For Toru Kawakatsu, winning a 70-second spot on Nintendo Co.’s popular Direct showcase in March was the culmination of an unusual strategy many dismissed as quixotic.
His four-person game studio, dubbed Petit Depotto, started work on an adventure game called Gnosia for the PlayStation Vita portable console back in 2015. The Vita was already ailing back then, and Sony Corp. had stopped announcing sales numbers for it, but Kawakatsu and his friends didn’t waver.
Last summer, three months after the Vita was officially discontinued, they released their finished work on a zombie platform. Warmly received by players and recognized by reviewers, the game got Nintendo’s attention, which may not have happened had they competed on more congested fronts. Gnosia’s Switch edition went on sale in Japan on Thursday.