By Ponkotsu on Aug 29, 2010

He’s not wrong about Japanese games getting ignored, but it’s not a Nintendo platform problem. It’s strictly an issue on Sony and Microsoft’s consoles, where since the beginning of this generation, there’s been this obnoxious anti-Japanese gaming, pro-western gaming movement in their market, eschewing Japanese games by and large for western developed ones. The trick here is not to keep trying desperately to appeal to this crowd that’s deemed Japanese games “inferior,” but to drop the toxic, crashing market for the healthy one. More focus on the Wii and 3DS are key to this. But trying to push technical limitations on high end platforms with extremely high budgets, as many do and are openly bleeding to death over it – Square, Capcom, Namco, Konami – is outright suicide for these companies. There’s nothing they can do that will make them sustainable and popular in the west on the PS3 or Xbox 360. If they don’t start drawing down support and refocusing it where the profitable market is, they’re going to collapse.

By thomas on Aug 29, 2010

I think it’s a certain staleness and lack of wanting to improve the basics that he hints at. I mean, I like a turn-based RPG from time to time but they play so ridiculously similar and have a relatively small target audience in the west.

By RPGuy_AD on Aug 29, 2010

I’d agree more on Ponkotsu’s part, personally. Very rarely do Japanese games do well on the HD consoles – most of them tank outright, unless they copy western games to the letter, or fill some “Hardcore!!” niche like 3D fighters or what have you. Most of the genres, like RPGs, platformers, and the like have just been left to rot, which hurts the bottom line and gives off the impression that there’s no demand in the west.

The developers seem to have fallen into a rut, in which they think that the niche, the hardcore, are all that matter. Unfortunately now, more than ever, that’s far from true. Pandering to the base is going to hurt them more in the long run than it stings now. “Vision” has nothing to do with it – making a good product, on the other hand…

By NekoKnight on Aug 29, 2010

You know, I really feel that another reason Japanese games aren’t so popular in the west, is because they pamper to the “otaku” crowd instead of the casual gamer. Take Pokemon for example; it’s not only Japanese, but an RPG at that! And it sells like hotcakes in the west! Why is the series so popular? Because it’s for KIDS, that’s why. And we all know how kids like to get obsessed with franchises, many of us here were probably the same way, I know I was! But when we see JP games in stores, they’re generally TEEN rated titles chock full of crude language, fan service, and what not. Kids and parents will be turned off by the above mentioned content, while actual teenagers & young adults will have no interest because “anime is dumb.” Another reason,of course, is that many stores won’t even carry JP games. And if they do, they’re hidden behind a slew of awful western games based off popular movies like Shrek and Toy Story. So yeah, there are several factors behind the lack of success of Japanese games in the west. And I most certainly agree that most people who buy XBOX 360s and PS3s, is to play western games only.

By bob on Aug 29, 2010

i admit i dont buy as many jap games as west ones

By alex c on Aug 29, 2010

but u get jap lovers like me to balance it.

il be buying ico,and the collection, gran turismo,

i got tekken 6 -namco.

i love namco, sega. not so much capcom. never dug resi evil,. …. always preferred guilty gear to street fighter too. and i prefer virtua fighter to that, and tekken and soul calibur to that. so yeh i love all jap stuff.

klnoa on wii from namco…mmmmm sweet for the kids too.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 29, 2010

Technically speaking, there’s no balance whatsoever on the HD consoles here. Most games on those platforms sit on shelves in Japan and even those that find any kind of audience don’t find one nearly big enough to break even, let alone turn a profit. Only a tiny, tiny sliver of western gamers on those platforms buy Japanese games now. Even Tekken and Soul Calibur ended up seriously underperforming, and their nearly entirely HD-focal lineup is killing Namco quite violently at the moment. The best known Japanese third parties are very visibly hurtling toward a complete collapse since they just aren’t making money on the HD consoles, let alone enough to sustain themselves.

And notably in the west, Ubisoft and Activision get the majority of their profit from Nintendo platforms too, so for all the fixation on western games on the HD consoles here in the west, Nintendo’s mass market audience is still more profitable and important for developers and publishers here too. The industry in Japan’s just entering especially dire straits because PS3 and 360 development costs are far too high and the audience just isn’t there. It’s a matter of adapting or collapsing.

By Dixon Francois Jr. on Aug 29, 2010

I believe that these Japanese games have done or will do well: Pokémon, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, BlazBlue, Bayonetta, Naruto Shippudden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, Vanquish, Dead Rising 2, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Metal Gear Solid Rising. All multiplatform games as well, yet most of these games are from two well-known Japanese publishers: Capcom and Konami. I believe that the motivation to develop games that immediately grab the attention of millions will not rise from the desire to become rich or famous but from the motivation to share a game that will change the video industry repeatedly.

I also believe that Japanese developers that remain on a single platform divide their audiences.

Nevertheless, Japanese games, that I have played, are not as easy, passive, or heavily invested in online multiplayer as Western games are. However, Western developers focus on their market and Japanese should do the same and release the best games they are capable of doing.

I believe if Japanese developers and games like Lost Planet 2, Ninja Blade, Ninja Gaiden 2, King of Fighters XII, and Final Fantasy XIII tried escalating & changing the video game industry standards of perfect, compelling, and innovation, then this article could not have existed.

By w on Aug 29, 2010

I think Japanese RPG developers not ready for HD consoles

And they should not force it to do

By newtonyic on Aug 29, 2010

I got many jrpgs for Wii and some for the 360

I love the anime cartoonish graphics,both realistic and cellshaded(or inkblotted)

one problem could be voice translating,that goes well with the character’s mouth movement
other could be to keep a steady(ordered) characterictics of the particular character
I like tales of vesperia,but there was sometimes when I couldn’t get Yuri’s character
the game is nice though
And I like Yuri

sometimes the person’s characterictics pop out in. disorderedly manner

also
jrpgs should just be a complete role playing game
openended,nonlinear,vast immersive world,great exploration,music plays an important part.
gameplay must be innovative.

knowing how to transition from a serious state to a calm and to a funny state should improve depth and order of the story.

have a hardcore addon implemented.

its not just jrpgs but movies in the us are declining.
no orderly story pace and personality
makes you think the director and script writer have no concept of order,serene and smooth vision

also for me it would be nice that when you change your avatar’s equipment like armor,shirts,pants,leggings,the avatar’s standard clothing changes.

example.
Eternal sonata and tales of vesperia
if you just bought new armor and have equipped it,your character’s appearences changes.
for Yuri instead of having alternate costumes you just equip your new armor
like ffcc:echoes of time
I mean if developers truly follow these,itll make Westerners fall for anime.

By Extreme-Brah on Aug 29, 2010

If it’s being released for north America get rid of all the otaku crap. Back then anime was good. Not anymore, it’s down right stupid and made for people with no life. Not everyone wants to play a jrpg/or other game type filled with anime crap. Bottom line is they really need to STOP using the same Formula all the time.

By Captain N on Aug 29, 2010

Hmmm the biggest game Developer in Japan is Nintendo and they don’t seem to have a problem selling games in America…. I wonder why… oh that’s right they innovate things with their titles, not just rehash them every year. 3rd parties have spread their IP’s to thin…. how many Final Fantasy’s Metel gears, reident evils, Castlevanias,mega mans do we need? They are on every frikin console with different versions and it just annoying at this point. One or 2 titles like Nintendo does on each generation on 1 platform. We don’t get 10 zeldas on Wii we get 1 or 2 and same goes for DS.Metroid 1 or 2, Mario usually we get one… this gen we got 3 which is amazing on Wii. No gold editions, directors editions, premium editions, extra content editions…… if your lucky you get a special limited edition and that’s it for early adopters !!!!

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

Pokemon has done very well because it’s a massive franchise on Nintendo platforms. Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4 underperformed from expectations, BlazBlue and Bayonetta didn’t make money, licensed anime games don’t have much of an HD market, Vanquish isn’t out yet but despite hype Platinum Games’ titles haven’t seen notable HD platform sales yet, MadWorld on the Wii being their biggest financial success yet, Dead Rising 2 is western developed and doesn’t involve the original team and has a lot of negative hype at this point, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is an entirely western developed action game that Konami had no confidence in so they slapped the Castlevania name onto it, odds of it doing well aren’t particularly high, and Metal Gear’s one of the only Japanese franchises with an HD audience that will buy it – MGS4 relied heavily on in-game product placement to make money, though. Konami and Capcom are both in increasingly deeper and deeper financial trouble now due to their HD focus. Capcom’s HD games have all flopped hard this year, and Konami has openly stated that they’re looking for a buyer since they aren’t going to remain solvent for too much longer on their own at this rate. They aren’t changing the industry – they’re pushing titles that don’t sell at a very small audience on massively unsuccessful consoles that don’t buy their games.

They can’t afford HD console development, by and large, and there isn’t a market on either the PS3 or Xbox 360 that can make most Japanese games profitable at all. This has been very well established by this point. And releasing games as multiplatform titles on both the PS3 and 360 is far more expensive than multiplat development was last generation and largely hasn’t been worth the cost. Japanese software sales are terrible on both platforms, and collectively they don’t justify development on both consoles.

The problem is, on those consoles in particular that western developers are focused on, there’s no healthy market for Japanese games at all, and even most western developers aren’t thriving on the HD platforms. Giants like Ubisoft and Activision are getting by financially on the Wii far more than the other two, and with good reason. Technology, as Kawazu cites here, is NOT the driving force between hardware and software sales. The industry is not sustaining itself on these extremely expensive platforms, but openly crumbling.

It isn’t about “escalating” and “changing” anything here, so much as it’s about that the PS3 and 360 have a very small, toxic audience that buys VERY few types of games with very few brand names from very few companies. The development environments on these HD consoles the industry has been focused on since the beginning of the generation are suicidal for Japanese developers with the western dominated audience largely just buying a very few western brandname shooters and action games and ignoring everything else that hits the platforms. Neither platform is a mass market success, Sony’s been completely destabilized by the PS3, and Microsoft’s shareholders are calling for the end of the Xbox line since it’s just been a massive net financial loss for the company. The industry needs to get it through their heads – especially in Japan – that whether they like it or not, Sony and Microsoft are not the market leaders and their audiences are suicidal ones to focus on. Nintendo’s back on top in consoles by a huge margin, and software sales on the Wii are extremely varied and healthy while development costs are far, far lower than on the HD consoles. Focusing on the Wii and 3DS as that launches are key in achieving financial sustainability, but the industry has persisted entirely in focusing on non-market leading platforms that cost far more to develop for than they can afford and lack the necessary audience to make a sustainable profit. The industry has been openly crumbling this generation because of this focus, which has largely come as a result of fanatical corporate loyalism and the assumption going into this generation that Nintendo was going to completely fall out of the console scene. At this point, the industry is just being self-destructive, but there’s nothing Japan can do software-wise that’ll make the industry sustainable without dropping the PS3 and 360 and refocusing on the Wii and 3DS. There isn’t a market for Japanese software on the HD consoles, and this has been made abundantly clear by years of software sales numbers and increasing industry instability and developer/publisher collapse.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

It’s not even so much that they’re not ready but that these companies can’t afford the development costs and there’s no profitable audience on these systems. JRPGs don’t sell on the PS3 or 360. There’s no point in releasing games on these systems in a genre that doesn’t sell on them. Thus, the sharp decrease in JRPG announcements for those platforms and the corresponding rise in JRPG support for the Wii, where the genre can and does make money.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

It’s been well established at this point that anime isn’t mainstream in the west and isn’t going to be. And there just isn’t a profitable JRPG audience on the HD consoles. If you look at the sales numbers on the HD consoles, what sells above all else are a very few western shooters, and even WRPGs have largely turned into shooters on these platforms with very few meaningful RPG elements. There’s just no interested market for JRPGs. This has been well established by now.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

JRPGs were always niche, and anime always has been, too. They’re not going to drop it because westerners aren’t interested in it, and Japanese efforts to westernize games there haven’t turned out well for them, either. There’s a lot of hostility toward Japanese games on non-Nintendo platforms in general these days with a very visible narrative in the gaming media against Japanese games here. The JRPG genre’s been suffering more of an identity crisis than anything else in recent years as it’s dropped many of its roots, like turnbased combat and random encounters, in the name of focusing on turning these games into hack and slashers with a few relatively inconsequential stats attached. The JRPG was always a niche genre in the west. It was on the NES, SNES, PSX, and PS2 – only Final Fantasy ever made it big on Sony consoles, and a small mix of others sold solidly, but now there’s no profitable audience for the genre on the HD consoles with the extremely high costs of development on the platforms. The genre still sells on the Wii and portables, but it’s still niche as ever there outside of the likes of Pokemon, which is even more popular than Final Fantasy. But even Nintendo has shown that after years of failed efforts to make the series take off here, Dragon Quest IX has broken with precedent and been a strong success so far thanks to Nintendo properly backing the franchise in ways Enix couldn’t afford to and that Square never bothered to market it after the merger.

Japanese games trying to drop their cultural identity won’t serve them well in any region, as western gamers mostly ignore Japanese games that try to come off as western as possible, and it won’t turn JRPGs into hits here. White Knight Chronicles on the PS3 is effectively a Japanese attempt at a WRPG series – complete flop in all regions. Valhalla Knights is much the same way. Very westernized, and nobody bought it either. People who want western RPGs buy WRPGs, not JRPGs. It’s about paying attention to where the market actually is instead of trying to push games to where the market isn’t, and all generation third parties have been intensely focused on the HD consoles and sneering at the Wii while the HD consoles poison their bottom line.

Overly conservative game design is a serious problem, though. The HD consoles suffer an overabundance of the same basic types of games that third parties release over and over, but then when third parties try to release something more obscure – even like Sega’s Yakuza – they end up flopping and losing money due to general consumer disinterest on those platforms. More niche, obscure, fresh and unusual games do better and have more of a legitimate shot at profit on the Wii, but nobody markets their games on the system, which is another huge problem.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

Very true. Many third parties try to act as though Nintendo’s successes prevent them from success as well, when this is demonstrably false. Nintendo has by far the healthiest and most successful game platforms out now – they’re in phenomenal financial shape and still bringing in incredible profits where Sony has been destabilized completely by the PS3′s incredible failure and Microsoft’s shareholders are calling for the end of the Xbox line because it’s only been a failed long term investment for the company, having lost an incredible amount of money on both the Xbox and Xbox 360. Neither of these companies or platforms has a healthy market while third parties try to treat them like they’re collectively this generation’s PS2 in terms of success, while the Wii is still trending above the PS2′s sales momentum nearly four years into the generation now and has far better, healthier software sales, with good games consistently turning a profit.

Nintendo’s the market leader now and they know it. They create a huge variety of types of games, which today’s ultra-conservative third parties do not, and try to evolve older properties while still creating new, fresh ones. They’ve maintained a focus on high quality titles and developed a well deserved reputation for the quality of their games, and they actually ADVERTISE their games as well. You can’t sell a game to your market if said market doesn’t know the game exists. Third parties have not done this, in largely writing the Wii off as a second class console this gen, blatantly lying about its hardware power to excuse extremely low budget efforts with half-assed graphics and niche gameplay, and then they complain when their intentionally lesser efforts with zero marketing fail to turn into big hits and blame Nintendo and the Wii audience for their own lack of effort to actually make and sell games on the platform.

Indie developers, on the other hand, have flocked to WiiWare as Nintendo has by far the most successful download service of the generation, having created a very healthy environment on which smaller developers can push their download titles where most PSN and XBLA releases sit on the server, the primary audiences for those platforms having bought the consoles for high-end graphic intensive shooters with unsustainable budgets, not small downloadable indie games with less than stellar graphics by comparison.

When third parties have made an effort on the Wii, they’ve been rewarded. But it takes inspiration and effort. It takes actually taking the Wii audience seriously instead of disrespecting them or pigeonholing them as “kids and grandmas,” as so many have tried to – the HD market has pigeonholed itself intentionally by pushing very few types of games as ‘the ideal,’ and the market on those consoles buying very, very few types of games and only a very few releases within those genres – as the Wii has the healthiest and most diverse market, buying ALL KINDS of games, just like previous market leaders’ audiences. We’ve seen a huge influx of exercise, half-assed “casual,” and party mini-game collection games on the Wii from third parties assuming and insisting that that’s all that sells, when the vast majority of these games go ignored, as most of them are half-assed and the customers are smart enough to look at them and realize they’re half-assed products. They want more variety than that, not a million different variations on more of the same, and third parties have continued to disrespect them. Put out a game like Monster Hunter 3? Nintendo backed it and it’s been Capcom’s big hit of 2010, the best selling console Monster Hunter ever, and the most successful game in the entire series in the west. Last year? Konami’s biggest success was Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which did well on the Wii and flopped on the PS2 and PSP. What was their response? Climax praised the game’s sales and was ready to get going on a second Wii Silent Hill, and instead Konami just announced plans for another HD Silent Hill – after the previous one flopped incredibly hard on those systems and lost a ton of money – which is now rumored to be an FPS as well. Suicidal behavior, even in the wake of massive HD failures and strong Wii success. If trends continue this generation, many of the major old guard third parties are simply going to collapse by the end of this generation because of their refusal to actually adapt to the changing market and recognize that Nintendo’s platforms are leading the market. The PS3 and 360 are not relevant or profitable for the vast majority of developers, publishers, or games in general.

By Dixon Francois Jr. on Aug 30, 2010

@Ponkotsu

You’re right. After seeing the game sales for Bayonetta, I believe the US and HD consoles are a hazardous market for Japanese developers and producers. Though Bayonetta is , unarguably, the best action game on the planet, so far, the sale numbers never lie. Thanks for sharing your enlightening views Ponkotsu, appreciate it

By Ponkotsu on Aug 30, 2010

No problem. It’s a shame it didn’t sell better than it did. With any luck, hopefully we’ll see Platinum Games and the Bayonetta director get a shot at doing some action games of that caliber on platforms where they’ll actually turn a profit. I’m really hoping we don’t see Platinum Games fold faster than Clover did, and as of far, they haven’t announced anything new for a Nintendo platform in well over a year now, having released both of their previously planned games for them. It doesn’t bode well, but hopefully we’ll see something from them on the 3DS sooner than later, and perhaps another Wii game or two yet. MadWorld found the profitable market they were seeking, after all.

By calamity on Aug 31, 2010

ponkotsu, you are a genius