Ratalaika Games Comments on Why Plantera DX is Only Available in Japan For the Time Being

If you live in Japan, have the required funds and access to the Japanese Switch eshop, there’s a chance you might have downloaded Plantera DX already. Those of you who don’t however, might be asking yourself “Why did it only release in Japan.”  Well today, we’re going to provide you with an answer.

As we have previously revealed, a western release of Plantera DX is planned, but for the sake of asking the obvious and for learning the full story, on what is one of the busiest days for Ratalaika Games’ Adrian Vega, we were able to get the following shorthand answers:

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What prompted the decision to bring Plantera to the Nintendo Switch?

Adrian Vega: For Ratalaika Games personally and even Rainy Frog Games, Plantera for Wii U and 3DS has been a great success for us. One of our best selling games in fact, with Japan being our biggest supporters. So taking that in consideration and the fact that the Switch’s has higher quality hardware, like a much better processor, we just thought the game would work great on Switch, since the console allows us to do even more with the game, such as allowing more plots of land to be purchased and add plenty of other nice new features.

How long did it take to create the Japanese Plantera DX version for Switch?

Adrian Vega: We began work on it straight after work on the PS Vita version of Plantera ceased. It took between 4-6 weeks to then get the game working on Switch, add all the new features (including a new song) and test everything!

The Question on everyone’s lips, why was Plantera DX solely released in Japan as opposed to globally?

Adrian Vega: Due to a NDA, I can’t say too much, but this has a lot to do with Nintendo Regulations. Regulations which are enforced more in North America and Europe, so while bringing Plantera to Switch for Japan is fine, elsewhere it’s not. Not yet anyway. It does suck we couldn’t do it sooner, but it does allow us (Ratalaika Games) and Rainy Frog to work on other things instead, but when it does happen for PAL and NA territories, we (Ratalaika Games), will be responsible for its publishing.

Well since a Western release is confirmed to occur much later this year, provided there was enough demand for a Western release to happen sooner, would you make it happen?

Adrian Vega: If there is enough interest, we will of course fight to launch it sooner! It would be foolish not to, otherwise the release will not happen till around the end of 2017. Still that doesn’t mean there isn’t interest at the moment as we are often asked if we could bring Plantera DX to the West sooner, but it’s going to take more than 100 fans to make it so.

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So while it might be quite some time before we see Ratalaika Games bring Plantera West, let’s not forget that they have already revealed 3 other games for the Nintendo Switch (0000 which is also confirmed for 3DS and Steam. League of Evil for both Switch and 3DS and the recently announced I and Me.) But because having spoken with Ratalaika Games in the past and having them hint at additional Switch games, we asked one more questions, which warranted two answers. One answer is official response that can be shared public and the other is an off the record answer, which means you’re not allowed to know it just yet, but we can. Regardless of that though, here is the official response to when we asked Adrian Vega just how many unannounced works Ratalaika Games currently has confirmed for the Nintendo Switch:

Adrian Vega: While I can not openly confirm the exact number, what I will say is that Ratalaika Games have more than 3 unannounced games for Nintendo Switch, as well as our other games for other platforms.

For the sake of repetition, they have more than “3 unannounced games,” which means at least 4 on top of the 4 that are already known (League of Evil, 0000, I and Me and the eventual 2017 Western release of Plantera DX).

Now I don’t know about you, but I think it’s high time we in general stopped referring to Ratalaika Games as being a small-time developer/publisher that most of us do. There are big devs the world over who are still without a dev kit and yet the likes of Ratalaika Games not only have a dev kit, but they’re also bringing 8 games to the new Nintendo platform. There is nothing small about that and if you liked today’s Ratalaika news, just you wait until you see what we have in store for you next!

You will not be disappointed!

Source: Ratalaika Games