The Decline of the Japanese Gaming Industry

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

You know what is the problem? JRPGs have lost or hell throw it's edge away and WRPGs have taken it. Japan has a strong infrastructure of starving artists looking for their moment to shine so they can get some character designs they made from a H-Manga and yet never uses it for a Console/Handheld JRPG that pushes teh content level to it's limits. I mean where are the softcore scenes that would fit perfectly with their artstyle? Where is the intrigue that made their JRPGs so enjoyable? That's the reason why industry is in decline

 

[Therumancer]

[The Super Robot Series not being ported has nothing to do with lack of interest and everything to do with lack of licensing. You've got robots from dozens of different shows owned by multiple studios. Add to that the fact that those properties already have license rights divvied up in the US, and it's just a Herculean task to get those stateside. It's telling that the one that did get ported featured all original/in-house robots. Maybe some day when Funimation absorbs 4kids, Bandai, etc. we'll get them, but don't count on it before then.

...

I've heard that also, and yes I do know about the 3DS game that made it to the US as an exception.

This series has been under discussion and "investigation" for a while, at the end of the day the stuff about licensing problems is pretty much bunk because the guys doing the games already covered themselves in their contracts to produce the product as it's own thing, and do whatever they want with it pretty much. They are not splitting the profits with say a dozen different companies, having paid once to use so and so IP in their game. What's more a lot of these games have been released throughout Asia, as opposed to simply within Japan itself. Other licensing deals are likewise unaffected because again, the rights were pretty much sold for that product flat out and what the company does with the product and where they choose to sell it is entirely their own business.

At the end of the day, it's one of those cases where if you've been following it, you'll see like forty different excuses, not just over "super robot" but for a lot of things. Whether it's "licensing" the cost of localization, an *ahem* lack of interest, or weird things like music rights, at the end of the day it all comes down to a simple "we do not want to release to the US" whether it's racism, laziness, or any one of a number of other things, the bottom line is that there is no real legitimate excuse. Something I'm pretty confident in saying because over the years I've run into a number of fanatics that have chased down various things to find out why they were not released, and generally found out that one thing was a lie, only to say "that's not true" to the company in a letter or something and then get another lie. At the end of the day the basic truth is that it's their IP and you can't force them to release something, and it's not like anyone is going to go to war over video games or anime or whatever, but at the same time with this kind of garbage going on the Japanese gaming industry shouldn't be surprised at it's own failures when it keeps a lot of it's desired products, albeit ones desired by a niche audience (I'm not claiming most of these titles would be massive "Call Of Duty" like successes, but would be profitable as long as the expectations were reasonable) to itself.

It's sort of like how if you check into things like the game "Cross Edge: Dash!", NIS released the original version of the game for the PS-3 in the US and it did okay. They decided not to release the updated "Dash!" version for the 360 because they wanted to keep the extra content "Japan exclusive". When this actually went down the guys at NIS-America were under the impression that the game WAS going to be released in the US and really couldn't give the fans (who actually wound up telling them, which says something about the fans) a diplomatic answer at the time for why this wasn't happening. It's also incidentally a game which featured a lot of video game character crossovers, much like Chaos Wars (which released for the PS-2 as a Gamestop exclusive within a hitch). The basic licensing was a non-issue, because that's taking care of before a game like this even sees production.

Then of course we had the whole "Soul Hackers" Fiasco which had me holding a grudge against Atlus. They decided to pull that one from US release for no particularly good reason, along with "Innocent Sin" before it. They later released US versions of both of these games many years later, but again it was pretty much the same thing "we want to keep it Japan only" combined with a sort of racist suggestion that "Shin Megami Tensei" was too much for us poor, dumb, Gaijin. This despite the fanatical fan base that carried the torch for these games and turned "Persona" into an international phenomena.....

At the end of the day you'll think what you want, I'll think what I want. I've been following this kind of stuff for years. You think it's about licensing, me, I think it's about arrogance, and really I think that's a big part of what is throttling the Japanese game industry. Back with the PS1 and PS2 eras they could get away with this kind of thing because Japan was the 500 ton colossus of gaming. Now they have competition, larger overseas markets than their domestic one, and they have largely continued to pull the same garbage. I've always thought this kind of thing should be pretty obvious given all the "gaffs" by Japanese spokespeople over the years letting the way they think through. Truthfully Japan might never be *the* undisputed power in gaming again with so many competitors, but it could be doing a lot better if it was more willing to lead with it's best (or most desired by niche audiences) products on the global marketplace. Japan is still more or less sitting on an RPG and Tactical RPG goldmine it's not tapping when you have RPG gamers all around the world starving due to so few companies even considering to make stuff like that.

 

[Drizzitdude]

Need more action titles and jrpgs

WTB dragons dogma 2

 

[Therumancer]

You know what is the problem? JRPGs have lost or hell throw it's edge away and WRPGs have taken it. Japan has a strong infrastructure of starving artists looking for their moment to shine so they can get some character designs they made from a H-Manga and yet never uses it for a Console/Handheld JRPG that pushes teh content level to it's limits. I mean where are the softcore scenes that would fit perfectly with their artstyle? Where is the intrigue that made their JRPGs so enjoyable? That's the reason why industry is in decline

Well, as I was pointing out in my previous post, a lot of the best RPGs made in Japan are never released to the western market. As a general rule they tend to only want to release stuff they intentionally made to be "westernized" or which fits their arrogant views of what Americans want (with deep games being beyond us). As a result we see tons of cinematized garbage with minimal gameplay, and fairly simplistic action RPG games tossed to the market, while the best stuff they do, like the enduring "Super Robot" series I mentioned doesn't ever get a western release. Albeit I think a lot of it is also the desire to keep the best stuff "Japan only" on a lot of levels out of a sense of racism.

The case isn't helped by the simple fact that Japan has generally been unwilling to seriously fight censors, which means that I think a lot of products that they might release, never do get released specifically because of the soft core stuff you mention which might get an overreaction. Japanese developers in general don't sit down and say "okay, well how does this go any further than some of these "R" rated movies? We'll put an "M" rating on it, but by your own standards you have no right to demand we change anything" which they really should.

Despite the evidence it literally took Japan decades to realize that Westerners could both handle, and were interested in the "Shin Megami Tensei" series, which I think was held back largely due to racism and the fact that a demand for that kind of thing here plays contrary to what they wanted to think about the US audience. It's certainly not the only series of it's kind over there either which would likely restore "JRPGs to their glory days" if released on a global scale.

I mean heck, look at what it took just to get a US version of Xenoblade... and really if they had released that right off it might have done a lot to change the gaming landscape. Likewise there is occasional bellyaching about how survival horror is "dead" but consider we never got the latest "Fatal Frame" game either.

 

[LaoJim]

The 3DS was still the highest selling system last year. Those games on the American side are mutli platform and have a higher install base. Pokemon X and Y were the highest selling system exclusive last year, compared to last of us. I'm not trying to pick on them but that is the only good system exclusive I can think of that would've sold well. America's gaming market isn't just based shooters, sports and big-budget open world games. That's why Indie games are thriving in America. That's why is number 8 unless there was supose to be a comma in between "big budget openworld"

Obviously by only looking at the top ten from each country I'm over-simplifying what is a highly controversial issue. I was surprised that Pokemon wasn't on the American list and had to double check that it included hand-held releases (which it did in fact seem to). I wasn't including every game in the top ten list in my summary of genres (otherwise I would have had to add the Kinect/Dancing genre to account for Just Dance as well). You're right that Minecraft does show the new shift towards Indie titles in the West (but not so much as far as I'm aware in Japan).

The issue is not so much that Western gamers don't buy Japanese games (If you look at the sales chart for this week, both Lightning Returns and Bravely Default) are riding high. They still do, although not in the numbers that they used to (at least as a percentage of the industry) and there is a core of dedicated gamer who like the Japanese approach to gaming and are motivated to seek out the obscure releases (as can be seen on this very thread).

If we come of to rhizhim's point...

the problem is that japanese developers are either too dumb or too xenophobic as to unlock their region locked games for other people to play outside of japan.

and when they want to develop games for the western market they end up using stereotypical characters and elements from western games and thus lose what made their japanese games so special in the first place.

Without wanting to throw around accusations of racism, there is a serious issue that Japanese gamers, by and large, don't buy Western games. Take any Japanese weekly sales chart: Like this one for example:

http://www.ricedigital.co.uk/weekly-japanese-game-charts/

19 out of 20 titles listed are home grown with only one international title (Terraria interestingly). I'd say that was fairly typical most weeks for what I've seen. Now I'll accept that the Japanese as a nation just plain don't like certain game types (FPS, and especially Modern-Military FPS with their roots in World War II games are hugely problematic), but I don't think this can explain it total. Take racing games for example, you have Ridge Racer, you have Gran Turismo and both sell well in Japan (well not the new Westernized RR but you know what I mean) on the other hand a lot of Western racing games, which lie somewhere in the middle, don't sell in Japan at all (regardless of their percieved merits by Western audiences). Similarly how much of PES success over FIFA in Japan is really about cultural preferences rather than the fact that it is sold by a Japanese company? What I'm arguing is that there is something in the way the Japanese game industry is set up, or in the mindsets of Japanese people that make it difficult for many Western games to be accepted. The problem is that Japanese companies often have to make the decision to make either a game for primarily for a Western audience or a game for primarily a Japanese audience (including a relatively smaller number of Western Japanophiles)

 

[LaoJim]

again, look at my original post and then back at me.

Ok, look sorry if I've offended you in some way. I think we are talking about two different issues here and I'm sorry if you feel that I've confused them together or not been clear about my meaning.

I've got no issue with Japanese companies taking games that were developed specifically for the Japanese market (culturally and in terms of preferred gameplay mechanics) and releasing them on the Western market. I'm completely against region-locking hardware, so Western gamers whose Japanese is good enough that they can enjoy imported games should be allowed to do so. For everyone else the company is going to need to provide translations of the games into at least English and this costs money. You may well be right and CEO's are missing out by not localizing games that would make that money back easily. I would ask why you think this is specifically to do with xenophobia, rather than a pure business decision? You may well be right that corporate executives are unable to make sensible decision about how popular a product might be in a different culture. (Hell EA and Activision can hardly do it in their own...) I'm all for gamers having more choice of games, especially when those games are outside of the mainstream.

The issue I'm trying to highlight is that there are two different markets out there. The Japanese market and the American/Western market and to appeal to the -mainstream- you have to produce very different products. Its not impossible to produce a game which appeals to both markets, but its getting more difficult, especially as Japanese players are not playing Western games and so the markets seem to be getting further apart. I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with being a Japanophile, I am merely using the word to indicate someone whose preferences put them firmly in the first camp rather than the second. If you don't like the term then I'm happy to change to another term for the same idea. Maybe I am, or seemed to be, underestimating the size of the Japanophile market, but I'm not sure that any of the games that are not being released in the West would be CoD/Assassin's Creed/GTA level sellers and thus unlikely to reverse the fact that the Japanese game industry seems to be in decline.

Anyway, I could clarify more, but I'm afraid I need to go out now, so I'm sorry if I've not fully addressed your points here.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

The problem is that Japanese companies often have to make the decision to make either a game for primarily for a Western audience or a game for primarily a Japanese audience (including a relatively smaller number of Western Japanophiles)

Except that's pretty much false; remember, nearly the entirety of console gaming was dominated by Japanese makers for over two decades and they never necessarily went "Western-centric" with their titles. Heck, the two best-selling games of the last console generation were Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. Wii and those clearly weren't Western-centric. Again, I can't help but feel this "Japanese decline" is a myth. Japanese game numbers didn't really decline, they just didn't explode in the same way their Western counterparts did.

 

[Saetha]

The problem is that Japanese companies often have to make the decision to make either a game for primarily for a Western audience or a game for primarily a Japanese audience (including a relatively smaller number of Western Japanophiles)

Except that's pretty much false; remember, nearly the entirety of console gaming was dominated by Japanese makers for over two decades and they never necessarily went "Western-centric" with their titles. Heck, the two best-selling games of the last console generation were Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. Wii and those clearly weren't Western-centric. Again, I can't help but feel this "Japanese decline" is a myth. Japanese game numbers didn't really decline, they just didn't explode in the same way their Western counterparts did.

JRPGs used to rule because there wasn't much else. Western gaming hadn't caught up yet. But then it made itself more accessible and the market soared - people who were turned off by the "weirdness" of JRPGs suddenly had something for them that wasn't ridiculously complicated or hard to get in to. I mean, if you haven't noticed, back when JRPGs were on top, gaming was still a "niche hobby" for weirdos or kids - the rise of Western gaming happened in relative proximity to gaming becoming a more acceptable hobby, and I don't think those two are unrelated. I have to agree with Lao Jim here - Japanese games once dominated because they were the only games capable of doing so. But now Western games have caught up. It only makes sense that Japanese games sell better in Japan, and Western games sell better in the West, because that's simply how entertainment works - the early years of gaming was a fluke, where Japanese games sold well in the West because Western games were still figuring themselves out.

It's not a "decline," not really. It's the market righting itself, fixing an anomaly that resulted from a young industry that didn't develop at the same rate in both the Japanese and Western market.

 

[LaoJim]

Again, I can't help but feel this "Japanese decline" is a myth. Japanese game numbers didn't really decline, they just didn't explode in the same way their Western counterparts did.

You can rephrase it as "being overtaken by the West" if you want, but you end up in the same place. Japan once made the most of the most popular games both at home and abroad, these days they just make the most popular ones at home.

Except that's pretty much false; remember, nearly the entirety of console gaming was dominated by Japanese makers for over two decades and they never necessarily went "Western-centric" with their titles.

The point I'm trying to make (probably badly) is that the two markets are getting further and further apart. Games were simpler a couple of decades ago, which I feel meant that some of the obvious contradictions between the Japanese and Western styles were not so obvious. Since the Japanese do not play many Western games, Japanese developers have been slow to include genuine improvements or new techniques from the West into their games (or possibly they simply don't like them or seem them as beneficial).

Take for example just one aspect, narrative. Now for certain games, like fighting games you could argue that they don't need narrative and I wouldn't have a problem with a fighting game that got rid of it completely (see for example Virtua-Fighter 5). But if its there, we can have a look at it and Street Fighter 4 is a good example of a typical, if particularly poor example. You get cut-scenes at the beginning and the end, but these do little or nothing to explain who the characters are or what the story is and the story has little connection who you are actually fighting in the arcade mode. On the other hand the Western developed Mortal Kombat has an incredibly detailed story mode, there are cut scenes before and after each fight letting you know who you are fighting and why and the story has a clear beginning middle and end and the things that happen in the middle largely make sense (its still cheesey hokum of course). Story was seen as being important enough that it got a large piece of the development budget. Soul Calibur V has a similar story mode, except that it lacked consistant cut-scenes, making do with a lot of artistic style sketches and the plot was, to me at least, incomprehensible and cringe-worthy. The worst offender, to my mind, was King of Fighters XIII which had a story mode, where nearly the whole story was told through text which scrolled about ten times slower than an average human would read and so became incredibly tedious very quickly as well as making the game feel incredibly cheap. You can look at the narrative in other genres, I'd say the stories in, for example, Final Fantasy XIII, Bayonetta, Child of Eden, or Sonic Generations were strangely told (from a Western perspective). Back in the day, when the whole story could be summed up as "the princess is in another tower" it didn't matter so much

Now I could have talked about other things. How for example Final Fantasy XIII is losing out to Skyrim and Dragon Age in the West because the Western games are offering open worlds and choice systems that let the players 'create' (to arguably a limited extent) their own stories, while FF is content to tell it's own. Twenty years ago both Eastern and Western gamers enjoyed side-scrollers like R-Type, but today its instructive to contrast say a Japanese schump, like DoDonPachi with say the mosquito levels from Rayman Legends. Similarly you could talk about the way in which, while many Western games strive for reality, certain Japanese games still feel 'gamey'. Consider the way in which Shadows of the Damned still uses bright glowing power-ups and (some admittedly interesting) game mechanics that don't have more than a passing acquaintance with logic (that can also be part of the charm of course).

 

[LaoJim]

It only makes sense that Japanese games sell better in Japan, and Western games sell better in the West, because that's simply how entertainment works

Thanks for your support.

Whats interesting though is if you look at the Japanese movie industry for example,
(See here http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/yearly/) you have a mixture of home grown films and the sort of Hollywood movies which tend to be popular all over the world. (And in this respect the Japanese film industry is probably a lot healthier than many other countries where you mainly have only Hollywood fare). Whats interesting about the games industry is that the Japanese charts tend to exclude Western games to a much larger extent.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, I do know a number of Japanese publishers have nothing but contempt for the global market as of late because they aren't dominating anymore. But with the growing number of non-Japanese (or non-Eastern) game developers from the US, Canada (especially Montreal), and the entirety of Europe, I cannot see how their domination was going to last.

Western games appeal to western cultures more than eastern cultures?
WHOA! YOU DON'T SAY?

So why did Japan own half the game market for so long? And why have they only declined in the last decade or so?

Japan enjoyed full-on game market control for nearly two decades thanks (broadly) to two things:
1) Nintendo rebooting the game console market following the Atari (western consoles) crash in the 80s, effectively giving Japanese developers a HUGE chunk of the popular game market share (Nintendo had a monopoly, and yes, behind closed doors, were colossal dicks to developers they didn't like).

2) Japan's advantage in the electronics manufacturing industry, especially in the 80s and 90s.
Due to their proximity and importance to the Japanese economy, Japanese markets were FLOODED with electronics in the 90s. This lowered the cost of entry into the gaming hobby for the average Japanese citizen, and greatly reduced the stigma associated with being any kind of "tech nerd".
Basically, Japan had a head-start in making gamer culture mainstream, relative to the rest of the game market; so it was THEIR game culture that dominated while it went uncontested.

Knowing that, there wasn't a single serious contender to Japan's console business until Microsoft entered the fray with the Xbox. By the early 2000s, with a few exceptions PC didn't really steer the global game market; consoles did.

But in the early 2000s Western tastes began to change. The arrival of Rockstar?s seminal open-world shooter, Grand Theft III, kickstarted a whole new genre of expansive sandbox games, while the increasing popularity of first-person shooters like Quake and Unreal led to big American franchises like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty set in grittily authentic landscapes.

GTA3 was a major gaming milestone and turning point for western developers.
Sadly, it wasn't Quake or Unreal series that lead the charge leading to today's major shooters; it was Halo.

I have a mouthful to say about Halo, and how it contributed heavily to Microsoft's rise and Japan's decline in the greater gaming market, but for now I have class to attend to.

The short, very dirty version: Halo saved the Xbox in its infancy, and with it, Microsoft's running in the console business. As evidenced by the performance of the 360, that turned out to be HIGHLY significant in the long run.

(Xbox vs PS2 was a joke; the Xbox was completely outclassed in terms of popularity by the PS2; but 360 vs PS3 is a MUCH closer matchup, and a large contributor to the rise of western games)

 

[Gigano]

Maybe it's less "decline" and more "stabilization"?

A business model where a company risks its survival on every AAA title it releases, because it invested all its assets in that title, is untenable. A stable and healthy balance between investment and profit will go a longer way in keeping you in business. Not polarizing things into a market of AAA+ franchises which play it incredibly safe, and one of low budget indie titles with niche appeal, could make for a pretty healthy market.

This isn't to say Japan hasn't lost its dominant position on the global scene; It most certainly has, as all other markets have grown. And while some companies might have found a better balance between investment and payout, others undoubtedly suffer from financial limitations. This isn't necessarily a sign that the market is in decline, though, it's probably still in better shape than most other markets, certainly in the long run.

Also, the Xbox One has yet to launch in Japan, meaning that it would make sense for Sony to prioritize getting a sufficient volume of PS4 consoles on the markets where they're competing. Worse than not selling a PS4 to a guy today is not selling one to a guy who can go buy an Xbox One instead, since then you won't be selling him one at all.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Also, the Xbox One has yet to launch in Japan, meaning that it would make sense for Sony to prioritize getting a sufficient volume of PS4 consoles on the markets where they're competing. Worse than not selling a PS4 to a guy today is not selling one to a guy who can go buy an Xbox One instead, since then you won't be selling him one at all.

I'm not sure why Microsoft would even bother with the Xbone in Japan, honestly.
Xbox as a brand has performed HORRIBLY in Japan; especially compared to the domestic competition.

Which isn't to say that there wasn't some individual success on the Xbox in Japan (From Software, I would kill in your name if you bring back and port Metal Wolf Chaos) but they're very VERY rare.

 

[Roxas1359]

I'm not sure why Microsoft would even bother with the Xbone in Japan, honestly.
Xbox as a brand has performed HORRIBLY in Japan; especially compared to the domestic competition.

Which isn't to say that there wasn't some individual success on the Xbox in Japan (From Software, I would kill in your name if you bring back and port Metal Wolf Chaos) but they're very VERY rare.

Well to be fair the original Xbox did do a bit well in Japan, still sold more than the 360 has in it's entire life in Japan. But then again everything was eclipsed by the PS2 in the 6th Gen, and it claimed the life of poor SEGA. *hugs Dreamcast*

 

[ChristopherT]

Some of the posts in here are just, wow. Someone starts rambling off problems with Japanese games, and I swear they're being cheeky silly butts talking about Western games, but nope, they're sincere. Oh well.

My problem is, it gets a little difficult to find good games when the talk is usually focused on Popular, Bad, or Buzz games. Not that popular or buzz worthy games are bad, they just either drown out some of the more easy to miss games, or simply take the show, the whole damn show. Perhaps fans of some less-popular games or game types need to be more vocal, myself included.

I miss my old school Survival Horror games, Resident Evil (pre 4), Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve, Fatal Frame (finally got around to getting the 3rd late last year). Corpse Party is fun, but it doesn't quite scratch that particular itch. I have not given up on JRPGs though, f' that, I'll stick it out with Resonance of Fate, Valkyria Chronicles, and last night I completed my first playthrough of Final Fantasy XIII-2 and enjoyed it a good deal, much better than XIII - and looking forward to the rather different Lightning Returns once I can afford it. May not be a long list, but I'll take what I can get.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Could there be a link with the collapse of their economy and their 'lost 10 years' on top of their ageing population which might suggest why the trend of decline seems so blatant in their games industry?

 

[Wyatt Wilkerson]

i think a lot of this can be linked to cultural norms within japan in general rather than just the game industry, if you consider trends within japan such as an adherence to "traditional" methods in multiple fields this leads to a sort of powerful stagnation which is to say you become really good at a certain thing but when the world moves on as the gunslingers say these fields are left in a catch 22 you change to suit the global markets ad risk catching trouble from your people at home or stay the same and yahtzee writes mean things about you.

 

[Someone Depressing]

It's blameable on many things, from the Nintendo 64's blatant abuse of develops, with its ridiculous limitations from Nintendo, the litle nostalgia-drugged child it is, didn't want to use discs. That was probably one of the first stepping stones of demise.

The other is probably Japan's big obsession with mobile games. Did you know that there's a Devil Tuner sequel? Sure, it's spiritual at best, but it's about half as long as the second, and it's just as good... on a mobile. Literally. Not a console or even PC. A mobile.

Another is probably JRPGs just never being able to catch up. JRPGs could certainly do with the freedom that WPRGs employ, but it should keep the narrative it beholds. The Shin Megami Tensei games are good at doing this.