Author: by Staff

Despite challenges for mature games on the Wii, if a game is well-designed, the audience will come, says Kazufumi Shimizu, director of Hudson's upcoming Wii horror title Calling. Comments from major publishers like Sega and Capcom in recent weeks have directly questioned the wisdom of developing mature content for the Wii, and Shimizu acknowledges the challenge. "When we started developing Calling, it was with the knowledge that the Wii marketplace might be a tough one to crack for it," he tells Gamasutra as part of a new feature on all things Hudson. "However, when it comes to the controls and the experience, the Wii is really the platform that's best suited for it." "The Wii has a pretty family-friendly image, of course, and everyone knew from the start that it'd be tough for this game in the marketplace," he continues. "But we wanted it on the Wii; we wanted to take [the remote] and use it like a phone." Shimizu says that from a developer standpoint, sales are impossible to predict early on, so uncertainty about platform or performance is no reason to hold back: "If you aren't passionate about the game you're making, then it's not going to have a chance in the first place," he says. "You need that sort of force working on it," Shimizu adds. "If all you think about is money and finances, then you tend to put what you want to do on the back burner." And at least for Hudson's part, executives understand this, he adds, having seen their share of failures as well as sleeper hits. "It all comes down to the game," says Shimizu. "If the game is interesting, then it'll attract both kids and adults on the Wii. It's hard for the Wii at present, but no matter what the platform, if it's good, people will come to it."