Over the past few months, we’ve heard a lot from former Team NINJA head honcho Tomonobu Itagaki regarding his thoughts on the current direction of Dead or Alive. However, those currently in charge of the franchise have been rather quiet – until now.
In an interview with MCV, Dead or Alive 5 producer Yosuke Hayashi and director Yohei Shimbori open up about the latest installment of the game, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round. Here, they talk about how consumer interest in the series is bigger than ever and how fan demand resulted in the creation of a new version, with new stages and characters, for the next generation of consoles, instead of a simple port.
More importantly, they address talk about why, after almost two decades of staying only on consoles, they finally decided to bring the franchise over to PC. “The adoption rate of high-spec PCs and related peripheral devices has traditionally been lower than consoles,” Shimbori explained. “But these days, the perspective of PC gaming has changed drastically and we expect more fighting games will be released for PC users.”
He expressed some concern about modding on the PC version – something a company used to developing on consoles usually doesn’t have to worry about. “We have to deal with mod issues from an IP holder perspective. We would like to ask PC users to play our game in good moral and manner. Otherwise, we won’t be able to release a title for PC again.”
While some may see this as referring to any possible nudity hacks, this concern could also be directed towards modding the game to get free access to its downloadable content, additional revenue that Team NINJA certainly relies on to keep supporting for the series and its community.
They also took time to address the series’ often controversial approach to female representation. “Our characters, male and female alike, are created in a fantasy setting and are using extraordinary abilities to compete with each other in a clearly light-hearted, over-the-top universe,” said Hayashi. “Their abilities are very balanced and we want to present all of them as dynamic, strong, sexy and confident.” For Last Round, this likely refers to the fact that even the male characters are getting their share of fanservicey outfits.
He added that the game has to appeal to fans all over the world. “What is important to remember is that Dead or Alive is a series developed in Japan, where the interpretation of beauty is very different to that of Europe or the US. Our philosophy is to try and make a game that our fans can enjoy, both in the East and the West, and regardless of gender.”
Of course, this isn’t all that the duo talk about, you can read the rest of the interview over at MCV.
Source: MCV via Free Step Dodge