mikio-watanabe
Latest
Cave Vita games reportedly canceled as COO resigns
Mikio Watanabe, Cave's executive vice president and COO, is leaving the company as of May 31 for personal reasons, according to a press release issued by the company today. Watanabe will continue as representative director until the next shareholder meeting in August. Following his departure, CEO Ito Masahito will become the only remaining representative director.At the same time, the latest Famitsu magazine (reported by Andriasang) lists two Vita games by the publisher as canceled. One of the games is a Vita release of its casual/social castle building game Shirotsuku; the other is an unspecified shooter.If you're feeling worried about the seemingly vulnerable company, now might be a good time to remind you that Akai Katana Shin, the company's latest Xbox 360 shooter, is out in North America this week.
Cave's Watanabe on the benefits of premium app pricing
Conventional wisdom says that expensive iOS and Android games don't sell, but in a speech at GDC, Mikio Watanabe, COO of shmup developer Cave, frankly stated the exact opposite. In a presentation entitled "Japanese Retro and Social Games on Smartphones," Watanabe gave advice to developers looking to port their companies' legacy IPs to the rapidly blossoming smartphone and tablet markets.His advice? For starters, keep the games running at a good clip instead of focusing too much on graphical clarity. "When games are running quickly, the human eye misses tiny imperfections in the visuals," he noted, encouraging developers to try to shoot for an average of 50 FPS or better. To increase the profitability, he encouraged developers to include unique and interesting DLC to spur in-app purchases.
Super Mario 3D Land, Resident Evil Revelations talks at GDC
Super Mario 3D Land director Koichi Hayashida will present a postmortem talk at GDC entitled "Thinking in 3D: The Development of Super Mario 3D Land." Attendees will be required to cross a pit of moving blocks while being chased by evil purple versions of themselves in order to attend.Or, what will actually happen is that Hayashida will discuss developing for 3D devices, and "share development philosophies learned from Mario creator and legendary Nintendo designer, Shigeru Miyamoto."Another 3DS-centric talk is "Revealing the Truth About Resident Evil Revelations," presented by producer Masachika Kawata. And Cave COO Mikio Watanabe will discuss "Retro and Japanese Social Games on Smartphones," bringing attention to the company's recent endeavors in porting crazy shmups to iOS.
