AdvancedMN interviewed Ben Herman, SNK Playmore USA President. Much of the interview discusses the Metal Slug Anthology title in development for Wii. During the interview, Herman also reveals the Nintendo Wii will be its primary console and discusses how the company is interested in providing gamers past titles via the Virtual Console. Those excerpts are below. The full interview can be read here.
AMN: So do you suppose that Wii is SNK's current favorite next-gen console right now and will probably have the most support from SNK (relative to other systems)?
Ben Herman: It has the first support. Xbox 360 has been out for awhile but we haven't brought out a title yet. PS3 is coming, and from our stand point as far as any games for it, they're coming later. So without question, Wii is coming out, we have a game for Wii and. . .you know it's certainly the first thing...so the first is usually. . . the first child is usually closest to your heart. But we do have some strong expectations that Sony will do very well. I'm sure Xbox 360 will continue to do well. The Wii, is just...the buzz at the show is very strong.
AMN: You mentioned bringing SNK's games to Xbox live arcade. What is SNK's opinion of Nintendo's Virtual Console?
Ben Herman: It's a tremendous idea. Even though there were no details. And even though the world said "gee the whole NES library is going to be available. The whole Super NES library." That was not true. It was not true initially because there was no third party program. They announced Sega, there's ten Sega games, it's great. Sonic and others that they've actually brought to there. Also some Hudson. Some TurboGrafx games. It's wonderful. I think it's four of those games. But they just announced, and just put a person employed, to create a program to have third party games come to the virtual console. I can go back and get Baseball Stars, Ikari Warriors, P.O.W., and others...you KNOW I want them on there. Now I don't know the deal yet, but I am not going to hold back. I want those games to be available to my consumers who want to go play them. It would be wonderful if you buy this $250 system, which is the rumored price. So you buy the system at $250, you have the capability of downloading every game from every prior system going back to '85 and you're talking about a serious home-run. So it's going to be fun.