Q-Game head Dylan Cuthbert has stated that he doesn't think the company will port anything else to the PSP, telling Kotaku, "We thought the psp-go and the psp-3000 were safe but a rip "that works on psp-3000s" went up on the torrent servers the day after we released PJMD."

The PSP port is optimized for the PSP screen and features all the content of the PSN tower defense original as well as a brand new island.

Concerned about piracy, Q-Games decided to release the game as digital-only, but to no avail. "Seeing it up on torrentz.com the following day was very depressing," states Cuthbert.

A UMD version of the game was released, but in Asia, and it was not the full game. The pirated versions appearing online are the full game.

Piracy aside, if PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe isn't a big PSP hit for Q-Games, then porting games over to the PSP could very well be more trouble than they're worth.

I stumbled across the PixelJunk space by accident this morning, while checking out PlayStation Home on my PS3 for the first time in many months. Later, I chatted with Cuthbert about the space and some of the early success Q has had with it.

Click the thumbnails to see more and get more explanation about what I learned today. (Note that most of the images were taken off of my TV using a still camera. Apologies for the poor quality and for the creepiness of my mushroom-hatted guy.)

The PixelJunk space was launched a couple of weeks ago in Japan and here in the U.S. just a few days ago. It's set up as a museum for the company's line of downloadable PS3 games; PixelJunk Racers, PixelJunk Monsters, and PixelJunk Eden. This is the lobby, where I found people dancing and flirting, the two cliche actions of any Home community.

See that video screen? It runs a trailer for the upcoming PixelJunk Shooter. Cuthbert said it runs off a Q-Games server and was getting accessed 10s of thousands of times in the space's first few days of release in Japan. That's the closest he has to attendance figures so far.

Right at the entrance is a store where shirts are being sold for 49 cents. PixelJunk Monsters headphones are sold for men; slippers for women. "In Japan only we have sold 1000s of virtual goods in just the first week," Cuthbert told me.

Cuthbert said this is the most popular t-shirt in the space.

Though he said this one is popular is well. Given the constant flirting and sex-talk I see whenever I'm in Home, I'd say Q-Games knows what it's doing with these shirts.

Walking into each area of the space cues music from the related game. This is the PixelJunk Eden area.

This is the PixelJunk Monsters area.

This is more from the Monsters section, with Racer in the background. Cuthbert hopes that his team can iterate on the space and make it more active and interactive. For example, he'd like the fire tower here to occasionally shoot flame.

More Racers.

And the rest of the items on the store. The PixelJunk Home space is free for users in Japan and North America to access online through their PS3s.

"For right now, there is a culture of downloadable titles being smaller and generally 'shorter', but I think this is destined to change," explains ThatGameCompany programmer Rick Nelson.

"Companies will always compete with each other by offering more and higher fidelity content, on any platform, and it seems that there will always be an audience for that," he adds. "Download size budgets kind of keep things small, but there have always been an enormous array of compression and data baking technologies available to large game studios to overcome some of those obstacles. What this means is that "downloadable" does not have to mean 'small.'"

For example, compare the teams that made Shadow Complex and Bionic Commando: ReArmed to the miniscule teams that made games like Everyday Shooter or Braid.

Digital console titles do have obvious flexibility. "We can experiment more, because it won't be too long until we get our games in the hands of players and hear their reactions," says ThatGameCompany president Kellee Santiago." If we fail, well, there's not too much damage done, and we'll do much better on the next one!" Words echoed by PixelJunk boss Dylan Cuthbert.

Downloadable titles — as a retail model — continue to find their footing. Like ThatGameCompany, Kyoto's Q-Games has produced a handful of top quality PSN titles like PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Eden, and PixelJunk's Dylan Cuthbert thinks retail still does have its advantages: "There is a lot of implicit advertising that you gain from getting your game out into the shops — the shops put up banners and displays and they all try to sell your game for you," Cuthbert explains.

"This gives sales a tremendous boost and I can't think of what the equivalent would be in the online distribution world." Though, he adds, developers like Q-Games or ThatGameCompany do not have to physically print up game discs and can tweak the game right up until it goes live — a costly, time consuming expense.

Customers, Cuthbert believes, are still a little too judgmental when looking at the price-tag of digital games. "I can understand why but it would be nice if at some point people wouldn't complain about the price of something that costs about the same as a cheap lunch," he explains, "yet gives you many more hours of enjoyment." And doesn't give you indigestion.

[Pic]

And that name is PixelJunk Shooter. The title was settled upon after users were allowed to nominate their own ideas for a name, and since the game involved shooting, Shooter was the winner (Actually, PixelJunk Elements was the winner, but it didn't work out, so Q-Games binned it).

Mike's had a go on the game already, and liked what he saw, so until the game's release during the Summer you can read up on his impressions here.

PixelJunk 1-4: Drumroll Please … [PlayStation]

He writes on the official U.S. PlayStation blog that "two or three more PixelJunk titles [will be] coming out" in the new year.

We already know that the tower defense game PixelJunk Monsters is getting a PSP port sometime this year (if that counts) and we know that Q-Games has a PixelJunk Dungeons in the works, so what else?

In addition to outing Dungeons at the Game Developers Conference last year, Cuthbert says the Kyoto-based Q-Games has designs on moving the PixelJunk series into 3D.

He assured the 2D-dedicated crowd that might have been unsettled by that news that the second series, while cracking into the third dimension, would follow the gameplay conventions established by the first for the PlayStation 3 and that it would all run in glorious 60 frames per second and at 1080p resolution.

I seem to recall that Q had plans for up to six 2D PixelJunk games, but who knows whether those plans have changed. Only Q-Games knows!

Happy New Year from Q-Games in Kyoto! [PlayStation.blog]

The main thing I learned at Nintendo was that being "anal" is the most important asset a game creator needs to have. Mr. Miyamoto has the uncanny ability to spot the most minute detail in any game; just the odd pixel out of place and he will strike upon it like an eagle. So, although we are nowhere near that level yet, I am trying to guide everyone at Q to get good at "the details".

The other thing I learned from Nintendo, is learning to look at your game from a distance towards the end of development and decide what really needs to be done to make the game into a sell-able product. This is almost totally separate from the creative "game-making" process and most companies let their marketing departments do it which, in my opinion, is totally wrong.

And it's sort of been rocking my world.

It's unfair, really, that Desktop Tower Defense has become the new gold standard of the genre. Because while the game is excellent, its success forces us to expect more of the same—and I daresay, even hope for more of the same—in other tower defense titles.

So when I loaded PixelJunk Monsters, I was immediately frustrated by the interface. Not only does the game limit you by demanding that turrets can only be placed where there are trees (eliminating the DTD maze creativity altogether), but it forces you to ration your movements wisely. Instead of playing a god that can place turrets at will, you control a little man that runs around doing such tasks instead. So your character has to simultaneously build turrets, stand by said turrets for them to upgrade (money alone will not accomplish this feat), dodge between monsters to pick up money and power-ups (because if you get hit, your coins go Sonic) and occasionally run back to his base to unlock new turrets (oh, because every level forces you to unlock the good weapon through gem purchases).

But the result of all these choking restrictions is remarkably enjoyable. PixelJunk Monsters forces a constant in the moment juggling act that requires intelligence and dexterity. Gameplay varies between a chaotic mess and an extraordinary coordinated ballet—depending on how well the level is going at that moment. But in either circumstance, the game is always fast, fun and crazy addictive. And it's been sucking up way too much of my time when I have a stack of "AAA" games to play.

Video games used to be taken far more seriously than they are now; over here the gaming culture was affected adversely by advancing mobile phone tech., which back in the late '90s and early '00s was years ahead of the West. Suddenly people were playing (not games) with their phones and being more sociable than before, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the human race. However, the Japanese still think of themselves as a kind of gaming mecca because they have a few god-like presences. In reality though, gaming has become less central and more a standard commodity; the Wii and DS have proved this with their huge demographic range. People want to play games, but without the huge investment of time and money games used to take up.

You could look at it the other way around and consider that games are taken so seriously here they are a "standard" in everyday life. There is just an increasingly diminishing core of hard core game players and increasing number of light, casual, "least-possible-investment" players.

"For the first few months of working here, my old boss at Lionheads Studios thought I was working with Mizuguchi," says Q-Games planner Rhodri Broadbent, lounging on a sofa in the developer's third floor Kyoto office space. There's a hi-def TV playing their latest, PixelJunk Racers. Whenever Q-Games is first mentioned, Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q? Entertainment is usually as well — though Q-Games had the "Q" before Mizguchi left SEGA to set up his boutique studio. Sure, Q-Games may not have Miz, but it does have Dylan Cuthbert, who helped create Star Fox while working for Nintendo, and Kenkichi Shimooka, who developed Ape Escape for the PlayStation. Dylan has the chicken pox and couldn't make it. Kenkichi? No clue where he is.

I'm in a white meeting room, waiting for the interview to start. I peer down the street still slick with rain. There are traditional Kyoto-style houses across the street from the modern office building. In the meeting room, there's a clock, a white board (fitting) and ping pong nets. When not used as a meeting room, it's converted into a ping pong room. Well, that's what the recruitment brochure tells me — and the drawer of ping pong equipment doesn't lead me to believe otherwise. A trio of developers enter, trade business cards and speak in British and North American accents. Almost half the office is foreign. These devs sitting across from me were instrumental in bringing Q-Games first game label PixelJunk title Racers to the PlayStation Network.

"How many people were involved in creating the title?" I ask.
"You're looking looking at them," Braodbent says, laughing. "We're not just trying to get that old school feeling in the game itself, but also in the way we make them."

Typically, there was a team of 4~5 people working full-time on PixelJunk Racers. The title itself is fairly straight forward — deceptively simple, even. It's a top down, slot-car style racing game that features over thirty modes like "Fireball Frenzy" in which hitting other cars causes you to speed up or "Balloon Burst" in which your car is propelled by deflating it. The slot car element gives the game a puzzle feel in which it's more about "maneuvering" and less about "driving" where the goal isn't finishing the race, but completing the objective. Players use the analogue trigger for the gas and the directional pad for, well, directional movement.

As I play through with the guys who created the title, it truly seems like they are enjoying themselves. They turned around the game into a finished product within months, bypassing that brick wall that most developers smack into. Even after spending months (as opposed to years) working on Racers, they tell me that it still seems fresh. And more importantly, fun.

"Even though Racers isn't going to be on Xbox Live," Broadbent explains. "We tried to adhere to Xbox Live size limitations." Meaning? Racers clocks in at a little over 40 MBs and loads quick. Twenty-five percent of that is music.

With an international working environment, Q-Games was able to see what particular modes and games appealed to Japanese players and Western players. For example, Japanese staff enjoyed the brutally difficult "frustration games." Western team members, on the other hand, enjoyed the loose, high speed titles.

Through obvious strong connections at Sony (both of the Q-Games founders worked there), the developer was able to release PixelJunk Racers as the first PSN licensee for Sony Japan. For a network still in its infancy, Q has gotten in on the ground floor. While everything hasn't been smooth sailing (the morning Racers launch, there were issues with the online leader boards), Sony is expressing a strong desire to get online, says Q. And get it right.

"The support we've been getting has been incredible," adds Broadbent.

The game was conceived earlier this year when Q-Games founder Cuthbert was kicking around a new brand idea called "PixelJunk." A slot car game was proposed, and then pitched to Sony at this year's GDC. But, not just one PixelJunk title was pitched. Close to twenty were that ran the gamut of an airport game to a mountain climbing game to a taxi company game. All of them were top down just like Racers. All Q-Games employees are encouraged to pitch titles and can created demos on an in-house engine. That lets them see if the titles are even possible. The taxi game was deemed too busy and had too much going on the screen at once for the brain to process. Broadbent shows me concept art that was used in the GDC pitch to Sony.

GDC? That was back in March? Quick turnaround — especially, in an age where most projects lumber on for years. Q-Games has the nascent stages of an PixelJunk production line going. Last minute touches are being placed on Racers, which is already out in North America. The game is gearing up for its Japan release on September 20th and its October 1st European release.

Meanwhile, a second PixelJunk title is being developed — this one quite different from the dizzying Racers. It's a tower-type game in which the goal is buy and set up towers to shoot enemies. Different from the arcady vibe in the first PixelJunk game, but does a nice job of showing how broad the brand is. Like with Racers, the second PixelJunk game shows a fixed screen and has a black line at the bottom with the brand's logo. The music, as with Racers, is from Kyoto-based musicians and is mellow. Same's true for the game.

There's a third game in the preparation stage as well. Actually, the idea didn't come from Q, but one of the Kyoto musicians who created the soundtracks for a PixelJunk title. What's more, there's a fourth title in the preparatory stage. What's linking all the current PixelJunk titles is one fixed screen. That alone links the PixelJunk titles. For now. The current plan is a series of five or six games, and then introduce a new element that ties together the next PixelJunk series. So, if you don't like one particular game or style, there is more coming. Much more.

"We're trying to get them out as quickly as possible," assures Broadbent. "With a pipeline of three on the go at once."