Interviews With Tsunekazu Ishihara!

Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, at Party of the Decade

Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, is quite the busy man nowadays. He was in the UK to promote Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, which will be released on July 27th, 2007. Here's an interview with Tsunekazu Ishihara by the Times Online:

Times Online Interview With Tsunekazu Ishihara “The key to Pokémon’s success is that it is not a solitary experience,” Mr Ishihara, 49, explains. “Since the first title in 1996, we have designed video games for people to play together. New technologies, the internet, will make this stronger.” The sales figures back him up. When the first Pokémon game (the name is a contraction of “Pocket Monster”, the first that title Mr Ishihara produced) emerged, its meteoric rise, first in Japan and then worldwide, looked to have all the trappings of a fad. Now, having sold more than 165 million units, it looks like an unstoppable juggernaut, albeit one steered by nearly 400 cute, made-up monsters.

To read the entire article, go here: Master of the Pocket Monster Universe Puts Success Down to Better Experience

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GameSpot UK also has an interview with Tsunekazu Ishihara:

GameSpot UK: Pokémon has been an incredibly long-running franchise. Why do you think it has managed that longevity when many other series have been forgotten? Tsunekazu Ishihara: I think perhaps the continued success is due to the fact that every time we create a new game there's always a new surprise, something new to discover, and a new element of fun. That's something that we always try to have in mind when we evolve the game. For example, every time there is a new iteration of the game, a new region and therefore new Pokémon are discovered. If you look at what's happening at the moment, there are many intellectual properties that have made these crossovers between TV, movies, and games, and I think have applied similar methods [with the Pokémon brand]. So, we have to continue to look at new ways and ideas so that we don't get left behind or snowed under by these copies. So we have to keep topping ourselves. ..... GSUK: Any plans for a Pokémon massively multiplayer online game? TI: At the moment it's not in that exact style, but I already feel that the fact that Pokémon can now be played worldwide, exchanging Pokémon and so on, that it is essentially a massively multiplayer online game already. GSUK: What's next for the Pokémon series? TI: Right now [in the UK] Diamond and Pearl will be made available soon, then the Wii Pokémon Battle Revolution is coming, which can connect with the DS versions. I have ideas for the next Pokémon games after that, but I can't disclose them at the moment.