Interviews// SPOnG Interviews Yoshiki Okamoto

SPOnG: I want to look at three things in the game that have perhaps been overlooked in America and Europe, firstly can you say a little more about the game’s use of the PS3’s hard-drive?

Yoshiki Okamoto: As to the use of the PS3’s hard-drive, because the game was a launch title, it was very difficult working on it. The launch date, as you know, is not really set in stone; there’s always a lot of changes, for a few days and whatnot. So, there is a lot more we could have probably done with it [the hard drive]. But with the amount of time and technology we have right now and having not yet had the opportunity of having a few years working on the hardware we feel that we have done the best job we could on the hard disc stuff we have implemented into the game – reducing the loading times and so forth.

SPOnG: Secondly, can you tell us more about the beautiful in-game audio?

Yoshiki Okamoto: The music is by composer Yasuharu Takanashi and is just beautiful. I would argue it's the real stand-out feature of the game and demands to be heard in full 7.1 surround sound. We did a lot of live recordings, with hundreds of musicians, a full orchestra, Japanese drums… We then had our engineers set it up so it could be done on a 7.1 system…So I think we worked on it a lot.

SPOnG: Finally, how are downloadable add-ons and microtransactions going to work in Genji: Days of the Blade?

Yoshiki Okamoto: In terms of the downloadable contents and the charging for it… well that’s something that’s up to Sony. As Game Republic we have been creating the downloadable content which is initially all going to be given away free so we can gauge what fans of our game want. I think our game was the first to give away free downloadable content on the PS3.


SPOnG would like to thank Okamoto-san for his time and all at SCEE for helping to set up the interview.