When Namco Bandai yanked the modern-day Splatterhouse from developers BottleRocket, it was met with boos and hisses from the angry internet mob. But Namco's Makoto Iwai says the publisher wasn't trying to be evil.
"Basically, the only reason why publishers pull the project out from the developer is when the developer isn't really meeting the requirements," Iwai tells Gamasutra in a new interview. Such was the case with BottleRocket, with the Namco Bandai EVP noting that a "performance issue" was to blame.
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of Splatterhouse is now rumored to be in the hands of the team that developed Afro Samurai, the first game to appear under the publisher's Surge label. Iwai tells Gamasutra that, despite some "brutal reviews" for the licensed action game.
"The team did a great job with the limited amount of time, which allowed them to make improvements up to the last moment," Iwai commented. "But again, this is the very first internal project that we have started as a newly born Namco Bandai Games America."
Let's hope that Surge's next game will be more fondly remembered.
Q&A: Namco Bandai's Iwai Talks Tricky Topics In Western Markets [Gamasutra]