During the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2026 held in South Korea from August 14 to 16, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida held a lecture to indie game developers, offering insight on how to choose a publisher and successfully pitch your game (as reported by 4Gamer). As part of the presentation, Yoshida also cited anecdotes from his own career as an advisor to publishers, including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 publisher Kepler Interactive.
When asked how much game publishers care about chasing trends, Yoshida says that, in his experience, it tends to depend on whether the specific publisher picks up games that are nearly finished, or spends several years building projects from scratch. The former is often mindful of pursuing trends, while the latter is not – given that whatever is trendy at the moment is anyhow bound to be outdated by the time of launch.
Yoshida illustrates this point with an episode from the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. As an advisor to Kepler Interactive, Yoshida played a demo of the game about two years prior to its launch. He was immediately impressed by the combat, which he describes as a “combination of turn-based JRPG mechanics and real-time action inputs reminiscent of The Legend of Dragoon” (which he was the producer of).
However, despite being personally impressed by the gameplay, Yoshida observed a tendency for turn-based JRPGs to be dismissed as outdated at the time, so he advised the developers at Sandfall Interactive not to label it as one. “It’s incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG. That alone might cause players to overlook it.” Consequently, the branding was adjusted to terms like “reactive turn-based battles.”
After Expedition 33 became a breakout hit, Yoshida says, publishers have apparently started receiving a steady stream of pitches for turn-based RPGs. He sees this story as a prime example of success not being guaranteed just by pursuing market trends.
Lol the stigma is not from japanese turn based ita from Japanese turn based moving away from turn based
Also stop calling it a jrpg, it’s a wrpg.
It’s clearly a Je-RPG 👏
Its a Frenchrpg
Where do developers get these bizarre delusions?! They’ll make a couple of horrible games, pick some random completely irrelevant aspect of those games to blame for the failure, and then we won’t see that type of game again for a decade. It’s happened so many times.
They don’t seem to take failure well and at times seem not to like to learn from them. If fans point it out and they still do it, fails, seems like pride enters and becomes harder to admit. The FFVII remake director when he deliberately ignored what made E33 successful where SE openly refuse to bring their RPGs in line again.
Both FF7R1 and R2 released well before Expedition 33 did lol
The opposite is more likely true – there’s nothing wrong calling an RPG turn-based, or whatever other mechanic it has. It’s just a combat mechanic preference; some prefer turn-based, some prefer hack n’ slash.
It’s the lack of acknowledgement that put Squenix in the position they’re in now. They took a staple mechanic Final Fantasy was known for and why gamers played it, changed it as they pleased, and lost sales over it.
They were so ashamed of their own turn-based JRPG roots that they spent the last 20 years moving Final Fantasy further and further away from the FF1–10 formula and calling whatever came after “innovation.”
And now they have the nerve to lecture Sandfall about the stigma around turn-based RPGs? Meanwhile, fans have been begging Square Enix for a proper turn-based Final Fantasy for decades.
The audacity is almost as impressive as the irony.
Are you buying FF Resonance?
There always has been people playing chess while others were playing some more action packed physical games prior to video games. Turn based VS action games is just the same thing, but in video game format. Tossing one away because some people like the other is a proof that they completely miss the point.
It’s increasingly clear this stigma came from the game industry itself. Primarily Square-Enix failing with it’s JRPGs led to thinking that including ‘Japanese’ somehow changed the distinct differences between how the West makes their RPGs and how the East does.
Atlus was succeeding, Falcom was succeeding, Namco Tales Studio was succeeding. They never said it was a problem.
Besides, E33 isn’t a JRPG. It’s inspired by them, but from French developers. It may be categorized as that in a online store to find easier, but there is enough about the game besides inspired approaches that make it very much Western-minded in execution and aesthetics.
JRPG can be understood as “Japanese-style RPG”. From the moment it became a genre and not just a denomination the country stopped mattering, only the mechanics.
It’s just like how Japan does a lot of western fantasy yet is an eastern country.
They should have advised Dustborn to not make shitty game with woke propaganda.
Define woke lol
cry about it pussycat
Isn’t this the same dude that told FromSoft that Demon’s Souls was a shit game and wouldn’t amount to anything?
This guy seems thoroughly out of touch.
What an out of touch and foolish thing to say. Explains the last two decades of disappointment from Square though.
Mention e33 and the schitzos appear in droves. You “people” are the lobodomites of gaming lol.
Well, I think they mean that it was just thag same guy, the director of remakes, who said those comments after e33 came out, when asked about the future of adding turn based into the ff games in the future (explicitly because e33 did so well)
I call it a Role Playing Rhythm Game
I wouldn’t call a game with 150-200ms parry windows turn based either. People who are not good at rythm game gameplay literally can’t 100% the game, due to hard hitting multi hit enemy combos.