OMG Nintendo

Hudson Soft has a much closer relationship with Nintendo than most people realize. The company helped co-design the GameCube, is behind every game in the top-selling Mario Party series, and was even one of the first third-party publishers making games for the original NES.

Knowing all this, it's not really surprising that Hudson Soft has become one of the most prolific publishers on WiiWare. The company expects to release its 10th North American WiiWare title soon, anticipated to be Adventure Island: The Beginning.

To complete our picture of where WiiWare is one year after it began, we sat down with Associate Brand Manager for Hudson Soft USA Amar Gavhane to see what kind of insight we could get into Hudson's North American operations. Gavhane's role is often primarily in localization since many of Hudson Soft's WiiWare games are developed in Japan.

Hit the jump to find out exactly why casual gamers have flocked to WiiWare, why Deca Sports sold so many copies, and what the heck was up with Onslaught.

OMGN: So... what's up with Onslaught? Where did that come from? 

Gavhane: I know, it's a shocker, right? [laughs] Wii is a causal platform and yet we had to make an FPS! I think the point behind it was that we wanted to try something new and push our development teams to increase our skills. Also, knowing the Wii was a natural fit for FPS, and wanting to give casual gamers a chance to play an FPS.

Most FPS are too complicated for a casual player but Onslaught is more forgiving. The point is just to get to the end of the level alive. You don't need to complete 20 different tasks and kill a boss. It's kind of an interesting blend. It's a little bit of an arcade-style FPS so you're trying to get a high score and keep a combo multiplier up.

OMGN: In general, is WiiWare more challenging to work with than retail Wii releases?

Gavhane: Both more and less challenging, primarily because of the space limitations. In the full Wii title you have lots of memory to work with and lots of space to put a translation on disc. But since WiiWare is small, if you do have text or whatever you need localized, you don't usually have mounds and mounds of text like a typical RPG would have, or crazy cultural issues that need to be localized. WiiWare games tend to be simple, universal, and plain fun.

OMGN: What types of games sell best for you?

Gavhane: When I think about the sales numbers... it's variable, but the more casual and wide-appealing games do better. Believe it or not, our best-selling game is My Aquarium which is a fish tank simulator. In general, casual games like that do really well for us.

OMGN: Was this surprising for Hudson? 

Gavhane: Actually, it was a surprise! People who work at game companies tend to be hardcore gamers. We do tend to subconsciously favor hardcore games and think they'll do better on every platform. We had no idea casual would be such an important aspect of this platform. We all realize now that Wii has been a huge success, especially for casual gamers.
 

OMGN: Has Hudson repositioned to take advantage of the growth of casual gaming on Wii?

Gavhane: No, not at all. We've been in a perfect location. We're a family-friendly, fun game maker since forever and we've had a very close relationship with Nintendo since back in the NES days. We've always made a lot of games for Nintendo platforms. So our strength really does lie in developing Wii, WiiWare, and DS games. We have had some success with Bomberman Live for XBLA, but we were postiioned very well for the casual success of Wii.

OMGN: Did Hudson Soft see a sales boost from firmware 4.0?

Gavhane: Yeah, just like everyone else we did see a bump in sales.

OMGN: At what point in development does Hudson Soft generally know a project is going to be a WiiWare project?

Gavhane: That probably happens the moment a concept is put forward. The actual controller and system is the same, but they're very different platforms due to space limittions. WiiWare is very simple and fun right off the bat and you can't cram too many goodies into it. I think right from the outset we'd know what direction it's going in.

OMGN: What is Nintendo's role in creating Hudson's WiiWare games, if any?

Gavhane: Well, they're Nintendo! [laughs] They're a typical first party. We go to them for advice and what they think about a product, we go through checks with them, we work with them on the marketing and see how we can leverage our efforts together. It's pretty standard publisher first-party relationship.

OMGN: What does Hudson have planned for Wii retail and DS? 

Gavhane: We just launched Help Wanted where you can play 50 different jobs as you try to save the Earth. That especially will appeal to people on the casual end and younger users. We announced Deca Sports 2, which is obviiously our sequel to last year's Deca Sports which worked out really well for us, and then s yo said so there'll be plenty more.

OMGN: Let's talk about Deca Sports for a minute. Why do you think Deca Sports sold so well?

Gavhane: It was the right game at the right time. Everyone has Wii Sports and everyone loves the game. There hasn't been a game like it since the Wii launch. So I think when Deca Sports came out last year, people were wanting another sports compilation that was easy to pick up and that they could play with their families. So Deca Sports gave them exactly what they wanted.

OMGN: So can you see Deca Sports 2 doing as well, given that we'll see the release of Wii Sports Resort later this year?

Gavhane: Yeah, I can. The game is just as quality as the first one. We added new features that I think will make a difference. Now you can customize your own team and we added online Wi-Fi multiplayer. We think a lot of people have been looking for that and haven't seen it in their casual sports compilations before.