I'm a massive fan of Clap Hanz and HSG/EG but with how they've handled DLC and clubs the last two iterations, I'm a little worried what that will look like on a mobile. Still excited to check it out.
I wish I could buy it outright but I guess now is as good of a time as ever to try the free month of AA.
This is Apple Arcade, not traditional mobile, so monetization
may not be as greedy as a mobile Hot Shots could get. Then again, like you said, the series was already nickling you when you had to pay for it in a box.
This looks interesting and I wonder what chance it has at popping up on other platforms.
Very interesting Sony didnt lock up this studio - I thought they WERE 1st party? For me, Hot Shots/Everybodys Golf is at the top of Sony's exclusive franchises. What is going on with Sony these days?
Apple Arcade doesn't lock onto exclusives (although it could stay there,) and this is Clap Hanz big move to move forward (
they totally redid their website and barely mention 20 years of Hot Shots...) so I assume a high chance off cross-release if this isn't locked in and if this does well.
As far as why Sony didn't keep them locked in, for one thing Japan Studio is pretty much no longer and so SCE WWS would have to re-negotiate with Clap Hanz to continue it or start something new. But also, it feels like the PS4 game kind of exhausted the franchise. It did everything it could with a Hot Shots and added a ton of lifestyle stuff (which people faulted it for,) and it still didn't seem to make much impact (EG VR didn't bust out either.) If Sony had gone crazy with Hot Shots and added more Mario style minigames, then maybe it could have continued as a one-game-a-generation release (and they're not saying that there's never going to be a PS5 Hot Shots... it just seems extremely obvious that it's not happening,) with maybe a Tennis game in between sometimes, but it also makes sense that Sony cut Clap Hanz loose to do what they wanted to do since Sony had little reason to keep it internal besides the legacy.
Love me some Everybody's Golf, but that art direction? It's like they desperately try to make it appealing to western audiences.
Will I buy a PC version? YES.
I was mentioning this in an earlier post, but these character models totally remind me of what it felt like to transition from HSG1 to HSG2 on PS1. The goofier or uglier or stereotyped character models have been a staple for a long time, but they tended to front-loaded the presentation with characters like Yuna or Billie, and this is the first time since HSG2 that I can recall feeling like there's not a "Standard Hot Shots character" to identify with before getting invested in the crazier characters.
So maybe it's not a ploy to sell out to the West? These seem to be the character models Masashi Muramori has always wanted, and maybe just Hot Shots traditions steered him towards the more anime-styled characters.
(BTW, yes, the same studio designer has been there at Clap Hanz since 1998!)
www.gematsu.com
