Rising Star Games talks up U.S office

Late last month, Rising Star Games announced it opened a U.S. office, bringing their niche publishing initiative to North American shores. Today, speaking in an interview with MCV, Rising Star managing director Martin Defires revealed that their U.S. office will take over the U.S. publishing arm of Marvelous Entertainment. 

“We were given an opportunity to take over the U.S. publishing business of our former parent company Marvelous Entertainment, to rebrand that as Rising Star Games Inc and to build a successful subsidiary,” said Defries.

“It’s a whole new market for us. We’re able to take products that we’ve only been releasing in Europe and deliver them to the US as well. I’m not suggesting we’re going to replace the business we’re missing here with what we get there like-for-like. But it is too good an opportunity for us to turn down.”

Defries is confident of the publisher’s reputation in the U.S., as data has shown him that the country is certainly interested in the games they publish.

“Rising Star Games is not unknown in the U.S. We’re not working with a blank page before we’ve even started. Our website traffic tells us that we have visitors from the U.S., people are interested in what we’re doing. And forums across the internet suggest that consumers know what Rising Star is about, so we’re not an unknown property at all.”

The U.S. office should allow Rising Star to publish titles that they wouldn’t have been able to in the past, as they were dual packages for the U.S. and Europe.

“It’s a broader territory package. Previously, part of our parent group was Marvellous Entertainment Group from Japan and they restricted us to the PAL or European market. So I’ve been on the edge of securing publishing deals that would have been for Europe and the U.S., and we’ve had to walk away. So having a U.S. office allows us to deal with products that are available for both markets.”

Rising Star’s first U.S. release, Cave shoot ’em up Akai Katana, is due for Xbox 360 in Q2 2012.