Cubed³ recently had the opportunity to interview Monolith Soft president Hirohide Sugiura, asking questions about the upcoming Baten Kaitos Origins, Monolith Soft's future plans, and even about the mysteriously vanishing Baten Kaitos DS.
Sugiura explains first why Origins didn't make the jump to Wii. "Because we were almost finalising the development of the game when Wii was announced, we determined that transplanting it onto Wii was not worth the cost and labour hours. And since Wii is very unique hardware, we thought we should start from the basic game design if we [were to] make game for Wii. Therefore, I would rather challenge it in another opportunity."
Also asked was whether Monolith Soft had plans to bring the Baten Kaitos franchise to Wii. "At present, we do not have concrete plan to produce Baten Kaitos for Wii," Sugiura explained. "However, there are several on-going titles exclusively for the Nintendo format. Please look forward to them." Specifically, Sugiura hinted that future Monolith Soft titles may take advantage of WiiConnect24, saying readers should wait for game announcements to find out more.
Cubed³ also asked about vanishing title Baiten Kaitos DS. "Please ask Namco for this question, because they sell the title," Sugiura responded. "We are strongly willing to develop this." Regarding this, one of Namco's producers said "the Baten Kaitos DS project has been stopped once. Further development is currently undecided at this point."