Little Tail Story

[Sadivinedevil]

Cyber Connect 2's next smartphone game Little Tail Story was just announced.

http://lts.bngames.net/

[Kuukai]

Hmm, it looks like the Tail Concerto/Solatorobo version of Guilty Dragon.

Tail Concerto, Solatorobo, and Fukuoka's emergency mascot Mamoru-kun all exist in a larger world called Little Tail Bronx. That being part of the title of this, it seems safe to say they're connected...

The music is so beautiful, it kind of makes you want to roll up into a ball and cry your eyes out that CC2 can't get anything made anymore that isn't a shovelware casual game...

[Sadivinedevil]

I kind of wish that CC2 would stop working on Naruto and these mobile titles and work on .hack and Little Tail Bronx games again. I also wouldn't mind a completely original title like Asura's Wrath was.

I believe they are developing another .hack game, I saw some news about it a couple months ago, and I'm still holding out hope for Strelka Stories.

[Kuukai]

Strelka Stories supposedly showed up at the summer event as something they're still working on. They have plans for continuing .hack (as seen in Thanatos Report) but aren't actively developing it. They need publisher backing. And right now it seems like the only thing publishers are backing is unoriginal smartphone games that die out one after another. They made Guilty Dragon for Namco Bandai's Mobile department, which is a very run-of-the-mill social RPG with a very generic plot, but I guess at least it's .hack, and they want to release it internationally someday. Then they made a cute Temple Run clone for GREE which was released internationally, and got canceled almost comically fast. So then they said screw that, and made Shinigami Messiah, another darker social RPG like Guilty Dragon for the publisher DeNA. But that wasn't enough generic RPGs for them so they teamed with the publisher Drecom to make Fullbokko Heroes under Drecom's new "Fullbokko" IP. Now since Guilty Dragon is still going it looks like Namco Bandai finally caved and went to them saying, "You win. Your .hack mobile game is very successful, proving .hack is successful, so you can finally make... another shitty social game." And that's Little Tail Story. So in two years, the only games CyberConnect2 has made are a JoJo fighting game and 5 mobile games for 4 different publishers. Unfortunately it creates the image that no one wants to fund a real RPG anymore...

[Bullet Biter]

Smartphone games are the future of gaming. We're doomed.

[Sadivinedevil]

This was the news I was referring to before about .hack. It's more of a we're looking into it than it is a confirmation but it does give me some hope.

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/27/pl ... nect2-ceo/

Although I am okay with the current smartphone trend, they are broadening their horizons to say the least, it is rather annoying that they aren't going to other major publishers like they did with Capcom to publish other original titles. I look forward to JoJo, but I'm not a fighting game fan. I wouldn't mind playing the Naruto games but it seems that they are stuck in Naruto game development hell. I understand Naruto is popular, Matsuyama also really loves Naruto, but give us a break between each game. Release an original title or release another .hack or Little Tail Bronx title instead of just going into another Naruto game. It's like the Dragon Ball Z games. Every year we get a new one and eventually no one cares about them because of franchise fatigue.

[Kaori]

Smartphone games are the future of gaming. We're doomed.

Can't they make games with the unreal engine? They can make games like Infinity Blade.

[Kuukai]

This was the news I was referring to before about .hack. It's more of a we're looking into it than it is a confirmation but it does give me some hope.

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/27/pl ... nect2-ceo/

Unfortunately .hack coverage in English has been plagued by really bad translations and sensationalist spins. They've had it "planned" since Thanatos Report ended, as you can tell from the conclusion, but sadly they aren't working on it yet. No one has given them money to turn it into a game.

Smartphone games are the future of gaming. We're doomed.

Can't they make games with the unreal engine? They can make games like Infinity Blade.

The problem is that more and more what's popular among investors is "social games" (e.g. games designed to be addictive and make you keep coming back with little actual content.) Unfortunately this doesn't require a lot of "game," just an "engagement cycle" of clicking and rewards. As you can see from my above blurb, CC2 is getting more work from more publishers than it's ever worked with before (the total before smartphone games was 2) because of this industry.