro Yamashita, NIS America President: For the JRPG market, the biggest country is France, so most of our key titles, such as Ys VIII and the Disgaea series, we localise the game in French to get in a much better position in Europe, because the French market is the biggest for JRPG titles. We’re starting to do more on Nintendo Switch, SNK Heroines is not the only one. We’ve teamed up with Nintendo Europe for our other Switch titles. They support us in a good way. Compared to that, Sony is not friendly with small publishers like us. They just care about big Japanese companies. Also, if we simultaneously release a Switch version and a PS4 version of the same title, currently the sales trend is two to one. That means the Switch version sells twice as much as the PS4 version. Physically and digitally. A lot of PS4 titles are coming up, so the market is very competitive. Compared to that, the Switch market still has a lot of room for publishers to make money.
Below is the apology statement that followed from President Yamashita:
“I must extend my most heartfelt apology to SNK and Sony Interactive Entertainment. The truth is that the Nintendo Switch exclusive plan was originally decided by NIS America, and only later among discussions with influential SNK people did we decide the best option moving forward would be to have as much exposure as possible. This is why that in the end, we are bringing the PS4 version of SNK HEROINES to the market, and even supported this version at the NISA Press Event and in the press meetings in February and March.
In discussing matters with MCV, I thought that some insider information would make them interested in the overall conversation, and such lip service did not stand on the side of truth.
Once again, I apologize to SNK and Sony if it made them seem negative towards the PS4 platform in any way, and stress that the original goal of a “Nintendo Switch exclusive” version of SNK HEROINES came from NISA.”
Takuro Yamashita
CEO and President of NIS America, Inc.
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy releases on September 7, 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
