Back in February 2020, PlatinumGames launched a Kickstarter for The Wonderful 101: Remastered, which has earned $1.9 million as of March 2, 2020. At the end of February, we learned the remaster would be launching soon—on May 19, 2020. This stirred up some confusion as to why a Kickstarter was needed since the project was nearly finished when fans started pledging. In speaking Gematsu at PAX East 2020, Platinum Games executive Vice President Atsushi Inaba confirmed the Kickstaarter was put in place to gauge interest and bring fans together, not for funding.
He said:
Well the actual reason we decided to do a Kickstarter campaign was not for funding at all, it was more about gauging interest in The Wonderful 101. This is a game we’ve always wanted to revisit at some point in time, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to bring the fans together—to unite them—and gauge interest. And in essence, to release the game. So it wasn’t really about the amount of funding at all, it was about self-publishing, bringing fans together, and revisiting The Wonderful 101.
Discussion about The Wonderful 101 has skyrocketed after the Kickstarter began. And with nearly 30,000 backers and almost $2 million raised, it’s clear there’s an audience for it.
Inaba also went into more detail about what the money will be used for. He confirmed it will be put towards the many tiers and rewards associated with the Kickstarter, as well as to implement additional content to the game. He explained:
First off, the money is going towards the production of all the goods—I don’t know if you’ve seen all the tiers and their rewards, but those cost money to produce. The rest of the money is going towards the additional content that will be added to the game. All that costs money, and it takes time and work to port the game to the additional platforms. I want to clarify that we didn’t do the campaign to ‘get money’ or anything like that—that wasn’t the point of it. The main goal was to bring the fans together, gauge interest, and find a good way to revisit and release the game.
This explains why the initial stretch goal of $50k was so low. It’s also comforting to know PlatinumGames is putting its nearly $2 million to good use and will spend it to make the game even better.
[Source: Gematsu]
