Level 5 President Talks About The Company’s Future Plans

Akihiro Hino, the president of acclaimed studio Level 5, has spoken to Famitsu about the company’s future plans. Hino says he wants to diversify the titles and make some for younger people, and also some for a much wider audience, like the breakout hit Fantasy Life. However, Hino says that it’s the games for younger people which have seen fantastic results in Japan, such as Inazuma Eleven and Youkai Watch.

“If I had to split it in two, then it’d be cross-media expansions for children for Nintendo 3DS, such as Youkai Watch and Inazuma Eleven, and then games for a wider audience such as Fantasy Life and Wonder Flick,” answers Hino. “Each target audience requires a different strategy in terms of hardware approach, so I’d like to think about more plans for that.”

“It’s actually still selling quite well. In the case of Inazuma Eleven, the first game’s opening week saw about 40,000 copies sold, and it ended up selling about 400,000 in the end, and I see Youkai Watch going with a similar flow, so I believe we were able to create another successful title. I believe that we’ll be able to surpass that next time, so I’d like to continue focusing on titles made for children.”