Director Suzuki and Producer Ogata Attend Panel Session for Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom! Photo Report for SXSW 2024

SXSW (South by Southwest) 2024, the world’s largest creative conference event, was held from Friday, March 8, 2024, to Saturday, March 16, 2024, at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

At the event, a featured panel entitled “Bringing a Major Franchise Into XR: The Gundam Example” was held to discuss the new virtual reality (VR) visual work Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom.

Kenichi Suzuki, the work’s director; Zoé Lemaire, Head of Publishing at Astrea; Ryan Genji Thomas, Meta’s XR producer; and Naohiro Ogata, Executive Producer of Bandai Namco Filmworks, took to the stage to discuss the technical challenges and future prospects regarding expressing Gundam as a VR work.

During the session, a video with the work’s latest information on the development of the work (click here for the introductory article) was released for the first time. Director Suzuki said, “I personally wanted to create a work in VR. I’ve sprinkled in some of the things I would want to experience for myself if I were in the world of Gundam. When you see Gundam in the VR world for the first time, you will be as moved as if you were to see it in real life, so I hope you look forward to it.”

Silver Phantom is a joint production between Bandai Namco Filmworks and Atlas V, a VR production company headquartered in Paris, France. Astrea, which has developed many VR works, will be in charge of distribution, and it is scheduled to be released on Meta's VR Meta Quest headset.
New information will be released on Friday, March 22nd, so please look forward to further updates.