Japanese shoot-'em-up developer Cave ceasing Western presence
Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi series creator Cave Interactive is shutting down its Western-facing public presence, ending its long-running English-language blog and closing up shop on Twitter.
After marketing its games exclusively in Japan for many years, Cave made great strides toward establishing a presence in the West with iOS ports of its popular bullet hell shoot-'em-ups DoDonPachi Resurrection, Espgaluda 2, and Bug Princess. This week's announcement follows the recent departure of studio head of development Makoto Asada as the company restructured its business to focus on mobile and social games.
Cave ported many of its arcade shoot-'em-ups to the Xbox 360 in Japan, and partnered with North American publishers to produce localizations for games like Akai Katana and Deathsmiles. The studio previously self-published an untranslated version of Deathsmiles 2X in North America via the Xbox 360's Games on Demand service in a bid to gain a foothold in the Western market.
