The Wonderful 101 was a pretty high profile commercial flop when it first launched on the Wii U, but motivated to change the game’s fortunes, PlatinumGames decided to self-publish the game on modern platforms through crowdfunding. Its Kickstarter campaign, defying many people’s expectations, has proven to be very successful one– but according to Platinum themselves, the campaign was never really about raising funds for the remaster as much as it was about gauging how much interest people even have in such a release.
Speaking to Gematsu, PlatinumGames studio head Atsushi Inaba said that Platinum never saw The Wonderful 101: Remastered’s Kickstarter campaign as being necessary for funding the project. Its primary purpose, as far as they were concerned, was to “bring the fans together” and “gauge interest”.
“The actual reason we decided to do a Kickstarter campaign was not for funding at all, it was more about gauging interest in The Wonderful 101,” Inaba said. “This is a game we’ve always wanted to revisit at some point in time, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to bring the fans together—to unite them—and gauge interest. And in essence, to release the game. So it wasn’t really about the amount of funding at all, it was about self-publishing, bringing fans together, and revisiting The Wonderful 101.”
But the fact of the matter, of course, remains that they are receiving funding from fans- so if that was never the purpose to begin with, what’s all the money even being used for? Inaba explained that that money is going toward the production of all the rewards that are being made for several backer tiers, as well as for the development of all the new content they’re putting into the game as a result of the Kickstarter campaign.
“First off, the money is going towards the production of all the goods,” Inaba said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen all the tiers and their rewards, but those cost money to produce. The rest of the money is going towards the additional content that will be added to the game. All that costs money, and it takes time and work to port the game to the additional platforms. I want to clarify that we didn’t do the campaign to ‘get money’ or anything like that—that wasn’t the point of it. The main goal was to bring the fans together, gauge interest, and find a good way to revisit and release the game.”
If gauging interest among fans was the primary purpose of the Kickstarter campaign, then it has to be said that it’s been a successful one, and Platinum must be quite happy with their findings. Here’s hoping that they continue to find success with this remaster- because if they do, it might just lead to full-fledged sequel (something we would not have thought possible for this game in particular not too long ago).
The Wonderful 101: Remastered is out for the PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC on May 19. Check out over fifteen minutes of gameplay footage from the upcoming release through here.