What made Nippon Ichi decide to come to the West?
Jack Niida: It kind of sprung from us originally having games, like Disgaea published (in America) by Atlus, but we were always thinking of producing games for the North American market, and after awhile, we thought it was better for us to publish our own titles since they are our games. But we still have a good relationship with Atlus. We publish the games and they distribute them for us. It just kind of happened. Gamasutra: The games market in general is shrinking in Japan, was this a move to expand Nippon Ichi’s market exposure? Niida: In a way. We thought it was the right timing, because the American market seemed to be getting more accustomed to Japanese anime-style artwork and the market over here seemed to be growing, and our titles are all pretty much anime-influenced 2D, there is 3D, but it’s heavily 2D influenced, so we thought it was a perfect match. The anime crowd is pretty hardcore, so we thought it was a good match, and it turned out to be. Gamasutra: To what do you attr
