Today, Kingdom Hearts series director, Tetsuya Nomura stated in an interview with Famitsu (via Kotaku.com) that his future game projects may not release concurrently worldwide due to the unfortunate Kingdom Hearts 3 leaks.
According to IGN.com, four copies of Kingdom Hearts 3 were distributed before the title’s scheduled release last month. Although fans tried to keep the leaks from spreading elsewhere and tried to locate the one(s) responsible for leaking the game, IGN.com reports that “the experience has given Tetsuya Nomura second thoughts about how to handle the launch of his games going forward.”
Here’s what Nomura’s stated in his Famitsu interview (courtesy of Kotaku.com) about the Kingdom Hearts 3 leaks and his worries about releasing his games simultaneously worldwide. Before reading the quote below, realize that Nomura cites the “retail” versions are being reconsidered for these special releases–not digital copies.
“Because of what happened, the risks for a simultaneous worldwide release are high, for any games that I work on henceforth, currently I cannot help but reconsider a simultaneous worldwide release for at the very least the retail package version.”
Thankfully, the game’s epilogue and secret film, weren’t accessible in the leaked copies since those will be downloadable after Kingdom Hearts 3 launches–according to IGN.com. The epilogue will be unlock-able on January 30th while the secret movie will be accessible the day after. However, IGN.com states, “to view the epilogue, players will need to have completed the game and seen the ending.”
Nomura states getting access to watch the secret movie won’t be easy. IGN.com reports that Nomura says, “players need to snap photos of ‘lucky marks’ shaped like the iconic Mickey Mouse logo, that are peppered throughout the game with Sora’s selfie device.”
Furthermore, Nomura states the amount of ‘lucky marks’ players need for photo-shoots relies on the game’s difficulty setting. “The easier modes require more than the harder difficulties, with Beginner requiring pictures of all of them,” IGN.com reports.
Regardless, it appears many fans were disheartened by the “potential end to simultaneous worldwide retail releases” statement. It’s understandable considering these few bad apples possibly had little to no respect or understood the impact their actions had on the developers. Nevertheless, if Nomura decides to do-away with worldwide simultaneous releases for “retail,” or even “digital” versions of his titles, than I’d completely understand.
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Silver Soul Gaming 