Tekken director wants to make a Xenosaga HD Collection, needs fan support

Update: Fan efforts have started in #OperationKosMos. Follow the new group on their Twitter and Facebook channels to show your support. Don’t forget to tweet at (and retweet) Katsuhiro Harada, as well.

Original: Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada has taken to Twitter to express his interest in creating a “Xenosaga HD Collection.”

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht first launched for PS2 in 2002. It was followed by Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose in 2004, and Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra in 2006.

Harada wants to make the collection, he said in a long message posted on Twitter, but needs fans to show their support.

“What I need, are the voices from many fans,” Harada said. “This is a little different from having ‘messages sent every day from the same person.’ Although I do understand the deep love for the game, more than that, the cheers from as many ‘unique users’ as possible is what is needed.”

Harada says not to bother with comments such as “I’ll buy 100 copies!” as in reality, they’re not something a company could realistically believe.

“It means more to have 100 people mentioning they want the game one time, rather than having one person repeating it 100 times,” Harada said. “A miracle would happen if several tens of thousands are gathered at the end.”

Find Harada’s full message below. If you want to show your support, send him a message on Twitter.

To Xenosaga fan community.

I do understand that you all are desiring “Xenosaga HD Collection”. Also, I do appreciate all your passionate comments.

I do understand your feeling to “tweet every day until the day Xenosaga HD collection comes real”. However, what I need in order to achieve your dream, is not to have tweets from the “same person” sent to me every day.

It has been a long time since Xenosaga has been released. It really brings back memories of those days they were developing the first Xenosaga staying up all night, when the TEKKEN Project was also staying up all night on the same floor at office.

A while back, triggered by the overseas version of Project X Zone, I have conducted a research and calculated if there is a business chance for Xenosaga HD Remaster.

It was a very simple research at that time. Yet, research does cost money. And at that time, I was not able to seek business chance.

In other words, I was not able to find the necessary market size that will pay for the development fee needed to create the HD remaster. Back then, the reactions on [social networking sites] and unique users were rather few in number. It may be that I didn’t work hard enough.

Measures such as Kickstarters are as of last resort, and at any rate we will not have a chance of winning as it stands now. It will not gather people by crowdfunding without creating some kind of big movement to support it.

To be honest, I was about to give up and I’m troubled.

What I need, are the voices from many fans. This is a little different from having “messages sent every day from the same person”. Although I do understand the deep love for the game, more than that, the cheers from as many “unique users” as possible is what is needed.

Digging further, I will not be able to believe comments like “I’ll buy 100 copies!”. Most companies will not believe in it. It is not realistic for one person to tweet 100 times every day, or buy 100 copies alone. It’s more realistic if you bring 10 fans to the game (not to mention, it wouldn’t mean anything by having the same person suddenly creating alternate accounts. I will be able to tell those).

What’s important in these kinds of cases is the number of unique users. It means more to have 100 people mentioning they want the game one time, rather than having one person repeating it 100 times. A miracle would happen if several tens of thousands are gathered at the end.

Of course, involvement from the company is needed for this but…