2013’s going to be a busy year for game development studio CyberConnect2. Not only are they working on the finishing touches for Naruto Shippuuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (March 2013), they’ve also been concurrently working on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle (PS3), as well as GREE smartphone action game Night Runner (Working Title) and additional contents for its other smartphone title, Guilty Dragon.

And that’s not all. The Fukuoka-based developer has apparently got pretty big plans for 2013.

In a New Year’s message YouTube video that just went live today, CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama teased that the game developer plans to unveil three more unannounced titles later this year in 2013.

Matsuyama-san described these three new titles as “original new works” (オリジナル新作), which is Japanese-game-industry speak for “brand new IP”. So I suppose that means right off the bat we can cross out Asura’s Wrath 2 and anything .hack related from our list, huh?

(No, wait, Matsuyama did not say that these three games will be the only new titles they’d be announcing in 2013, after all.)

Since the video’s meant as a New Year’s message, Matsuyama decides to close off by doing a kakizome calligraphy, writing out one of his favourite character quotes from Takahiro Ozawa and Asako Seo’s manga series Giga Tokyo Toybox: “Besides my hopes and dreams, the other weapons I’m armed with include diligence! And guts!”

Giga Tokyo Toybox, a sequel to Tokyo Toybox (also by Ozawa and Seo), is about a group of young protagonists chasing their dreams and coping with the struggles of working in the video games industry. When the manga series developed from Tokyo Toybox into Giga Tokyo Toybox, several new regular characters were added to the story. One of those characters added was Momo Momota, whom the character quote Matsuyama wrote out belongs to.

“Momo Momota is a female protagonist who’s a newcomer to the video games industry. As she’s a newcomer, she doesn’t really have much of anything apart from her hopes and dreams. So when she needed to draw from a source of strength to embrace the challenges ahead, she realises that the only weapons she’s armed with are diligence and guts. And that’s how her story begins in Volume 1,” Matsuyama explains.

This is something Matsuyama says that he can relate to, especially in recent years, during which the games industry has underwent numerous changes that presented various new difficulties. For instance, console games are getting harder and harder to make (due to production costs, etc) and so people often question what’s going to happen to the future of the console games business.

“Well, something like that [difficulties a developer faces when making a console game, the future of console gaming being questioned], actually that’s been a part of the video games industry all along since the very beginning. The path towards creating a product isn’t always smooth-sailing, and it’s not always fun and games. Naturally there are tough battles to overcome too.”

“But it’s just like what the main protagonist of Giga Tokyo Toybox Taiyou Tenkawa says: ‘this line of work is tough, but it’s also a lot of fun’. I feel that he’s absolutely right, and that, especially in light of today’s challenges in the games industry, we as developers need to meet them with diligence and guts. Well, it’s been like that in the past too, but now more than ever, we need to re-examine the meaning of those words [even though CyberConnect2 are no longer newcomers to the industry].”

Matsuyama, who’s a big fan of the manga series, says that in the story there is a scene where the character quote is taken one step further: you start with “hopes and dreams”, arm yourself with “diligence and guts”, and then after that, you stand your ground and brace yourself for the harsh impact (踏ん張り). It’s a scene that Matsuyama says is a tear-jerker, and he recommends that gamers check out the manga – pretty much everyone in CyberConnect2 is a fan of the series.

Source: Excite News

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