[RUMOR] Level-5 experience employee shortage, may be the reason behind recent game delays

[NebulousNeon]

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Over the past year or so, Level-5 has delayed many of their new projects such as Inazuma Eleven Ares and Yo-kai Watch 4. Both games were intended to release this year, but have since been pushed back into 2019. Yo-kai Watch 4 currently has a release window of Spring 2019, while Inazuma Eleven Ares has been pushed back beyond May 2019. Though Level-5 has not officially shared a reason as to why their recent games have been delayed, Nifty News has reported a possible reason why.

According to recent reports from Nifty News, Level-5 has recently faced mass departure of many employees recently, which has led to a loss of manpower and productivity which, in turn, may be the major reason why their newer games keep getting delayed.

Excerpt from Main Source (Translated)

...In addition, due to the massive withdrawal of Level-5 employees, the production of their major games has lagged behind schedule. The Nintendo Switch exclusive game "Yo-kai Watch 4", which was slated to be released this winter, has been postponed to Spring 2019.

Akihiro Hino, CEO of Level-5, recently revealed in a live news update for the game Inazuma Eleven Ares that the game had been partially outsourced to another studio who also did not have enough employees to finish the game on time, to which Level-5 was not aware of and ended up restarting and outsourcing work to another studio. This is not the first time in recent memory that Level-5 has outsourced one of their games. Yo-kai Watch Busters 2 was also outsourced to Digital Works Entertainment Inc. and ended up receiving a slight delay shortly before release.

However, due to the unknown reliability of the main source, I am marking this as a rumor.

Original Source (Japanese): https://news.nifty.com/article/domestic/society/12184-44804/

 

[pedro702]

seems to me they are going bankrupt, massive staff loss probably were fired imo.

 

[ThoD]

seems to me they are going bankrupt, massive staff loss probably were fired imo.

If it indeed was mass firings, it wouldn't be just a rumor, as it would be much easier to verify. Seems like they just quit... actually a fair few in the field in Japanese departments seem to have been quitting and going from company to company lately from what I've heard on some Japanese forums. Most probably unsatisfactory conditions or something as Japan is losing it's "quality over quantity" slowly and becoming "quantity over quality" like the US in anything involving entertainment, so same money as always for more work. Quite possible many companies will close or just get sold to Kadokawa as it's always happened...

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Guess we ain't getting a rogue galaxy sequel

 

[anhminh]

seems to me they are going bankrupt, massive staff loss probably were fired imo.

Bankrupt? From the company that made a game that can rival Pokemon? As if.

 

[pedro702]

Bankrupt? From the company that made a game that can rival Pokemon? As if.

rival pokemon.. in what way? certainly not in sales...

their best game has around 3 million units sold ... compared to Pokemon sales numbers that is nothing really.

 

[ThoD]

rival pokemon.. in what way? certainly not in sales...

their best game has around 3 million units sold ... compared to Pokemon sales numbers that is nothing really.

Don't know what you are on, but 3 million units for a SINGLE game is HUGE! Games are successful if they can reach 100K and huge hits at 1M, you think 3M is bad for a relatively small company on top of MANY other great games they've made that sold well?

 

[pedro702]

Don't know what you are on, but 3 million units for a SINGLE game is HUGE! Games are successful if they can reach 100K and huge hits at 1M, you think 3M is bad for a relatively small company on top of MANY other great games they've made that sold well?

i meant to rival pokemon you need to be huge not just successful or you aren't a rival are you?

i never said their games aren't successful or bad but just no rival worthy.

same way to say the vita was successful because it sold like 15 millions but then it really doesn't rival nintendo 3ds which is close to 90 millions does it?

 

[ThoD]

i meant to rival pokemon you need to be huge not just successful or you aren't a rival are you?

i never said their games aren't successful or bad but just no rival worthy.

same way to say the vita was successful because it sold like 15 millions but then it really doesn't rival nintendo 3ds which is close to 90 millions does it?

3 million is still a HUGE sucess and considering USUM sold about twice that, it's really not that big a difference after a certain point, especially when you compare how big a production cost the two had, where on studio basically made a game with like 35 employees while an ENORMOUS triple-pronged company used 200+ only to get double as many sales... They got a HUGE chunk of the market, that IS rival-worthy, many actually instead of getting both copies of the same iteration of Pokemon would instead get one and one of the YoKai Watch ones, that's pretty big if you ask me. Also, it's not "3 million", it's 2.6 million IN JAPAN ALONE, internationally YK2 hit close to 5 million, so compare that to USUM's 7 million and you really see that it IS indeed rival worthy.

 

[pedro702]

3 million is still a HUGE sucess and considering USUM sold about twice that, it's really not that big a difference after a certain point, especially when you compare how big a production cost the two had, where on studio basically made a game with like 35 employees while an ENORMOUS triple-pronged company used 200+ only to get double as many sales... They got a HUGE chunk of the market, that IS rival-worthy, many actually instead of getting both copies of the same iteration of Pokemon would instead get one and one of the YoKai Watch ones, that's pretty big if you ask me. Also, it's not "3 million", it's 2.6 million IN JAPAN ALONE, internationally YK2 hit close to 5 million, so compare that to USUM's 7 million and you really see that it IS indeed rival worthy.

USM are the third game in the same gen they usually sell alot less than new gen(becuase no new map or anything and very few additions besides a legendary or form) so you would need to compare ultra sun/moon to psychic specters solo values to make it accurate comparison, and compare yk2fs/bs to normal sun and moon where they sold more than 16 millions.

Also in the west the games sell very poorly, every where i go there are yo kai watch 3ds games selling new in stores for 15 euros because they have stock for ages even from the first one that they cant sell, i bought the first one for 15 euros new at retail lol.

 

[NebulousNeon]

rival pokemon.. in what way? certainly not in sales...

their best game has around 3 million units sold ... compared to Pokemon sales numbers that is nothing really.

That's only if you factor in the Japanese sales of the base versions of YW2. Adding in sales its third version, that tops off sales of YW2 at about 5.8 million units in Japan alone. Of course it won't be as high as Pokemon's sales because that's a first party title and Nintendo will push it like crazy, but for a third-party title it was very successful.

Another thing you don't even mention is the fact that Yo-kai Watch is a cross-media project, so every aspect (games, anime, manga, toys, etc.) ties into the franchise's success and popularity, to which the anime and toys also did very very well.

Nowadays, the momentum of the franchise has slowed and it certainly isn't as popular as it used to be, and outside of Japan the franchise has done just well enough to get by, but I certainly wouldn't shrug it off as nothing. After playing through Yo-kai Watch 1 and 2 and then Pokemon Moon, I could definitely tell YW affected Moon as a whole in some fashion, but I won't get into that.

Bankrupt? From the company that made a game that can rival Pokemon? As if.

I definitely don't think they're going bankrupt. I think they're just running into internal struggles in the company, which isn't unheard of. Level-5's games do sell, and they sell well. Granted, I don't know how many employees work there and how big of a chunk of the employees left, but I doubt it's enough to cripple them permanently.

Though, this isn't the only issue from one of Level-5's companies. I've read a few worker reviews on Glassdoor of their American branch and how terrible the management is and how there's little to no coordination or planning. Makes me wonder if that's why they take so long localizing titles.