I think it’s interesting to note here that he was the Director of the first two Katamaris, Director/Designer of Noby Noby Boy, but from there on out is just a designer. I think it shows that not only does he want to work with other people but that he doesn’t necessarily want full creative control as much as he values the input from others in creative ideas.
Which also makes it a little frustrating that all the games are still marketed as “From the Creator of Katamari Damacy!” while it seems like he’s just another designer on a team and he’s happy with that. More like the businesses use him as a marketing gimmick, maybe?
That list is crazy, so many niche platforms and limited availability:
Glitch was a failed Flash based MMO, that launched as a production release, was pulled back into beta 2 months later and then closed in late 2012. During this second beta they seemed to host a virtual death cult. Its messaging framework was later rebranded as Slack
Tenya Wanya Teens was designed to tour as an art piece last exhibited in 2014
Alphabet was bundled with Experimental Game Pack 01, a promo for LA Game Space a failed incubator/exhibition space the broke up in 2018
Woorld was a mixed reality game developed for Google Tango, a tech that hasn’t seen support on a new device since 2017
Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure was developed for the Playdate and was featured in Season 1. This is still available, in fact it is a pack-in title with the Playdate.
I’ve just wish listed Wattam, its his only still available non-Katamari title that runs on a mainstream platform.
When asked who his target audience for his games was, Takahashi answered that he was. “I make games that I feel satisfied with, so I’d like people to play them if they want to,” he replied. “I guess I probably should make games while thinking about the target audience, but I’ll work on that in my next life.”
I’ve never heard of the game designer mentioned in the article or of Katamari, just wanted to mention that it must be nice having that kind of creative freedom.
His latest game doesn’t look like it’s for me, but the concept sounds original.
Call of duty zombies lead isn’t the badge of honour they think it is. That got ran into the fucking dirt with the least amount of creativity and game dev talent I’ve ever seen.
You could give him a blank check, unlimited time and he would still produce a shit game
I don’t understand. So he had a team of over 100 people who worked on a Sony deal for like 3 years before it was shut down. Now he’s got a new studio and a new Sony deal? Has no one learned their lessons here?
I think the author missed the mark here by talking about game preservation, as many are already pointing out in these comments.
The real benefit of buying a physical disc/cartridge copy of a game nowadays is the ability to resell it when you’re done playing. That’s actually a huge boon if you buy a lot of newly released games at full price, and play on consoles where sales are less common than PC. Reselling games can save you a LOT of money over time.
Nope. When was your last time bought physical game disk for your PC? In fact, do your PC still have an ODD? Physical disk mush not be the reason why PC gaming is growing and consoles are strinking. That’s a wrong attribution.
I do have an optical drive in my PC, for Blu Rays and music CDs. The thing I was calling out was, “they want to have you buy it over and over again until the end of time,” which isn’t really a thing on PC. Sure, there are remasters and such, but the copy you bought 20 years ago largely still works on your new PC.
Great to hear you still have an ODD installed, but that game disc you bought 20 years ago won’t contribute to today’s growing PC market. Even then, I don’t think the “it” in the line refers to remasters but “new” or “first party” in the eyes of the publishers.
I would understand that original as, “But the publishers don’t want you to resell games. They want to have you buy games from their first party sales channel over and over again until the end of time.”
I’m struggling with your English a bit, but basically yes.
“But the publishers don’t want you to resell games. They want to have you buy games from their first party sales channel over and over again until the end of time.”
This is a problem that doesn’t really exist on PC due to forward compatibility and competing marketplaces. That forward compatibility has now been easily observed for decades by people who’ve been slowly losing the advantages that consoles used to offer.
I disagree. DRM breaks “forward compatibility” especially with online auth, and Steam dominates PC game sales. Not to mention some publishers avoid releasing on Steam but on their own platforms. PC gamers lost the ability to resell games long before the console gamers did. Still, I digress.
None of your poins help nor prove PC gaming market grows and cause console’s to shrink.
Steam isn’t always DRM, and even with its DRM, the vast majority of those games have continued to work without repurchasing them for over 20 years now. The premise at the top was basically that people are willing to give up the ability to resell their games when competition on PC has led to deep sale discounts, and I’d agree with that as well. On consoles now, you’re rapidly headed toward a future where you can’t resell your games and there’s no competition to drive prices down.
While it’s (probably) not the case for Valve, I think it’s pretty clear that Microsoft’s end goal is endless subscription fees and you owning nothing. And there’s a good chance of them succeeding at that as long as the primary OS for PC gaming is Windows.
Game Pass is already plateauing in subscriptions. I’m sure that while it’s far fewer subscribers than they thought they’d have, they’ll be happy to keep making money this way for some time, but it’s not going to turn in to the primary way people play games.
Yup. Waiting on those Skywind and Skyblivion mods to finish up, then I’m gonna put them into the base game and sell you a Tamriel Through the Ages bundle of joy.
Physical media has been dying for years. If you look at the sales statistics between physical and digital, it makes for grim reading if you care about physical media.
75% of game sales in Europe in 2024 were digital. In 2022, 90% of game sales in the UK were digital. It’s a similar story pretty much everywhere. And whilst there’s a lot of noise on the internet about how bad a digital-only future would be, the average consumer doesn’t care.
I realized a while ago that it’s not actually the physical media I care about; it’s the unfettered access. Physical media is just the easiest way to achieve that. I still buy from steam and pay for streaming, but I recognize that those could be taken away at any time. I want to feel like I actually own something. I buy digital music because I get a DRM-free file. I buy from GOG because I get an installer that I can store locally for as long as I want to.
When it comes to movies? I have to buy the disc because (almost?) no one offers a DRM-free video file that I can store locally and play whenever or however I want.
videogameschronicle.com
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