It was reported in the past that you had designed a prototype of Dragon Quest IX with action-based gameplay, but based on audience reaction, you changed back to turn-based battles.
YH: Yes and no, to that rumor. When we worked on the prototype, we actually did make it more like an action game, where you can kind of do the action button mashing, but people didn't really like that kind of gameplay system well. But we didn't change it back just because of that; we also found that turn-based battles are actually fun in the multiplayer mode, so that's what we wanted to do, too.
When you say "people didn't like it", do you mean people internally developing the game, or focus groups, or something else?
YM: It was actually a media event where we brought that prototype, and then there started to be comments on YouTube -- people started arguing about which style was better.
Fundamentally, the core gamers don't like the change. Whenever we try to make some slight changes, they will reject the idea and just bash it. They key is to balance what kind of things we need to change, and what kinds of things we need to maintain.
Well, that's difficult. Ultimately there's an expectation that every Dragon Quest game will sell in the multiple million copies range, in Japan. You need to keep your audience happy, and to keep a lot of people happy at the same time is not an easy thing.
YH: It's very high pressure work.