Feature: 'Tose: Game Development Ninjas II'

In this latest exclusive Gamasutra interview, we revisit 'stealth ninja' game outsourcing firm Tose to speak to executives about the company's Western expansion, as well as recently released titles such as Square Enix's DS action RPG Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. In this excerpt, Tose executives address the topic of outsourcing, noting that the industry's growing reliance on outsourced development has proven to be a positive turn for the Japan based company: “As you probably know, all of the major publishers are now seriously thinking of doing outsourcing, and many of them have dedicated new divisions to manage their outsourcing contracts as well as due diligence and recommendations to other internal studios. It's good for us. Most of them are public companies, they do very careful research, and they due diligence, especially in hiring foreign companies from China, Russia, and other non-U.S. companies. The security is a very, very high priority issue. Many of them do a worldwide search. Sometimes they hire outsourcing consulting companies, to help them select the best ones. We're very happy to say that one of the largest U.S. companies shows us as one of the top five in the world in outsourcing.” However, Tose Software USA vice president Koichi Sawada admits that the company is not the low cost leader in the outsourcing market: “...that's a challenge for us. If they just see our price, they probably wouldn't choose us, but they usually value not only the price, but also the credibility, our track record, and that sort of thing. Lots of companies come to us.” You can now read the full Gamasutra interview with Tose, which includes more from the executives on Tose's team layout, publisher expectations, and the company's growing presence in the Western market (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).