Katsuhiro Harada Says ‘Xenosaga’ HD Collection Would Need ‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of Fans

Katsuhiro Harada took to Twitter to address a call from fans for a Xenosaga HD collection that would need “tens of thousands” of fans in order to become a reality. Harada has been with the Tekken fighting game team at Bandai Namco for the past 20 years, and recalled when the Monolith Soft team was one floor below the Tekken team crunching to finish the first entry into the trilogy, Xenosga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht.

Taking to TwitLonger, Harada typed a message to the community that has been calling for an HD collection of the PlayStation 2 games. The full message is below.

“To Xenosaga fan community. I do understand that you all are desiring ‘Xenosaga HD collection.’ Also, I do appreciate all your passionate comments. I do understand your feeling to ‘tweet every day until the day Xenosaga HD collection comes real.’ However, what I need in order to achieve your dream, is not to have tweets from the ‘same person’ sent to me every day. It has been a long time since Xenosaga has been released. It really brings back memories of those days they were developing the first Xenosaga staying up all night, when the TEKKEN Project was also staying up all night on the same floor at office.

“A while back, triggered by the overseas version of Project X zone, I have conducted a research and calculated if there is a business chance for Xenosaga HD remaster. It was a very simple research at that time. Yet, research does cost money. And at that time, I was not able to seek business chance. In other words, I was not able to find the necessary market size that will pay for the development fee needed to create the HD remaster. Back then, the reactions on SNS and unique users were rather few in number. It may be that I didn’t work hard enough.

“Measures such as kickstarters are as of last resort, and at any rate we will not have a chance of winning as it stands now. It will not gather people by crowdfunding without creating some kind of big movement to support it. To be honest, I was about to give up and I’m troubled.

“What I need, are the voices from many fans. This is a little different from having ‘messages sent every day from the same person.’ Although I do understand the deep love for the game, more than that, the cheers from as many ‘unique users’ as possible is what is needed.

“Digging further, I will not be able to believe comments like ‘I’ll buy 100 copies!’ Most companies will not believe in it. It is not realistic for one person to tweet 100 times every day, or buy 100 copies alone. It’s more realistic if you bring 10 fans to the game (not to mention, it wouldn’t mean anything by having the same person suddenly creating alternate accounts. I will be able to tell those).

“What’s important in these kinds of cases is the number of unique users. It means more to have 100 people mentioning they want the game one time, rather than having one person repeating it 100 times. A miracle would happen if several tens of thousands are gathered at the end. Of course, involvement from the company is needed for this but…”

Of all the HD collections that have been released, the great majority of them have been from first party properties owned by Sony and Microsoft. Fable, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and God of War are a few examples. Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix is one example of a successful third party HD collection. However, Xenosaga arguably does not have the same market presence of Kingdom Hearts. That said, JRPG fans are known for their dedication to the style and play so the possibility is there if the interest from fans is legitimate.

The original Xenosaga trilogy was released by Bandi Namco in 2007, and the games are still owned by Namco. As IGN previously reported, Monolith Soft is now a Nintendo-owned studio and has since produced another entry into the series, Xenoblade Chronicles, exclusively for the Nintendo Wii. Namco could take a cue from other HD collections by producing the Xenosaga HD collections with Monolith’s involvement and instead using a different studio to handle the port to a more modern console.

Time will tell if the “tens of thousands” of fans will turn out for a Xenosaga HD collection. If they do show up, you can be sure Katsuhiro Harada will be listening for them and cheering them on to those who would make that decision.

[Image Source | Bandai Namco]