PaRappa Creator Wonders if the DS Japan Bubble Has Burst
By Chris on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:03 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Games, Games Industry, Nintendo, Nintendo, Portable
In an interview with Gamasutra, Masaya Matsuura – the man behind PaRappa the Rapper – made a point of suggesting that the DS’ bubble in Japan may have already burst. No one can deny the insane success the system has seen, but at some point it’s got to stop selling, right? When asked how much longer the DS (and Wii) Could continue to dominate Japan, Matsuura responded:
That’s a very difficult question. Some people have said already that the DS software’s bubble has burst…
[One company I know has] some kind of learning type of game. The first one sold over 200,000, but the second one is 8,000. So these kind of things are going to happen.
To me, that seems like more of an overreaction than evidence that the DS is about to enter a downward spiral. Maybe the demand for that particular genre of game is dying down, or gamers simply want more than what that game offered. Of course, Matsuura didn’t outright proclaim the DS’s doom, but it was certainly something that struck a chord as I read the interview.
He also discusses some of his projects, one of which is a music game being developed for Wii.
Read the full interview here.
If there first game only sold 200K, it probably sucked. So no one bought the sequel.