http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3162620
It sounds like he was really wasted at MS once Phantom Dust was finished. :/
There's also a plethora of other interviews with him on the history and development of Panzer Dragoon as part of the PD retrospective on 1-up if anyone's interested.
Yukio Futatsugi Speaks
The father of Panzer Dragoon and Phantom Dust returns to development.
By James Mielke, 09/07/2007
The name Yukio Futatsugi might not be as commonly known as the Itagakis or Suzukis or Sakaguchis of the gaming world, but his contributions are no less significant. As a core member of the former-Team Andromeda, he stood at the helm of the entire, original Panzer Dragoon series (Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Panzer Dragoon Saga), and after leaving Sega made his mark with the critically-acclaimed Phantom Dust. For the last few years, Futatsugi has held the role of Design Manager at Microsoft Game Studios Japan, overseeing the development of games like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey and 99 Nights. But his recent stay at Microsoft has kept him out of the actual development process, a process he dearly misses, and by the time you read this interview, he will have left Microsoft Game Studios entirely to dive back into the world of game development.
That's good news for gamers. But before Futatsugi left MSG, we took him out for drinks and yakiniku to discuss his plans for the future, his time at Microsoft, why he's leaving Microsoft, modern gaming trends, and so much more. This is but the first in a series of interviews with Futatsugi, that will continue next week, when we re-convene with the man behind Panzer Dragoon and Phantom Dust. But for the time being, let's listen to what he's got to say about gaming now.
1UP: How do you feel about the Japanese game market today? The sales don't seem to reward the effort and innovation that goes into these games. It must be discouraging as a game designer, when people only want to buy sequels or play around on their cell phones.
Yukio Futatsugi: These days the kind of games that are selling well are things like Brain Training [Brain Age] and simple games -- not the action titles -- it's a little bit of a pity that those kinds of games are what's selling. I didn't join the game industry to develop those kinds of games. I'm here to make real games, but from a business standpoint, these are the titles that are making money, so I understand that. However, with games like Monster Hunter, which sold over a million in Japan, so there are still hardcore games like that, so it's not like there aren't any game users out there. There are still kids in elementary and high school who are into games, but it comes down to the concept that game developers make, and the kind of games that users are wanting have to match. With titles like Monster Hunter, everything matched, so because of that I still have faith in the market.
The way I view the market is that these days is that game players are more into portable machines than consoles. But from research we've done, we found that people aren't using their portable machines on the go. The time they spend using these portable machines the most is when they're at home. Back in the days we played games in front of the TV, we would commit to the game for hours and we'd play, but these days kids have a lot of things they want to do, they want to go on the Internet, they want to watch TV, do a lot of stuff, so they can't commit that much time in front of the TV, play their game a little bit, do something else, then maybe play later again. So the style of gaming has changed. But developers that make games these days are from the generation that grew up sitting in front of their TV, putting in hours to a game. So the developers mind and the player's mind might not by synchronized.
1UP: You've been at Microsoft Game Studios for a while now, from the beginning of Xbox through to the Xbox 360. That must have been a difficult experiment to witness, in terms of Japanese culture and their limited acceptance of that hardware. What sort of observations have you made about the Japanese gaming consumer based on your experience with the Xbox platform?
YF: The only people who buy Xbox in Japan are people who like games. Hardcore gamers. If you ask them what their hobby is, they'll say "playing games." So, because of that, especially when I was working on the original version of Panzer, I was always thinking that this [game development] was a cool job, and much in the way it was working on the original Xbox, it was something of a luxury because we knew that our audience just wanted to play games. They didn't buy it because it played DVDs or for reasons other than gaming. This was awesome for me, because I could focus on people who liked real games.
With Xbox 360 if you look at the lineup of titles that the 360 has right now, it's pretty solid, and if we had this kind of lineup 5 years ago, we might have had half the market. But these days the way users play games has changed, so the question is do people even want to play games on a console any more? So that might be one of the reasons that 360 or other consoles might not be doing as well as they had before.
1UP: Like with the PS3. You might ask yourself did we really need another one so soon? The PS2 is still selling very well, and the installed base is in the tens of millions, which makes it less risky for publishers.
YF: PlayStation 3, even though the price came down a bit, it's still not selling, and part of the reason why Wii is selling so well is because you can play it with everybody, it's like a party tool. You can play it with everyone in front of the TV. The people I work with who bought the Wii aren't playing it any more.
1UP: Then the novelty wears off?
YF: Yeah, we're still satisfied with it, the gaming experience and the Miis, we're pretty satisfied with it, but there's nothing to play any more so it just sits in the corner of your room. But whenever you talk with somebody else and they ask you if it was fun, it was fun, so a person who hears that goes out and buys the Wii, so the hardware keeps on selling and selling. But the software isn't selling that well, because people don't play it any more, so they don't buy new software any more. That's the current situation.
1UP: Yeah, only hardcore people are buying Zelda. Everyone else gets it for Wii Sports or Wii Play and that's it. Eventually Nintendo is going to have to drum up some serious games before everyone else gets bored and goes off and concentrates on their 360s or PS3s, or something else.
YF: I think that Nintendo understands that. When the DS first was released, it wasn't that bright, it wasn't that cool. But after a year or so it started picking up and turned into a pretty awesome machine. So Nintendo is probably aware of that and thinking of something.
1UP: One criticism is that Nintendo always designs consoles for their games. If 3rd parties hop on, well great, but Nintendo always follows the patterns of releasing a B, B-plus game every two or three months, then putting out a triple-A game once or twice a year. Anything else is just filler. It's either Princess Peach or Mario & Luigi to fill the gaps, then its an F-Zero or Mario Kart in the biannual sense, then you might get a real Mario or Zelda game once a year. It's a predictable pattern. So besides the current state of the market, what have you been working on recently?
YF: After Phantom, I haven't been developing titles, I've been managing outsourced development. Within Microsoft, we have four groups to watch over outsourced development. One group looks over game design, another looks over the programming, another watched the art, and then there's the group that keeps scheduling on track. I'm the head of the game design unit. Whenever an external developer approaches us about a game concept, I look it over and decide whether or not it's good enough for us to release in Japan. So I've been doing this for two years, but now I'm getting sick of it, so I think it's time to quit.
1UP: Did Microsoft stop supporting internal development altogether? Is that why there hasn't been a Phantom Dust sequel?
YF: There's no more internal development in Japan. Lost Odyssey, that title used to be Microsoft's title. It was Microsoft's idea, and was begun as an internal project. But after we started Microsoft decided that we weren't going to do internal development any more, so we gave the concept over to FeelPlus, and sent all of the people who were working on it internally over to FeelPlus.
1UP: So FeelPlus is all former, internal MSG members?
YF: Well, currently, only about a quarter of the people are former MSG members, since FeelPlus had to bring in a lot of people to work on the game, but it's sort of like that.
1UP: And AQI [AQ Interactive] is just producing the title? I'm a little foggy on how AQI is involved exactly.
YF: Ray Nakazato, formerly of Microsoft Game Studios, at AQI is producing and looking over Lost Odyssey with FeelPlus. AQI owns FeelPlus.
1UP: So basically you would approve a concept and then hand it off to individual producers to manage?
YF: So Microsoft is like a game development investment company. It's not necessarily actively involved with the development. For example, Microsoft U.S. may have invested in this title, and they'll ask us "Do you think this game is worth the investment, do you think we'll make our money back?" And then we give our reports, like "We think this is a good investment" and give our report on the game. Then the developers will create the game, so Microsoft isn't so involved in the development that much. But during the development of 99 Nights it was a little better. I was able to be involved with the development, so it was more fun. But with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, no one could say anything to [Hironobu] Sakaguchi. Nobody could go up to Sakaguchi and say "This part sucks, you have to change this." So, we just had to watch what he was doing and report that back to the U.S., so my real feeling is that I'm just tired of this, it's time to move on.
1UP: So you were just watching everybody else have fun. I understand.
YF: With Blue Dragon, near the end we did jump in and help them check stuff. But the actual fun part, the development, we couldn't touch anything. In Microsoft Japan, there's nobody that understands games like they do at Microsoft U.S. So from my point of view, Microsoft let me create Phantom Dust, but then they were supposed to release it in the U.S. as well, then it got removed from the first-party release list, so we weren't able to make a huge profit from it. So my perspective was 'Microsoft let me create my game, so I'll stay here for a while to watch over the development of these other games,' not because I wanted to, but because I felt kind of obligated to because they let me make Phantom Dust. But now I think that I've done enough, so now I'm going to move on.
It sounds like he was really wasted at MS once Phantom Dust was finished. :/
There's also a plethora of other interviews with him on the history and development of Panzer Dragoon as part of the PD retrospective on 1-up if anyone's interested.
is a demo channel/demo option missing from the VC? Why not deliver a playable demo of Metroid Prime 3 instead of some crappy videos? Why can't I navigate the GUI with a GC controller? What happens when I fill the all the internal storage I have with VC games, and then something like Earthbound/Mother 2 is released? Where the 
