Ninety Nine Nights is an X360 exclusive being developed by both Phantagram, who made Kingdom Under Fire for the Xbox and their partners, Q Entertainment. Phantagram’s boss Sangyoun Lee says, “If you looked at our operations on this project, you would think that we were a single company.”
With their new Dynasty Warriors-type game, they are drastically raising the bar on what has been done in the past. “Up until now, if you were to create a war in a game, players would really have to use some of their imagination to fill in the gaps,” says Lee. “With the new technology available in the Xbox 360, the amount of imagination you require to approach much more realistic representations of war is almost none.”
Lee is also quick to point out, “Dynasty Warriors is a few hundred soldiers. For us we’re shooting for 20,000 soldiers in a frame. The sheer scale of the game is going to be entirely different. While we had a fair number of characters on screen with Kingdom Under Fire, we’re going to be drastically upping those numbers. With one swipe of your weapon, you might now kill 100 people. With one spell, we want players to be able to kill 1000 people or more.”
Lee believes that for the smaller developer, like Phantagram, to stay afloat these days it is necessary to bring to the table new technology. “Lee says. “If you go to a restaurant, even if it’s very small, if the food is good, there will be long lines. Even a small company can do well in today’s market if they have distinguished and marketable skills.”
Although a niche market here in the US, Dynasty Warriors type games are big in Japan. Microsoft is lucky to be able to add an exclusive title like this to their growing X360 library.
Author: Eric ‘Jetson’ Pfoutz