Holy Digital Distribution Shenanigans, Batman!
Nippon Ichi Software America announced today that niche strategy/bitpop title Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? (aka Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida aka that crazy cutesy 8-bit rendition of Tecmo’s Deception) will be out July 16th. The publishing house based out of Santa Ana, California also announced that the title will not receive a full retail release; instead, it will be released exclusively on the PlayStation Network. Unlike Patapon 2 — another title that shifted gears from full, boxed retail title to digital-distribution spearhead — the game will have no retail release whatsoever (not even download vouchers). NISA’s Nao Zook on this last-minute change: “We’ve been having tremendous number of download for the Badman demo on PSN.Because it is all digital, we can provide Badman for $19.99. I understand that people may have mixed feeling about this decision.But I hope NISA fans and gamers out there will enjoy Badman with the affordable price and easy access.”
So yeah, that’s kind of a bummer, but with piracy cutting deeply into the PSP’s effective profit margins, as well as the looming release of the PSP Go, I suppose this’ll mark the beginning of the end for UMD titles — at least for the more niche titles at first.
Fact Sheet
The goal of the game is clean and simple: As the God of Destruction, you must create a dungeon that is difficult and powerful enough to fend off human hero invasions. The dungeon must have a self-sustaining ecosystem, so players must strategically dig and create a dungeon with a balanced food chain. Periodically, human heroes will invade the dungeon in order to bring peace and harmony to the world, but they are your enemies. You must destroy the heroes before they capture the Overlord and take him back to the surface.
