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The story
In an interview with ascii.jp, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo revealed that the company is moving away from its previous PS5-focused release strategy and will now treat multi-platform releases as the default going forward. The shift comes after Switch and Steam versions proved effective at pulling in new players. On 5ch’s hardware/industry (Geha) board, some users welcomed the policy change, while others pointed out the contradiction of claiming to “go multi-platform” while still skipping an Xbox release — sparking debate over Xbox’s tiny market share in Japan, the limited resources of small-to-mid-size third-party developers, and Falcom’s past struggles breaking into Nintendo hardware.
— The Switch and PS5 versions of this title come bundled with a download code for ‘Trails in the Sky FC’ as a first-print/pre-order bonus. Could you tell us the story behind including that?
Also, are there any plans for HD remasters of ‘Trails in the Sky SC’ or ‘The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd’ (hereafter, ‘the 3rd’)?
Kondo:
Source: ascii.jp / Original article here
What people said
He really didn't say it, damn it!
Nippon Ichi's operating at a loss though, that's a failure
Now even Falcom can't get by on PS alone
going multi-platform is how they're landing new players
Even Level-5 is ditching Nintendo these days ("任" = Nintendo)
That's good news, glad to hear it
No it's not
deliberately skipping Xbox
and that's while developing on PC is standard now, so putting out an Xbox version should be easy
No way a Japan-focused company like Falcom or Nippon Ichi releases on that
Exactly, that's the contradiction — saying "multi-platform" while skipping Xbox
That's not a contradiction lol
releasing on Xbox wouldn't turn a profit
even Toshi Densetsu ("Urban Legend") and Sakuna skipped it too
small-to-mid third parties don't have the resources to go multi on every single console, they have to narrow it down
small-to-mid devs just can't keep up anymore, can they
So PS really is seen as declining, huh lol
that's basically common knowledge among every third party by now
look at the Amazon rankings — every single title in the top 100 is either "released within the past week" or "not yet released"
what that shows is: existing users buy new releases, but with no new users coming in, back-catalog titles just don't sell — a stagnant playerbase made visible
meanwhile Switch 2 has titles like Pragmata charting, so new users are clearly coming in there
you probably don't know this since you're clueless, but
nowadays it's develop on PC, then port to consoles, so the extra workload is basically nothing
so it was always strange that the base model specs were treated as some kind of barrier
when Falcom first moved into console gaming it was common knowledge that third-party games didn't sell on Nintendo hardware — and honestly the Wii earned that reputation fair and square
and even when an Ys game came out on DS, it wasn't even made by Falcom themselves — what were they even going for?
simple answer: they couldn't make games for PS3 at the time
DS was a storage capacity issue
PSP was the only option left
Falcom actually pitched a turn-based Ys game for DS
it was Nintendo that turned it down
and on top of that, it wouldn't even sell
all excuses, no substance
other small-to-mid studios do release on it
wake up to the contradiction
according to the official platform breakdown for Trails in the Sky the 1st, PS5 comes to 51% combining physical and digital, while Switch 2 — digital-only — is at 27%
so looking at digital sales alone, it's pretty safe to say Nintendo hardware is already ahead
this is a company that called PS "declining" back in the year "barrier" was the trending term
some people were calling it the "declining barrier" around here
keep telling yourself that forever
go buy your games on Xbox then
nobody buys it, that's exactly why it doesn't get released
someone who doesn't know how ports work these days
realistically, with sales declining, refusing to release on Switch — the platform that dominated at the time — just seemed insane…
there's no physical distribution for it to begin with
Never played one
only Ys Origin is out on it
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Third-party console gaming used to mean the PlayStation camp, but in recent years the standard workflow has shifted to developing for PC (Steam) first and porting to consoles afterward, which lowers the bar for multi-platform releases, especially for smaller developers. Xbox, meanwhile, has a small installed base in Japan, making it hard to justify porting and operating costs against expected sales — which is why many Japanese publishers leave it out. The download ratio for ‘Trails in the Sky the 1st’ cited in the thread (51% PS5, 27% Switch 2) was calculated by thread posters themselves from an official published breakdown, not pulled directly from a primary source — worth keeping in mind. It’s also worth noting that this “multi-platform” push doesn’t mean releasing on every single platform; it’s a business decision to selectively choose platforms expected to be profitable, a nuance that’s easy to lose sight of from the thread discussion alone.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “Falcom President: “Until now we’ve focused on PS5, but going forward multi-platform releases will be the standard”.”
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