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Suda51 says Grasshopper ‘ten-year plan’ includes 3 original IPs, maybe some reboots

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman



Suda told VGC contributor Tom Regan that Grasshopper has already started pre-production on its next project and indicated it would like to focus fully on original properties for the next decade.

“We’ve got a general plan in place for the next ten years. At this point, we’re planning on doing three titles over the next decade: three new IPs,” he said. “We’ve actually already begun the pre-production stuff on the first title, but I can’t say anything about it just yet.”

“While I wouldn’t say the games we plan to make are going to be full-on AAA titles, they aren’t exactly going to be really small-scale or anything like [3DS shooter] Liberation Maiden, either; I’d say they’re probably going to be around ‘AA’-scale games. As in, the games themselves will be around AA-level scale, and the core team making them will be a relatively compact team.”

One of these original games could potentially be the horror game Suda has said he’d like to make in collaboration with Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro.

Suda went on to state that he wouldn’t rule out deviating from the original IP plan, should an attractive property become available or a good idea for reviving one of its own.

“With regard to the three new IPs I mentioned, we may actually go a slightly different route,” he explained. “What I mean is, we may actually decide to do like one new, original IP – the one we’re working on now – and then make a game version of an existing IP for our second game, and then go back and do another new one for the third one.

“There are a few games from back in the day that I’d like to get my hands on and try to do a reboot or a remake of some kind, or we may get approached by the right company with the right IP and decide to go with that… We’ll see how things work out.”

The writer and director clarified that while Grasshopper doesn’t own the licenses for the likes of No More Heroes and Killer 7, it does hold the rights for the Silver Case series, ‘Flower, Sun, and Rain’, Killer is Dead, and Shadows of the Damned.

“While I don’t have any current plans or anything in the works, if I were to go back and revisit some of our past titles, it would most likely be one of these,” he confirmed.

“If I were to do something with one of our past titles, I don’t know if it would be an actual sequel, or something more akin to a remake or remaster, but one thing I’d be interested in is revisiting Killer is Dead.

“You know how first another director did Suicide Squad, and then James Gunn did the reboot, THE Suicide Squad? I might like to do something like that, like take Killer is Dead and remake it into The Killer is Dead or something.

“Because the game that got released ended up being quite different from what I had originally set out to make, and revisiting that and remaking it into what it was originally meant to be could be really interesting.”

Quizzed on which “games from back in the day” he would like to reboot, and if they could be from frequent collaborator Nintendo, Suda said: “Again, I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment, but of course I’m always open to a collaboration with Nintendo.

“It would be really cool to be able to work on a reboot or remake of some of the older Nintendo IPs that have been around for awhile, especially some of the ones that have been dormant for a long time. If I’m going to do something to really surprise all the gamers out there, then I’d like to do it together with Nintendo.”
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Speaking on the NetEase Games Youtube channel, spotted by Niche Gamer, Suda talked about the future of the studio and what he has planned for the rest of the year.

“The games we make at this studio, I mean the really, truly cool and all-new games, we’re going to continue creating them,” Suda said.

“I wonder when I can announce them? Maybe around the end of the year?”

Suda went on to say that the announcement “may end up being next year, we’ll see how it goes,” adding: “I want to hurry up and show everyone what we’re doing.”

While nothing about the new game is shown, at one point in the video the camera passes by a computer screen prominently displaying a helmet from Power Rangers in Space, or Denji Sentai Megaranger as the series was known in Japan.
 

A.Romero

Member
3 AAA titles with 3 years of dev time each. It will be difficult but it's possible.
SUDA is more like AA tier. In the article he actually mentions that they are not AAA but more like AA.

I think it's doable with a large enough studio but I'm skeptic smaller studios can actually produce at this rate. I think project management stuff is difficult for studios like IGA's, Platinum and Suda's.
 
Killer 7 and Shadows of the Damned are all-time classics for me.

Lollipop Chainsaw was only mediocre and Let it Die was, despite loving the premise and atmosphere, too grindy.

I still need to go back and play No More Heroes, Killer is Dead, The Silver Case and some others.
 

A.Romero

Member
Killer 7 and Shadows of the Damned are all-time classics for me.

Lollipop Chainsaw was only mediocre and Let it Die was, despite loving the premise and atmosphere, too grindy.

I still need to go back and play No More Heroes, Killer is Dead, The Silver Case and some others.

Killer is dead is a gem. I liked it better than Shadow of the damned.
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Suda 51, the creator of the No More Heroes and Killer 7 IPs, spoke about his future projects in a recent interview with Famitsu. He said that among the three games his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, plans to produce in the next decade, one of them will be an original action game on a larger scale than anything he has created before.

According to Suda, the project began around January 2022, shortly after the studio was acquired by Netease Games. The game should have a similar direction to the studio's previous two games, Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3, but the scale will be much more different. Also this time, the goal is to address the shortcomings of the previous action games and refine the studio's brand of exhilarating action-packed experiences.

Two major issues brought to Suda's attention by player feedback (more apparent than ever in No More Heroes 3) are the low-quality backgrounds and the studio's inability to take full advantage of the density and scale of large maps. That's why Grasshopper is currently working with external studios to improve these aspects. A diorama of the city that will make up the setting of the new game was also shown in the interview, but the image appeared rather blurry as the studio is not yet ready to reveal it.

Suda also expressed his intent to make a non-text game. In other words, a game that isn't reliant on scenarios unlike most of his story-focused games, and said he has been thinking about a project like this for a long time. He also added that the studio's focus on the three next games doesn't mean there won't be any remakes or remasters along the way.

Two teaser images for the next original action IP were shown during the interview. One of them depicts a sword that seems to be taken straight out of a Zelda game. Another image shows a character that seems to be a reference to Shounen Jump's new manga, Chainsawman. It's a character who seems to be armed with weapons all over his body, holding a chainsaw-like sword in his hand, and even chainsaws on his head and both shoulders, so it's hard to ignore the influence upon looking at it.
 

SALMORE

Member
Shadow of the Damned is the only one that's worth getting remade for modren systems ! loved the original back on ps3
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Loved Killer is Dead so much that I still lament there's no sequel to story at this point... Goichi-san, give us the good news!
 
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