Throughout the entire dinner, Haruno spent the time doing nothing but eating, eating, and more eating.
As for the changes in Yukino, she didn't notice them at all.
That was only natural—after all, Haruno herself was still completely inexperienced in that area, so even if she wanted to notice something, it would be hard for her to understand it in the first place.
This made Yukino breathe a huge sigh of relief from the bottom of her heart.
After dinner, Haruno didn't linger for long. She had a cup of tea, then went back next door to take a bath—she wanted to soak properly and get some good rest.
Without a hot spring, she could only make do with her own bathtub for now.
After Haruno left, Sonoko also took her leave. When she reached the entryway, she looked at Utaha and said, "Utaha, take these next few days to think things through on your own. Come over to my place again next week and we'll discuss it together."
Utaha nodded. "Mm, no problem. Be careful on your way, Sonoko-neesan."
"I'm heading out then—see you later~~~"
After the front door closed, Utaha turned to look at Ichin and Yukino, who was holding Peppa in her arms, and said, "Alright, since Yukino isn't planning to head back right now, let's watch some TV together."
The three of them returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa, though the seating arrangement was a little different from before. Ichin sat in the middle, with Utaha and Yukino close on either side of him.
After sitting down, Utaha picked up George, who had been lying on the armrest of the sofa, and put him on her lap. She then looked at Ichin with a smile and asked, "Ichin, how does it feel now?"
"Mm~~~"
He glanced to the right at Utaha, then to the left at Yukino, and scratched his cheek. "How should I put it… I still feel inexplicably a bit nervous."
Seeing the expression on Ichin's face, Utaha and Yukino exchanged a glance and both started laughing.
After that, regardless of whether Ichin got used to it or not, the three of them continued sitting like this. Utaha and Yukino watched TV and played with the cats, while Ichin held a tablet and slowly went through the work reports that Hazuki and Yagami had sent to his email.
He hadn't gone to the company all day, and Ichin still felt a bit restless. So in the afternoon, he'd sent a message asking Hazuki and the others to write up part of their reports and send them over first, so he could take a look whenever he had free time.
Halfway through the drama they were watching, commercials started playing. Utaha glanced at the tablet in Ichin's hands and said, "Ichin, the company currently has two games in development that are about to be released. After those two are done, what then? Do you have any new plans?"
"As for plans, of course I do."
Putting the tablet aside, Ichin smiled and said, "When I have some free time, I like to browse game forums in different countries. For design-oriented games, whether it's our Fall Guys, Titanfall, or Apex, they're all still in their popularity phase and require long-term operation. So for now, we don't need to develop more games of that type. After Garo and Tales of Berseria, aside from possibly continuing with a sequel to Garo, I'm planning to develop another game with gameplay similar to Dark Souls, but with a different style."
"A Souls-like game?"
Yukino said thoughtfully. "You've really been training a loyal fanbase for that genre."
From Hollow Knight in the beginning to Dark Souls later on, these high-penalty, high-skill 'suffering' games gradually became popular. Then, with Dark Souls as the benchmark, many later indie games inspired by it all came to be called Souls-like games.
And as both the pioneer and currently the best game in this new genre, future entries in the Dark Souls series were naturally highly anticipated by players.
After the two Dark Souls DLCs were fully released at the end of last year, players who bought the game at launch had either already cleared it, shelved it, continued with multiple NG+ runs, or started focusing on PvP.
Other, less hardcore players were taking their time—either playing slowly or waiting for discounts before buying.
During the previous Spring Festival New Year sale, with a 30% discount, Dark Souls saw another huge surge in sales. Its total sales across all platforms had already surpassed ten million and were rapidly closing in on Persona's fifteen million.
Ichin estimated that before the first half of the year ended, it would definitely catch up to and surpass Persona's sales.
And that figure was only for the base game—it didn't even include DLC sales.
Of course, Persona also had various costume packs on sale, so its actual revenue numbers would be even higher.
All in all, this year would see the emergence of a second blockbuster game with fifteen million sales.
As for free-to-play operations like Apex, the evaluation criteria were different. But even so, just from in-game cosmetic purchases and loot boxes, its revenue so far had been extremely impressive.
After all, Apex was already a globally popular online battle royale game.
Season Two was currently underway, and when the previous season launched—with several new heroes and a large batch of new skins—the game's in-game spending had hit a major peak.
No matter what kind of game it was, whales were never in short supply.
…Right, he'd drifted off topic a bit.
Going forward, Ichin didn't plan to focus solely on large-scale games. He had always encouraged everyone in the company to be creative and come up with interesting ideas. Just yesterday, Hazuki had sent him a few concepts, though he hadn't looked at them yet.
As long as an idea was good and could be expanded into a game, Ichin was more than willing to invest money and turn creativity into reality.
As for a follow-up title to Tales of Berseria, Ichin wasn't in a rush. He planned to first see how player feedback turned out before deciding whether to immediately greenlight Tales of Arise.
And the new Souls-like game he had just mentioned naturally already held a place in his heart—Bloodborne.
Although that game had never been upgraded to 60 FPS before.
Now that it was his turn, there was no way he'd let Bloodborne remain an exclusive title. He believed his team's development capabilities were no worse than any other studio's, and they could absolutely make Bloodborne even more perfect.
Gothic architecture, a dark and oppressive atmosphere, all kinds of monsters infused with Lovecraftian elements—blending all of that with Souls-like gameplay was something that had to be done, to create a truly unique game.
And so, Ichin gave Utaha and Yukino a brief explanation of Bloodborne's setting.
After listening, Yukino frowned slightly and said, "Cthulhu-style themes… those kinds of works do have quite a large audience. I remember Dark Souls also had a bit of that element, but it wasn't very obvious. Making it one of the core elements of a game now—wouldn't that be a bit risky?"
"There is some risk, sure, but it's fine," Ichin replied calmly. "As long as the quality is solid, and with the large player base we've already built up, at the very least we won't lose money."
As he said this, Ichin's expression was completely composed.
At this point, he truly had the confidence to say such things.
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