Namco on Gamecube 
March 28, 2001

The latest issue of Famitsu has an interview with Yasuhiko Asada, executive managing director at Namco.  In the interview, he re-affirms that Namco plans to support both the Gamecube and GBA in a big way.  He said the following:

"Xbox will probably ring up big sales in the US, but I still have worries because it's a new corner in the industry," said Asada. "Because of that, I'm looking to Nintendo more. Nintendo has limited their target audience, as well as kept the same concepts alive from the original Famicom (NES) era to now. It's just great!"

So basically, Namco likes the fact that Nintendo is trying to appeal to gamers first and foremost. He also echoed the sentiment found with most Japanese developers.  They think the Xbox will be a hit in North America, but they still have reservations about it's success in Japan. There's more:

"I think that Game Boy Advance will have some really innovative software that takes advantage of its network system at a much lower user age, introducing younger ages to the concept," the Namco executive said. "As Namco, we have been developing the latest version of our Klonoa franchise for Game Boy Advance."

"In addition, we are very interested in Nintendo's GameCube as one of our target machines because it will have a strong influence in changing the current user groups -- and it means more things created by Nintendo."

In other words, we can expect to see much more Namco support on the GameCube than we saw with the N64.  As interested as they also are in the GBA, hopefully we'll see them utilize the link features between the GBA and GameCube.