Nakayama Takuya closed the folder and tapped the cardboard cover twice with his knuckles.
"Not a bad idea." Nakayama Takuya looked at Hisao Oguchi. "What resistance did you run into? Is the Finance Department holding up the budget?"
"I can approve the budget on my end." Hisao Oguchi leaned forward slightly, his hands clasped on the edge of the table. "The issue is the return on investment."
Hisao Oguchi paused, choosing his words.
"Ever since Sega took over Super Robot Wars and made it a first-party exclusive, sales have remained steady. But the game has an obvious ceiling. Its audience is extremely fixed—basically all hardcore mecha anime fans. Selling several hundred thousand copies per release isn't a problem, but breaking the million mark will be difficult."
Nakayama Takuya nodded. Strategy games combined with a mecha theme naturally had a certain threshold for entry; they were the very definition of fan-oriented works.
"An original theme song, famous lyricists and composers, distribution channels for a single CD..." Hisao Oguchi opened the notebook he carried with him. "We used this kind of cross-media linkage with Sakura Wars, and it made us a fortune. But Sakura Wars has dating and character-raising elements, appealing character designs, and a broad audience. Super Robot Wars is full of metal hulks. I'm afraid these hardcore fans alone can't support such a massive crossover operation. In the end, we might not even recoup the music production costs."
Nakayama Takuya leaned back against the leather chair.
Hisao Oguchi's concerns made perfect sense under conventional business logic.
In this life, Sega had moved with astonishing speed and intercepted the Super Robot Wars series, which had originally belonged to Banpresto.
The games did make money, but the Development Department's thinking remained stuck at the single dimension of "selling game cartridges."
They had