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In a recent conversation with Ken Berry, President, CEO, and CFO of Marvelous USA and XSEED Games, we speak about the future of XSEED Games as they shift their focus toward third-party publishing. With a rich history of bringing beloved Japanese RPGs to the West, XSEED is now expanding its horizons to include a broader range of indie titles from around the world. Berry shared insights on the types of games they’re excited to publish, the challenges they anticipate with the company’s new structure, and their commitment to maintaining XSEED’s identity among its loyal fanbase.

Azario Lopez: With XSEED’s new focus on third-party publishing, what types of games or genres are you most excited to bring to the Western audience?

Ken Berry: Our history is deeply rooted in Japanese RPGs, so those will always hold a special place in our hearts. However, it’s hard not to get excited about all the innovation we see from indie teams all over the world, not just Japan. We don’t try to limit ourselves to a certain genre, but story-based games tend to fit best within our lineup, as opposed to something like an FPS, sports, or live service game.


Azario Lopez: How will the changes in the company’s structure affect your approach to localizing games for Western audiences?

Ken Berry: Nothing changes when licensing third-party titles from Japan where we also handle the English localization unless it is a distribution-only deal, but with indie titles, we usually have to work the opposite way in that the original text is in English and we have to localize it into Japanese and other languages.


Azario Lopez: Depending on which gaming circles you enter, XSEED is either known as the publisher of some of the most beloved JRPGs of our time or the company behind Senran Kagura. Looking forward, how would you like XSEED to be defined?

Ken Berry: The climate now is definitely very different from the heyday of the Senran Kagura series, and it’s hard to see how that series could prosper in the West in this day and age. I’m most proud of the titles that wouldn’t have made it to the US at all had we not been the publisher because, for whatever reason, we were the only ones capable of doing so. These include games licensed from Namco Bandai like Fragile Dreams, The Sky Crawlers, Retro Game Challenge, and Fishing Resort, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower from Nintendo, and Brave Story from Sony.

Times are different now with fan translators and digital distribution lowering the investment needed to localize and bring a title to US players. However, it’s still rewarding knowing you’re directly responsible for bringing games to players that they otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance to experience. I’d like to continue that tradition by funding and helping talented indie teams develop and bring their titles to market.

Full interview at the link below:

XSEED Games’ Ken Berry Discusses Future Plans, Indie Publishing, And PC Gaming

In an exclusive interview, XSEED Games’ Ken Berry shares insights on the company’s shift towards third-party publishing, upcoming indie titles, and the challenges of maintaining XSEED's identity in a changing industry.

noisypixel.net

 

[Killer8]

It would prosper just fine. Count the money and tune out the screeching.

 

[StereoVsn]

There is probably enough of an audience in the West to sell decently well, unless you are expecting sales in the millions.

 

[Celcius]

I just assumed the franchise died when the creator left the company.

To be honest I still don’t understand why we never got DOA XBV 3 in the west when you’ve got games like BG3 out there. (and selling millions of copies at that!)

 

[MadchesterManc]

That's a shame. Been playing since the original Burst on 3DS and they've always been decent little games

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

- Make it.

- Release it

- People that actually play video games, or the target audience, will buy it.

- Colonizers that don't play video games beyond Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring and Hades 2 on repeat, will make articles and twitter posts on it, calling you bad things that will actively make your games sell more.

- You will live.

Badaboom badabing.

There's no "day and age". It's a illusion created by people who could care less about artistic freedom.

 

[Vandole]

I'm happy Fragile Dreams got a mention. I can't honestly say it was a great game, but as far as a game that got a mood and atmosphere across, it's absolutely top-tier. I mean, do not play that game if you're in a bad place. It's all about loneliness, and it really drives that home.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It's a little tone-deaf - I think people would actually be more receptive to a Senran Kagura type of game given how few games are willing to give us appealing character designs or any degree of sexiness these days. Especially the audiences that... y'know, actually buy video games instead of whining about them on Twitter. The demand's clearly there - Stellar Blade proved that - and sex will always sell.

 

[{insert code here}]

I just assumed the franchise died when the creator left the company.

To be honest I still don’t understand why we never got DOA XBV 3 in the west when you’ve got games like BG3 out there. (and selling millions of copies at that!)

Might be because the industry is filled with dudes like this:

 

[Gojiira]

Just make one with actually good gameplay and the booba will just be icing on top. Not rocket science, it would do fine.

 

[NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt]

- Make it.

- Release it

- People that actually play video games, or the target audience, will buy it.

- Colonizers that don't play video games beyond Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring and Hades 2 on repeat, will make articles and twitter posts on it, calling you bad things that will actively make your games sell more.

- You will live.

Badaboom badabing.

There's no "day and age". It's a illusion created by people who could care less about artistic freedom.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

I just assumed the franchise died when the creator left the company.

To be honest I still don’t understand why we never got DOA XBV 3 in the west when you’ve got games like BG3 out there. (and selling millions of copies at that!)

TecmoKoei probably chickened out because they felt they would get a huge backlash I’m assuming. People don’t have a problem with sex, nudity in Western games for whatever reason, but if they see attractive or scantily clad women in Eastern games, they freak out. It’s probably the biggest example of hypocrisy I’ve ever seen.

 

[GHound]

Considering they got done dirty on Burst Renewal by one of the major platform holders in the eleventh hour...
Not that I trust XSEED to translate anything more risqué than a blank sheet of paper these days.

At the same time this seems like a bunch of industry nannies continuing to interfere with something that there's clearly a demand for and that pisses me off.

 

[Generic]

Senran Kagura 7 never ever

 

[Korranator]

Xseed = cowards

 

[NanaMiku]

Well, the creator of Senran Kagura already left Marvelous and joined Cygames. So probably the series won't continue.

Kenichiro Takaki's newest game is Project Gamm at Cygames. Looks like it's a MOBA

 

[ArtHands]

They couldn’t release Senran Kagura 7EVEN due to Sony’s censorship policy, and Senran Kagura: Renewal was censored on PS4.

Sony Seemingly Censors Controversial Senran Kagura Mode

Booby trap

www.pushsquare.com

Senran Kagura 7EVEN Impossible to Release After Sony Censorship Row

Project being completely reconsidered

www.pushsquare.com

And the series producer is gone, so no shock the series is dead.

 

[Hudo]

Just sell it and ignore the mentally ill people on Twitter.

 

[FeralEcho]

Just release it you cowards! The actual audience will buy it.

Stop making your stupid statistics based on the few mentally deranged cucks on the internet with loud voices overcompensating for their nonexisting personalities that wouldn't even buy your game even if you put THEM in it.

 

[Pejo]

Senran was a really fun low budget series, it's a shame that fans can't have any more because of Sony and "modern audiences".

 

[Cert.in.Death]

It is hard. But not hard to see.

 

[MayauMiao]

Ken Berry: The climate now is definitely very different from the heyday of the Senran Kagura series, and it’s hard to see how that series could prosper in the West in this day and age.

Stellar Blade & The First Descendant said hi.

 

[March Climber]

No one here is actually reading the article. This isn’t about culture war BS guys. He is talking about monetary issues and business. They are having trouble keeping their core identity as a JRPG company due to other genres simply being more popular in modern times, and additionally their userbase isn’t growing as much.

He even says the reason they’re questioning bringing over certain titles to the west is because of localization costs.

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

No one here is actually reading the article. This isn’t about culture war BS guys. He is talking about monetary issues and business. They are having trouble keeping their core identity as a JRPG company due to other genres simply being more popular in modern times, and additionally their userbase isn’t growing as much.

He even says the reason they’re questioning bringing over certain titles to the west is because of localization costs.

Read it, disagree. But it might just be me interpreting it wrong. Genuinely not trying to come off snarky towards you.

Azario Lopez: Depending on which gaming circles you enter, XSEED is either known as the publisher of some of the most beloved JRPGs of our time

or the company behind Senran Kagura. Looking forward, how would you like XSEED to be defined?

This question seems to me very deliberately structured and worded, to mean that being the company behind Senran Kagura, is like a dicy thing.

And to me:

Ken Berry: The climate now is definitely very different from the heyday of the Senran Kagura series, and it’s hard to see how that series could prosper in the West in this day and age.

This

I’m most proud of the titles that wouldn’t have made it to the US at all had we not been the publisher because, for whatever reason, we were the only ones capable of doing so. These include games licensed from Namco Bandai like Fragile Dreams, The Sky Crawlers, Retro Game Challenge, and Fishing Resort, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower from Nintendo, and Brave Story from Sony.

Times are different now with fan translators and digital distribution lowering the investment needed to localize and bring a title to US players. However, it’s still rewarding knowing you’re directly responsible for bringing games to players that they otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance to experience. I’d like to continue that tradition by funding and helping talented indie teams develop and bring their titles to market.

And this, seem like separate statements.

Or an attempt to dance around an elephant in the room. I think it's very obvious to me, knowing those games (Senran Kagura) and their content, what he mean by the "day and age" comment.

If I interpreted it wrong, I apologize for my past comment. But I genuinely think you are being naive.

 

[cireza]

He even says the reason they’re questioning bringing over certain titles to the west is because of localization costs.

You might want to check that again because he says that it has become less expensive, thanks to digital distribution and fan translations.

Times are different now with fan translators and digital distribution lowering the investment needed to localize and bring a title to US players.

 

[Astray]

The biggest and most important question is how much Senran Kagura sells. If it doesn't sell then this entire question is a non-issue, and it seems to me like they have decided that the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Xseed won't be able to pay their employees with your nice posts telling them to ignore the woke, they will pay them using the money gained from purchases you and others are supposed to make.

 

[March Climber]

Read it, disagree. But it might just be me interpreting it wrong. Genuinely not trying to come off snarky towards you.




This question seems to me very deliberately structured and worded, to mean that being the company behind Senran Kagura, is like a dicy thing.

And to me:

This

And this, seem like separate statements.

Or an attempt to dance around an elephant in the room. I think it's very obvious to me, knowing those games (Senran Kagura) and their content, what he mean by the "day and age" comment.

If I interpreted it wrong, I apologize for my past comment. But I genuinely think you are being naive.

The naive thing to do here would be to quote comments from the OP instead of actually reading the full article. It doesn’t take long and it will add much needed context to those quotes. There wasn’t a hint of culture war issues in that article, but since a ton of people here always want one singular answer to every single issue a company faces, that’s what people always decide to point to.

Xseed could literally go under in a year and people here would instantly blame it on woke culture in the west. Take a breather, look beyond the culture wars, and think about the ways they are losing money here. Or don’t I guess, because it’s always the easy go-to answer.

Example:

1) An easy way for them to alleviate some issues would be to focus more on games for mobile phones. They have been avoiding the inevitable for far too long.

2) In addition, they might just have to expand on what genres they are covering. It might hurt their identity a bit but they could use a game within a popular genre every now and then.

See how that’s much better than ‘just add more T&A, don’t change, and everything will work out’ as suggested above?

You might want to check that again because he says that it has become less expensive, thanks to digital distribution and fan translations.

This is fair. When I read the part about fan tranlations I took it the other way as it is costing them rather than helping them.

 

[RuneFactoryFanboy]

I'm so sick of XSEED and I want them gone. I cringe whenever they announce they nabbed the rights to a game I was looking forward to.

They used to be such a darling publisher/localizer, back in the days when you had guys like Tom Lipschultz working there who were adamant about keeping localization pure. They brought a lot of niche games to the west and were doing a pretty good job.

But now they just come off as yet another group of liberals trying to "change the narrative" by playing content cop. Rune Factory 5 was the last straw with me, a game that really could have used some more polish. Instead, XSEED advocated/pressured the developer to use their resources modifying the game to fit their social narrative, and then went on to brag that they did it like it's a huge win.

Any publisher/localizer who thinks behavior like that is ok is poison to the game industry.

 

[LRKD]

The naive thing to do here would be to quote comments from the OP instead of actually reading the full article. It doesn’t take long and it will add much needed context to those quotes. There wasn’t a hint of culture war issues in that article, but since a ton of people here always want one singular answer to every single issue a company faces, that’s what people always decide to point to.

You are completely full of it. There isn't any magical context in the full article. The article is a very cut and dry, safe interview, and nearly half the article is in the OP, there isn't any cut context that OP ignored. You are making shit up. Of course there wasn't culture war in the article dude, do you really think the CEO would start beef with the fan base that buys their games?

You are ignoring the very real culture war that has been happening in gaming, that has caused game after game to get censored or canceled. That has caused characters to be intentionally uglified, that has caused over and over again gender options to be swapped out for body type a and b in both new and old games.

Sony's huge crack down on Japanese games 10 years ago when they moved to California is the reason there are no more Senran Kagura games, it's not because XSEED is struggling to stay afloat. We saw interviews where the devs literally said it was a struggle to adjust to these new standards, how it will cause increased time and money in development. We saw game after game censored, and several including (seemingly) Senran Kagura 7even canceled. You are clearly disingenuous at worst, and naive at best.

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

You are completely full of it. There isn't any magical context in the full article. The article is a very cut and dry, safe interview, and nearly half the article is in the OP, there isn't any cut context that OP ignored. You are making shit up. Of course there wasn't culture war in the article dude, do you really think the CEO would start beef with the fan base that buys their games?

This is why I didn't reply to him...
Not interested in arguing with someone with a gold medal in mental gymnastics.

A game series with cover arts like this

With content containing this:

"The times" is totally not the reason why the man in the article is tip toing around this game.

And the man directly not mentioning tits and ass is totally the open and shut case we were looking for.