Director Interview with 4Gamer.net - 08/15

If they'd just released gameplay videos none of this would happened.

A lot of thoughts as I once again ponder the possibility that FPW really is the last Fire Pro game ever.

1) I think that rough translation of the interview may have lost some of the playful nuances of Matsumoto and some of the subtlety of Japanese.   As it is, text doesn't always get across emotions but especially when converting across languages and cultures.  So it's possible that some of the more negative thoughts were either exaggerated or misinterpreted. I think some of Matsumoto's self-deprecation comes from a place of humor and text can be bad with that as well.

2) From 2007 until 2017, it genuinely felt like we'd never get another new Fire Pro game again.  If you were in the community then, you know how it has felt over the past year to load up FPW every day and look at true glory.  I've never taken this game for granted, no matter how frustrated I may have gotten at some things.  It's always been that FPW was 1 billion steps forward and maybe some of the negative things were like 5 steps back.  Even if we were never to get another Fire Pro game again, FPW more than lived up to its hype and hope. I was 100% prepared to live the rest of eternity my totally mortal life playing FPR and not really complaining.  I can easily do the same with FPW taking that place. 

When FPW came out, I thought that it could be the last Fire Pro game ever because when FPR came out, I thought that could be the last Fire Pro game ever.  Games in this series haven't been a guarantee for decades.  We take what we can get, we love it, we play it for as long as we can, and we get ecstatic if another one actually comes out. The series is a miracle.  I never poke a miracle or expect one.  I just enjoy it and reflect on how lucky we are to experience it. 

3) That all being said, even though I think FPW was a miracle and the best Fire Pro game ever (by a wide margin) - I've also always felt that FPW had kind of an "unstable" quality to it that FPD and FPR didn't.  I've played FPW now on 3 different computers and it's always felt a little "off." From the menus, to the little graphical glitches, to the big graphical glitches (which are honestly 100% hilarious to me).  It felt rushed in many ways.   It seems to me that a lot of the JP audience playing the PS4 release are having those problems to a greater extent. The PC version is still at a point that I would personally call "Early Access" compared with the stability of other Fire Pro games and other games.

I wasn't happy that Spike took it out of "Early Access" when they did because there was still a lot of work that could have been done.  I know they did that for business reasons but I think it was a mistake.  I know and accept that Spike is a company out to make money first. But business people don't always do "what's best for business" despite trying to (after all, not everyone that tries to be a millionaire succeeds). I think they were too wrapped up in short term release goals and didn't realize the effect that a troubled release could have on the game and series.  (I would note that this is an industry-wide problem as companies rushing out games is an epidemic rather than an exception at this point).

My suspicion is that Matsumoto and his creative team would have wanted more time in Early Access but the Spike suits made the decision to get this game out of it quickly and onto the PS4 even quicker (to the point that much more preparation and testing was needed). My suspicion is that Matsumoto never had much control over the release dates of the PC and PS4 release and that he had to make impossible choices (either/or choices of which fans would be unhappy getting one but not both) regarding what was finished in Early Access.   Things like the unstable UI, the lack of some rather obvious additions to the game (it still pisses me off that we can't priority INTO standing moves), the complete mess of an edit/group menu, and just general feeling of instability exist in the same game with absolute brilliance. 

It makes me think that Matsumoto was probably under THE most intense stress to perform miracles for us armed with a pittance of funds and time.  Imagine you successfully lobby a company to bring a niche game back, have a community of passionate fans supporting you that have high expectations, but then realize that you weren't given the funds or time to completely satisfy the fans or yourself? That's a tough position to be in and couldn't have been easy for him. I don't blame him.  I think that Spike didn't want him to drag this out and had a set time frame.  He wanted this game made but he had to accept that project under very tight conditions.  I thank him profusely and I don't envy the pressure on him.  There were many times over the past year that he seemed depressed over not being able to deliver on things he wanted due to the intense pressure over him and the fact that he didn't have enough control over the time frame of releases.  In some ways it reminded me of a passionate Kickstarter project that fell short of developer and fan expectations due to monetary or game production issues.  Matsumoto did his best with conditions that were out of his control.  That the team produced the excellence it did on Steam (with the DNA to be replicated on PS4 with issues and patches) was amazing. 

4) It's also my belief that he had our role in the future of Fire Pro in mind from the start.  He didn't choose Steam/PC just because it was popular in the U.S. but because he knew that modding could and would happen.  We were locked out of FPR but he knew we wouldn't be locked out of FPW as long as it was released on Steam in addition to PS4. It's my belief that he made the best game that he and his team could under spartan conditions...but that his ultimate gift to us was giving us a game that could be modded forever.  And that's because part of him probably always thought this would be the last Fire Pro game.  (He may even know for a fact that it's the last Fire Pro game under the current Spike management team). He wanted to give us his best, but he also wanted to allow us to give ourselves the best from this point forward.  I think his ultimate gift to us was making a game with as much as possible that was also a template game that we could build on.

Thank you Matsumoto. I'm looking forward to the DLC but I thank him and his team for passing the ball and our team (led by Carl of Zilla) for running with it for what will likely be as long as our sun shines and our spirit burns. 

Thank you for your impassioned words, Orochi.

Because it’s not going to sell enough outside of Japan alone to make it profitable and/or sustainable.

Incredible avatar, invader! Also, the "Dusty Sucks Eggs" guy, too. Needed to be said

Because it's where the series originated and has the biggest fan following and it's the place where they have the best chance of doing the kind of sales numbers they want? It's been said all along that the Japanese PS4 version is the one they're banking on and if the NA/EU versions do well it's icing on the cake but they're not expecting much.