With 2024’s Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, Nihon Falcom gave fans a positive surprise with a simultaneous worldwide launch across Steam, Switch and PS5. Looking back on the response this yielded, the studio’s CEO and president Toshihiro Kondo says he would like to pursue multiplatform releases as much as possible going forward.
Talking to ASCII Japan in a new interview commemorating the soon-to-launch Trails In The Sky 2nd Chapter, Kondo says the new remake series is essentially what kicked off the strategy of embracing multiple platforms. “Until now, we had primarily released the Trails series on PS5, but with Trails in the Sky, we took on the challenge of leading our own worldwide releases across platforms including Switch and PC (Steam).”
He does mention, however, that this was possible largely due to the games’ scenarios already being finalized at an early stage in development. By comparison, brand-new games come with the challenge of last-minute changes that complicate multiplatform releases. Still, Nihon Falcom saw “really strong results” thanks to this approach, and Kondo says that from now on “the basic approach will be to ultimately release our games worldwide across a reasonable range of platforms.”
According to Kondo, Switch and PC account for a large share of Nihon Falcom’s new playerbase. “If we want our series to continue for a long time, I think we need to properly release titles on those platforms as well and work seriously on expanding awareness,” he comments. By consistently developing games for new platforms, Kondo believes the studio can keep attracting players – even in long-running series like Trails – and by extension, maintain an environment that allows it to keep making games.
Nihon Falcom reports 111% revenue growth and 485% profit growth in the past three quarters, citing worldwide success of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
