Nippon Ichi Software, better known as NIS, has been behind an incredible number of major projects for years now. They were at Tokyo Game Show 2018, which means that a significant amount of information on future endeavors and more have been revealed through interviews. In one such interview with Sohei Niikawa, the president of NIS, a number of topics were discussed, including the very recently released Disgaea 1 Complete and new project concepts that he wants to pursue.
He explains a bit more about the localization process, specifically how certain games are chosen to brought to the west while others aren’t. This is not done through choosing a specific genre and only localizing games of that genre such as RPGs and JRPGs; this process is done through staff at NIS looking at and choosing “any game that comes from Japan that we believe is something that fans in the west should play.” While the process is seemingly unconventional, it has the fans kept in mind, with the way the process is described as being almost reminiscent of a friend recommending a game. Near the end of the interview, he is asked about the next projects at NIS.
At the moment, there are several titles being developed by several different developers at Nippon Ichi Software. There’s also tons of projects that I personally want to bring to life. Of course, within that would be Disgaea but not just limiting Disgaea to a strategy RPG, we’re doing something else with Disgaea, something that’s attractive. On the other hand, we’re also thinking about making another strategy RPG that’s not in the Disgaea world or franchise.
The president of NIS seems to have a lot of ideas on where to go with the Disgaea franchise, some of which being new steps in the series that aren’t SRPGs. He also seems to have ideas on a potentially completely new IP, using the experience that has been gained over the years to make a new SRPG. Whatever the case is with his new project idea, expect it to be covered here.
You can read the whole interview with Sohei Niikawa here.