Vanillaware, the japanese studio behind some of the greatest action games of our time, might be considering bringing their games to PC.
Vanillaware, one the best japanese studios when it comes to stylish action games with a retro flair might be considering bringing their games to PC. The creators of Dragon’s Crown, Muramasa: The Demon Blade and the Odin Sphere series have historically only developed for consoles, but this might all soon enough change. According to Niche gamer, Vanillaware president George Kamitani said as much on his personal Facebook page, saying “[We are] currently exploring a solution for a pc version,” after being asked whether bringing games to Steam was or not a possibility.
Japanese developers were particularly afraid of the piracy that marked the PC gaming scene in the late 90s and early 00s, where it was almost impossible to make money in it and favoring consoles instead became more of an option. This tendency slowly started to change as very traditional developers such as Capcom (with the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil series), Square-Enix (Final Fantasy and the games formerly developed by Eidos such as Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Hitman), and Bandai Namco (Dark Souls) started experimenting with bringing their games to PC via the digital store Steam, infamous for its frequent sales and over-all cheap games. Now that the door is blown open, and Steam features an impressive catalog of Japanese games, Vanillaware might be the next team to join in the fun, bringing some variety to what is already the biggest PC gaming store in the world.
Vanillaware are a team of developers who started their own studio (Puraguru) in 2002, after developing Princess Crown with Atlus for the Sega Saturn in 1997. In those years they worked for a number of companies and studios developing many games for diverse platforms, but eventually decided to work together again, forming their own studio. After renaming themselves as Vanillaware, they made a commitment to develop games that mostly featured sprites and 2D art instead of chasing the latest 3d innovations like the rest of the market. Their biggest games were the aforementioned Odin Sphere which debuted on the PS2, Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii and PS Vita, and eventually Dragon’s Crown for the PS VIta and PS3, their most well-known game to date, which president Kamitani had been trying to create for almost 13 years.
Currently, Vanillaware are in the process of developing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, a 2D game with several mechas in a world that is trying to overcome some kind of catastrophe. The game doesn’t have a release date as of now, but we do know it is being developed with the PS Vita and the PlayStation 4’s capabilities in mind. Would you like to see these games on PC? Let us know about it in the comments section below.
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