The announcement of Saints Row: Drive By for the Nintendo 3DS was a bit of a strange one. Now that the E3 dust has settled, it finally makes sense – it’s to be a conversion of an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game. Nintendo “really wanted it†on their shiny new handheld, according to an interview with IndustryGamer.
Core Games VP Danny Bilson speaks:
“We were already making it as our Xbox Live game and in 3D also. It’s designed for 3D already. So the 3DS version is an incremental cost. It’s not a big startup cost. Anything in a transmedia play has a column called marketing in it. It’s also a marketing tool. So how does that game model for us? I believe it will do great, especially if Nintendo is going to go mature and really do a big mature campaign on it. It’s a killer game. It’s got all the weird humor of Saints Row, and also its existence is part of the marketing plan to sell Saints Row 3. Also, all these games have hooks where, if you play it, it unlocks things in Saints Row 3. If you play Saints Row 3, it will unlock things in the 3DS game or the Xbox Live game. I don’t know if I was clear about that, but all of our extension properties all connect and unlock things in each other.”
Just in case you only skim-read that paragraph – playing the 3DS version will unlock goodies in the Xbox 360 version of Saints Row 3.
It’s a sign of the times, people.