Dontnod CEO on Life is Strange iOS/Android, retail release, soundtrack and budget
As part of the ongoing Paris Games Week event, that has been getting a lot of publicity this year thanks to Sony holding their first ever press conference at the show, Oskar Guilbert, the CEO of DONTNOD Entertainment – the developers of Life is Strange – made an appearance on Tech&Co. Tech&Co airs on the French language news channel BFM Business. If you speak French, you can check out the interview here – he is questioned many times during the course of the 30 minute session. He sits alongside Cédric Lagarrigue, the CEO of Focus Home Interactive, and Kayane, a French based esports competitor – who has a 14 year history with games.
With no disrespect to the other interviewees, Guilbert was certainly the more interesting of the trio, as he took the time to talk on many aspects of Life is Strange fans were wondering about. When questioned directly by a presenter about possibly releasing Life is Strange on mobile and tablets he responds positively, but gave no details on if and when such a port would be released. Guilbert also commented that Life is Strange cost under €6 million to develop, which is not exactly cheap, but not the 10s of millions many games can hit nowadays. He reiterated the 1 million unit sales numbers that was made known during the release of Episode Four, and went on to say that publisher Square Enix are very happy with these numbers.
Later on he goes into more detail about the future of Life is Strange, mentioning a retail (disc based) copy of the game as well as a soundtrack. Based on his comment, it seems a CD could be bundled with the disc version when released. The Life is Strange soundtrack contains some original music by Syd Matters, and also has a bunch of easy listening indie alternative numbers throughout the five episodes. These songs are already available on the likes of Spotify, Google Play, and Apple Music, but having a physical copy of all the music in one place would be a nice extra for fans.
Sadly, Guilbert never delved into any truly juicy material, like a possible follow up to the series, or what a Season 2 of Life is Strange would be about. That is news for another day.