This was tweeted by alphazone. Its from Granzella. Regarding the global deployment of Granzella for PlayStation®Home| Granzella Homepage (Since they are from Irem, this is probably part of the reason Irem is leaving.
Edit: Just saw Zero's post now! They are making content for North America. Locust_Star has confirmed it and so has this statement on their website. Locust_Star's comments http://t.co/oLRYuaW Regarding the global deployment of Granzella for PlayStation®Home| Granzella Homepage ___ ◆◆Regarding the global deployment of Granzella for PlayStation®Home◆◆ We, Granzella Inc. hope to expand our efforts more actively, worldwide with regards to our venture currently in progress for PlayStation® Home in Japan. We were part of Irem Software Engineering Inc. until April this year, progressively involved in the creation of most of the PS Home Public Spaces and items. Please note that the following Public Spaces, "Irem Square", "Irem Seaside of Memories", "Glittering Reaches of Outer Space" and "Gathering Place for Cave Explorers" have all been our creation. We have founded a new company, Granzella Inc., with our experiences and ambitions at heart. Our company goal is to "provide an unprecedented exciting experience". To bring this to fruition our main pillar is to "release games that we can only create" and to "provide many exciting Public Spaces and eye-grabbing items for PS Home". We currently have the passion and know-how to provide services on PS Home beyond what we have done during our time at Irem and have the confidence that we can further bring out the capabilities of PS Home. Please look forward to PS Home and Granzella! Let us meet at PS Home! Granzella Inc. Chief PlayStation®Home Architect Architect of the world's most PS Home Public Spaces Kazuma Kujo
The one silver lining in Irem leaving is that Granzella is purely a content provider to Home. Only part of Irem was devoted to Home, the rest was in Pachinko machines, and videogames. Granzella MUST constantly provide content people want. If it doesn't, it dies. So we will constantly get content from Granzella. So in time, they might become a bigger content provider than even Irem was in Home.
FF, that's not correct. Granzella is a video game publisher. They're working on games for the PS3 and the PS Vita right now. They also want to make games for the Android OS too. The South Sea Isle is just the opening move for them. It gives them some credibility, and allows Kujo to claim spiritual succession from Irem. That's really what the South Sea Isle is all about. God I need more coffee.
No problem. But I need to go pour coffee into my veins. ttyl Oh, and tell obie to write me pronto before I break down and buy an x-box!
I think Granzella themselves saw this coming with their currently released space being so similar to seaside of memories and their next space, In my opinion, looking like it could be compared to Irem Square While it is great to still have many of the Irem Home development team still working on Home, I am sad to see so many items/ spaces will just disappear from Home overnight and realistically speaking we can't expect Granzella to publish 3 years worth of content in just a few weeks, but hopefully Granzella will continue where Irem left off and provide us with some great original spaces and content.
It's a good thing I've gotten all those rewards from Seaside in NA and EU a few weeks ago. HK and EU hasn't changed getting a third wave either. Seems I'll need to get the Spelunker gloves for my NA Spelunker game, as well as getting the original outfit and ghost ornament again - though I'm also happy to have gotten the Spelunker Black rewards too. Sad to see Irem go now, but I could see from the Granzella space itself it had a few things inside there that was taken from Irem Square (the big flying bird) and the two statues in the water in the jet ski race (April Fools Event 2010 & the public RPG Irem space). Could it mean we can still get rewards from other Irem games? I'm relieved though to have Pachipara stay.
Joanna, I would ask LS for clarification on that. He stated SCEA, yet the content he refers to is actually for SCEJ.
Keep in mind Granzella is the team that made the Irem spaces. Likely Irem have hardly and the Home team left. But why did the Granzella team jump, its likely they spotted bad signs so got out and setup why the going was good.
Since the president behind Granzella was one of the Irem guys, I'd have to say he might had a plan to keep Home afloat, but without the namesake and property of Irem since the Japan crisis began and they lost money from it. As I stated before, the Granzella space had things taken from the previous Irem spaces, so it was likely they wanted to refresh their company as a thriving business again and keeping Home alive with April Fools events just like normal. I'm thinking too, that Granzella will go so far as to "recreate" the old Irem spaces with their own - like the Irem Square would be changed to an even bigger festival. And let's not forget our old friends the Irem Black Brigade. They may be changing their logo on their outfits later on or have a completely new look. If you guys are buying stuff, I'd go with the Irem outfit and any clothing/furniture pieces you've been wanting for so long.
Well this stinks, I was always hoping to see the other spaces come to North America. I am glad I finally got around to making an Asian acct to check them out a few weeks ago. Is Irem as a whole company closing? Or just the Home spaces? I want to know if I should finally buy Spelunker.
Wanna see new spaces or re invigorated old spaces but not at the loss of decent current spaces, irem spaces loads of rewards, 1 shop on a space and plenty of room for the public something we dont get so much of now
Yeah--I would take Seaside over the new Granzella space any day. There is room to roam around in the Seaside space and an actual beach and piers with plenty of underwater space. The new space may have a refreshed look but is MUCH smaller and feels confined to me...not to mention a jet ski game that isnt really worth the space that it consumes. Irem made some nice, BIG spaces and Im afraid that we wont see anything like that anymore. Losing Irem is bad news for me no matter how you slice it.