As most of you are aware, Platinum Games launched a very successful Kickstarter that has already gone on to surpass $1 million in funding. As part of the original plans for the game to be ported to the Switch, the stretch goals were for the game to also come to the PC (Steam) and the PlayStation 4. However, the Xbox One wasn’t listed as a platform for the game and that bothers me.
Sure, we all are aware that the Xbox One isn’t a popular system in Japan. While the Xbox 360 managed to do somewhat decent in Japan, the Xbox One is all but dead in that region. In Japan, outside of the mobile market, the PS4, Switch, and the PC, reign supreme. Platinum Games is a Japanese developer, so it makes sense they’d want to focus on the platforms that perform well in the country.
However, this Kickstarter wasn’t focused on Japan, it was a global campaign. This game is coming to the Americas, Japan, UK, and other regions. Regions where the Xbox brand is doing fairly well. Yet, despite this, there was no stretch goal for the Xbox One for The Wonderful 101. And to me, that hurts.
Yes, there will be plenty of people playing this on their Switches and PS4s and possibly PC. But leaving out the Xbox gamers just means that those die-hard Xbox owners, the people who only own an Xbox One, are going to be left out. And as I understand it, the entire point of this project was to get The Wonderful 101, a passion project for Platinum Games, on as many platforms as possible. I can’t begin to tell you why the platform was excluded and chances are, trying to inquire as to why this happened would likely get me blocked on Twitter.
I know someone out there is going to say that it won’t sell well on the Xbox One. I know someone is and to that person, I say that history states otherwise. They said this when Nier: Automata was announced for the Xbox One and it sold extremely well (it also performed better on the Xbox One X as opposed to the PS4 Pro). So much that more Japanese developers started looking at the Xbox One. Hell, we’re getting Phantasy Star Online 2; a game that has been exclusive to Japan for 8 years, finally coming to West. On the Xbox One for a time-exclusive period. Lastly, it’s not like The Wonderful 101 sold well when it released on the Wii U, a Japanese console.
This sort of stuff needs to stop. If you’re going to support 2/3 of the existing consoles, then you might as well support the rest of them. Yes, I’m not a developer or a publisher, so I can’t begin to tell you what analytics are looked at before a decision is made on where a game goes. But I’m willing to bet that the status of the Xbox in Japan is mainly why the console was skipped. Yet again, the Xbox One is healthy in every other location and that should be a compelling reason to not ignore it.
At the end of the day, it’s all up to Platinum Games. Though, not releasing it on the Xbox One is a crappy move on the developer’s part. I’m not a fan of isolating the gaming audience because they decided to pick up the platform of choice. Sure, you can’t do anything about 1st party games, but you definitely can for 3rd party games. Sadly, The Wonderful 101 joins a list of popular 3rd party games that likely won’t ever arrive on the Xbox One. A list that already includes Nioh 2, most of the Yakuza games, Persona, Granblue Fantasy, Shenmue 3, and many more.
Damn, I hate it when this happens.
