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Following this morning’s news that Rising Star Games’ new USA division would be replacing Marvelous USA in North America, we fired off three questions to RSG’s Product Marketing Manager, Yen Hau, to clarify a few points about the new arrangement.
Now that you’re effectively taking over for Marvelous USA, is there any sort of formal partnership/ownership/joint venture between the two companies like there was prior to 2010?
Yen Hau: No, we do not have a formal partnership like that anymore. We have bought out Marvelous USA’s assets and holdings in the U.S. so that they can withdraw from the region, not taking over.
Does this mean that Rising Star USA will have exclusive publishing rights or a “first look” at most (or all) of Marvelous AQL’s titles? If not, is there any sort of consistent “method” that will be applied to decide which titles will be available to RSG?
RSG still retains first rights to MMV products as stipulated in our agreement when we parted company, that hasn’t changed. Our catalogue now consists of more products from other developers and we now have the opportunity to consider products that are only available on a PAL/U.S. basis.
[Note: We followed up on this question, and asked if Rising Star’s exclusivity agreement with Marvelous in Europe extends to North America as well. We were told that they’d get back to us on that point at a later date after checking. This is really the big question to keep an eye out for.]
Can you say anything about Harvest Moon/associated titles and whether that will be changing hands in the U.S. as well, or if Natsume will continue to publish those games?
Natsume still retain the rights to the Harvest Moon series in the U.S., as does RSG in PAL territories.
What’s going on with Way of the Samurai 4 in the U.S.?*
Sorry mate, you’ve picked the one topic we can’t discuss at the moment. Maybe in a few weeks, but for now it’s the standard ‘no comment’.
