To keep it short; if you like Xenosaga or JRPGs at all (actually, even if you don’t care for Xenosaga but don’t entirely hate it and its fans), you should respond to this tweet by Harada over at Bandai Namco. He’s looking to make a Xenosaga HD collection, but through his research up to now he hasn’t seen the support (mostly because nobody even thought it was possible – myself included – that they’d even CONSIDER doing one). He’s asking for people to respond to his tweet showing interest and making it clear there is a market big enough to justify the costs.
This is a cult classic and one that won’t succeed in being remade without everyone asking for it – so please ACTUALLY show your support for it actively by tweeting to Harada – DON’T ASSUME IT’LL BE FINE WITHOUT YOU SAYING SOMETHING. This is a rare case where every voice does actually help and he’s made that clear himself – sheer numbers of real people wanting the game is what he needs. Xenosaga wasn’t cheap to create originally and will be far more expensive to make all over again now, without every single person possible speaking for it, it will not happen.
Here is the tweet: https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/510056523549003776
And here is the full text he posted (linked in his tweet);
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…
Usually I don’t post anything like this (newsy stuff or asking for support of something) – but given the subject matter, I just wanted to spread awareness of it so that more people can show support for the project and ultimately have it be green lit.
I’ve never played the Xenosaga games. Are they similar to Xenogears or Xenoblade in any way? I tweeted Harada anyway.
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They make Blade look like total trash and are technically prequels to Gears chronologically (by like thousands of years though, so not really). Other than that I wouldn’t say they are really similar though – it seems Monolith Soft is just obsessed with putting Xeno in titles, the games have no real connection and xenoblade is completely unrelated to the other two. I’d say of the 3 series that Xenosaga is not just the very best of them, but also has the best gameplay, setting, writing (that probably being the most important aside gameplay), music (kajiura’s magnum opus), and hell even with the age the best graphical look and art direction. But, again, they aren’t really similar at all in any way really so I can’t give much of a comparison.
If you like JRPGs at all and also are into science fiction at all, you would for sure love the hell out of Xenosaga though. I’d recommend trying it even if you have to emulate, remake or not. Easily some of the best games to ever come out of Japan and extremely story focused – so if you love a good story with a lot of depth to it, again, worth checking out.
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I see. I don’t know if I’d be able to emulate them (probably not until I get a better PC) but I sure as hell would try the remake (assuming it does actually happen). I’ve been on a JRPG craze as of late and am getting into Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Tales etc. so I’m always looking to branch out into other great series.
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