The Power Review

Q-Games is a PSN Juggernaut

Q-Games is a small Kyoto, Japan based company that has come a long way since its first release of PixelJunk Racers.  Since then they have released two more installations in the series: Monsters and Eden.  Because of the continued success of these titles, the developers have continued to support these titles by releasing expansions.  Eden became one of the first two games to receive trophy support, and then Monsters became one of the first PSN games to retroactively receive a trophy support patch.  The most important thing about these games is that they are PSN exclusives.  In a market that is dominated by high octane graphics games, theses PixelJunk titles thrive because of their simplicity.

Each of these brand new IPs in the PixelJunk series exemplifies its genre:  Racers as a 2d slotcar racer, Monsters as the best and hardest tower defense game I’ve ever played, and Eden as a super-trippy platformer with up to 3 player multiplayer capabilities.  Because of Q-Games’ single platform loyalty, Sony has repaid them by publicizing each of their titles excessively to the point that Eden was one of the most anticipated PSN games to be released in all of 2008.  

PS3 has always been very hush hush about the number of sales, so it has been very hard to gauge how successful individual games have been.  So we have had to go off of what individual developers have had to say, and at GDC this year, Q-Games represented Independent developers wishing to develop for the PS3.  They stated that with Eden, they made back all of the capital spent to develop the game in the first week, and everything made after that was simply profit in their pocket.  Sure Eden isn’t the best example of how to make money since it was so heavily hyped and promoted for months leading up to its release, but this still demonstrates what an independent gaming company is capable within a couple of years of starting up.  Now Q-Games has two big games on the horizon PixelJunk 4 (still yet to be announced) and PixelJunk Dungeons (which was originally slated to be a top-down dungeon crawler, but has been pushed back because of whatever PJ4 is).  

All that we know is… Expect to hear a big announcement from Q-Games at this year’s E3.  And from what’s been said about PixelJunk4, it may not be as 2d as the others, and could quite possibly utilize a lot more of the PS3’s potential.  Get excited!