No More Heroes dev working on PS3 title

In Aesop's fable about the grasshopper and the ant, the former insect wastes away the summer months in leisurely activities while his industrious counterpart prepares for the coming winter. Unlike its namesake, Grasshopper Manufacture should be in no risk of perishing due to idleness.

The developer has a robust slate of games to work on, including a Wii sequel to No More Heroes, a multiplatform collaboration with Shinji Mikami and Q Entertainment, a potential project for Square Enix, and an unnamed PlayStation 3 game set to be published by Marvelous Interactive. In an interview with Siliconera, Marvelous president Yasushiro Wada implied that producing the game--which he still considered a secret--would be a significant risk for the publisher.

"If we do that [game], we might go bankrupt," Wada joked, adding that, "We are making it, but if we make everything, then it's a little too risky."

Grasshopper has a history of risky projects, including the violent No More Heroes on Nintendo's family-friendly Wii system, the surreal (and also violent) GameCube and PlayStation 2 action game Killer 7, and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for the Wii. Although it was part of an enduring line of survival horror games, Nintendo apparently felt the Fatal Frame game still carried too much risk, as the company declined to publish it in North America or Europe.

Siliconera doesn't mention if Grasshopper CEO Goichi Suda (often referred to as Suda-51) will have a hands-on role in the development of the PS3 title.

[UPDATE]: Siliconera has since updated its report as a result of an apparent misunderstanding. The site says Wada's comment about going bankrupt was a joke about if the publisher had decided to make a PS3 game with Grasshopper. However, the later comment confirming that "We are making it," was instead a reference to a PS3 title the company is making without the assistance of Grasshopper.