The president of NIS America, Takuro Yamashita, made some comments about Sony and the PlayStation that were a bit controversial. On a
recent interview for April’s issue of MVC, Mr. Yamashita mentioned that they were working somewhat exclusively with Nintendo for a physical release of
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. The problem was not the exclusivity part, but how he expressed it. This is what he said:
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We’re starting to do more on Nintendo Switch. SNK Heroines is not the only one. They support us in a good way. Compared to that, Sony is not friendly with small publishers like us. They just care about big Japanese companies."
During said interview, Mr. Yamashita also went into details about the Nintendo Switch version of
Disgaea 5 out-selling the PlayStation 4 version, thus making the Nintendo handheld a better fit for the game.
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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."
He also mentions the PS Vita and Sony deciding to leave that handheld market, which made NIS America opt out of releasing a PS Vita port of the game. Another thing that he mentions is that the reason why
Disgaea 5 was never released on the PS Vita is because the game would've not been able to run on Sony's handheld due to memory size limitations.
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For Disgaea 5, Switch sold very well. It sold just under 200k units in the west. 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. The memory size limitation of the Vita is just one gigabyte, right? But Disgaea is 8 GB."
While most of these interviews seem to get a lot of stuff lost in translation, it is nice to see that Mr. Yamashita felt the need to publicly apologise since there was no ill-intent on his behalf.
This is what he had to say:
I must extend my most heartfelt apology to SNK and Sony Interactive Entertainment. The truth is that the Nintendo Switch exclusive plan was originally decided by NIS America, and only later among discussions with influential SNK people did we decide the best option moving forward would be to have as much exposure as possible. This is why that in the end, we are bringing the PS4 version of SNK Heroines to the market, and even supported this version at the NISA Press Event and in the press meetings in February and March.
In discussing matters with MCV, I thought that some insider information would make them interested in the overall conversation, and such lip service did not stand on the side of truth.
Once again, I apologize to SNK and Sony if it made them seem negative towards the PS4 platform in any way, and stress that the original goal of a “Nintendo Switch exclusive” version of SNK Heroines came from NISA.”
Takuro Yamashita
CEO and President of NIS America, Inc.