The offices of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents creators iNiS have been home to several journalists as of late, it seems, and they've got a lot to say.
First up, Game|Life blogger Chris Kohler has quite an in-depth feature on the company over at 1UP. Company co-founder Keiichi Yano told Kohler, "People in the games business always ask themselves: what is our function in society? We're here to entertain people, and people want to be entertained because they want to get away from their everyday life, or they're tired, or they need a boost."
Yano also related a story about bringing the Ouendan concept to Nintendo. "Nintendo thought that the use of an ouendan was the coolest thing," he tells. "What's funny is that the chief producer that we were working with at Nintendo actually used to be the leader of an ouendan. And he thought that I knew that when I was presenting the game. But I had no idea." (The boys in the game aren't entirely fictional constructs—ouendans really exist in Japan, though they generally don't run all over the city like superheroes.)
Moving on to the other interview, done by Simon Carless of Gamasutra, Yano speaks a bit to how he runs his company. Beyond the three games they've made so far, iNiS has also worked on some localization projects and a PSP interactive music title. In addition, iNiS relies heavily on outsourcing to keep its team size steady.iNiS seems to have an Xbox 360 project in the pipeline at the moment, though details are unannounced. Asked about what he'd like to do in the future, Yano has a ready answer: "I want to do a Wii game, like everybody else." At the moment, it seems such a project is not in active development, but the future is wide open.
The sheer awesomeness of Elite Beat Agents (which we previewed at E3—and also had our own interview with Yano) is scheduled to drop to U.S. retail November 6. Nintendo DS owners finding they enjoy the title would also do well to import Ouendan.