NintendoEverything reports that during April's issue of
MVC, President of NIS America Takuro Yamashita made a very interesting statements regarding the Nintendo Switch.
Yamashita alks about
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy and mentiones that there's an exclusivity factor in regards to working with Nintendo, as the game will only get a physical copy on the Nintendo Switch and not for the PlayStation 4.
He mentions that they originally signed the SNK Heroines deal with the PlayStation 4 format in mind and during the Gamescom in 2017 NIS America and Nintendo Europe had a meeting, then another meeting between SNK and Nintendo of Europe. Yamashita remembers that after said meetings, the people from SNK went to their boothand asked if it was possible to cancel their contact with PlayStation 4 because they wanted to work with Nintendo on an exclusive basis.
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So these third parties come together and the team at NIS and SNK decided to go with Nintendo for the western market. Physical copy-wise, it’s going to be a Switch exclusive. PS4-wise it’s going to be just digital. That’s the deal."
Yamashita assures they will not released a packed version of the game on the PlayStation 4 and that Nintendo will act as distributors for the game. "
Then they [Nintendo] promised to buy a lot of units. I can’t reveal the number of units they’ve guaranteed, that’s secret talk."
On the support from Nintendo, Yamashita told the interviewer that they are starting to do more with the Switch because they are friendlier with small publishers like them [NIS America] unlike Sony who "
only care about big Japanese companies." He also mentions that in regards to sales, if they were to release both versions [PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch] of the same game, the sales trend is two to one in favour of the Nintendo Switch.
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That means the Switch version sells twice as much as the PS4 version. Physically and digitally. A lot of PS4 titles are coming up, so the market is very competitive. Compared to that, the Switch market still has lots of room for publishers to make money."
Later on the interview Mr. Yamashita talked about
Disgaea 5 selling over 200k units in the West and being NIS America's first game on the Nintendo Switch.
"Maybe 40 percent of these people already have the PS4 version. Why do they buy the same game again? Because it’s the function of a handheld that the Switch has. And Sony decided to withdraw from the PS Vita market." While talking about the game's memory size he mentions that the PS Vita would've been limited by its memory size since
Disgaea 5 is 8GB and the Vita only has just 1GB.
"So Disgaea fans want to play on a handheld, but there is no handheld Disgaea 5 on a Sony format. So this is a perfect platform. We can play at home and we can play outside using the handheld function of the Switch. That is why the Nintendo Switch platform is growing naturally."
Disgaea 5 is available now on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows.
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy will be available for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on the 7th of September.