Mass Effect has sold about 10 million over the entire series. FF XIII sold 6.65. So no, FFXIII hasn't sold more than the entire ME series. . .but you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who says FF XIII is the loser in this comparison.
That, and Bioware heavvvilllyy marketed ME3 as a "great time to get into the series". Not necessarily successfully, but they did.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I actually favor a lot of "smaller" Japanese publishers--for example, my favorite Japanese publisher, SNK, easily among my favorite publishes anywhere.
I don't think it's worth discounting since if I discounted smaller American or British publishers and developers, that would get rid of a lot of my favorites on that end either. *shrug*
There's a gap, I guess. Despite being treated as the Second Coming of Jesus here, Uncharted isn't exactly setting Japan on fire, and that's one of the more popular major western franchises to breakthrough over there, along with AC, right? Bioware, for example, to the best of my knowledge is a medium-size blip that is very hit or miss. Sound familiar? *cough*SE*cough*
As has been said many times in this topic alone, the majority of japanese people don't buy video games period. Using a game like Uncharted as an analogue to Square-Enix's output is glossing over the very real trends that dominate japanese media consumption.
True, I meant that in comparitive terms among the gaming community that does exist and does buy games. It's the only thing I can personally reference.
Honestly, I'm not exactly convinced a majority of Americans--313 million of them--buy games either. Certainly not by anything we'd call "regularly".
And I'm sorry, this is from 2008. I'd imagine the number has dipped a bit, but it should be largely the same. I remember seeing a similarly shocking report a while back that went something like 1-in-X number of Americans identify themselves as a Gamer, where X was a single digit number.
I have to strongly disagree with that. Even with the ongoing economic slump, smart phone and tablet devices had to have cranked that number even higher, at least in America. In 2008, I had a 360 and a DS to game on; now I have those and two different portable devices I can game on, all of which I managed to purchase with a little patience and good spending habits despite being pretty broke most of the time.
And that's besides the point of what I want to know from this thread. What I really want to know is why Japan keeps withholding Metal Wolf Chaos from us. OK, fine, they think it might offend us. But hasn't it occurred to anybody who might be in a position to port it over here to actually ask Americans if they would be offended? Because it's the exact kind of Japanese quirkiness I love and we almost never get any more. Instead we get all sorts of lame garbage that's either tedious, poorly written, or terribly localized.
Seriously, I want be a President flying a giant war machine.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Metal Wolf Chaos sounds like Bad Dudes on meth, roids, and metal.
I actually favor a lot of "smaller" Japanese publishers--for example, my favorite Japanese publisher, SNK, easily among my favorite publishes anywhere.
I don't think it's worth discounting since if I discounted smaller American or British publishers and developers, that would get rid of a lot of my favorites on that end either. *shrug*
There's a gap, I guess. Despite being treated as the Second Coming of Jesus here, Uncharted isn't exactly setting Japan on fire, and that's one of the more popular major western franchises to breakthrough over there, along with AC, right? Bioware, for example, to the best of my knowledge is a medium-size blip that is very hit or miss. Sound familiar? *cough*SE*cough*
As has been said many times in this topic alone, the majority of japanese people don't buy video games period. Using a game like Uncharted as an analogue to Square-Enix's output is glossing over the very real trends that dominate japanese media consumption.
True, I meant that in comparitive terms among the gaming community that does exist and does buy games. It's the only thing I can personally reference.
Honestly, I'm not exactly convinced a majority of Americans--313 million of them--buy games either. Certainly not by anything we'd call "regularly".
And I'm sorry, this is from 2008. I'd imagine the number has dipped a bit, but it should be largely the same. I remember seeing a similarly shocking report a while back that went something like 1-in-X number of Americans identify themselves as a Gamer, where X was a single digit number.
I have to strongly disagree with that. Even with the ongoing economic slump, smart phone and tablet devices had to have cranked that number even higher, at least in America. In 2008, I had a 360 and a DS to game on; now I have those and two different portable devices I can game on, all of which I managed to purchase with a little patience and good spending habits despite being pretty broke most of the time.
And that's besides the point of what I want to know from this thread. What I really want to know is why Japan keeps withholding Metal Wolf Chaos from us. OK, fine, they think it might offend us. But hasn't it occurred to anybody who might be in a position to port it over here to actually ask Americans if they would be offended? Because it's the exact kind of Japanese quirkiness I love and we almost never get any more. Instead we get all sorts of lame garbage that's either tedious, poorly written, or terribly localized.
Seriously, I want be a President flying a giant war machine.
I say it's likely dipped because literally every single publisher's fiscal year end report that I have read has mentioned a decrease in sales. It seems across the board.
But I guess I also didn't take into account the rise from mobile gaming. I would still bet it's dipped slightly, though.
Japan is insular, yes, but their general population's interests align pretty well with the western market. Japanese devs develop for japan primarily.
I agree with this point and want to discuss a point related to it.
A lot of westerner's seem to believe that many of the recognisable brands are developed for westerners. They aren't, they never were, they never will be. They were developed for japan and westerners happen to like it too. They became recognisable because countries outside japan liked them enough for japanese publishers to continue releasing the sequels outside their own country. But they still developed those sequels for japanese consumers first.
It is insane to believe that a company or publisher in another country honestly spends millions of dollars developing a game they never intended to sell well enough to recoup costs in their own country. No other publisher on the planet works like that. Why is japan considered special?
Companies develop stuff for export all the time. Less often in media, admittedly, but an export-centric focus is not terribly uncommon.
I actually favor a lot of "smaller" Japanese publishers--for example, my favorite Japanese publisher, SNK, easily among my favorite publishes anywhere.
I don't think it's worth discounting since if I discounted smaller American or British publishers and developers, that would get rid of a lot of my favorites on that end either. *shrug*
There's a gap, I guess. Despite being treated as the Second Coming of Jesus here, Uncharted isn't exactly setting Japan on fire, and that's one of the more popular major western franchises to breakthrough over there, along with AC, right? Bioware, for example, to the best of my knowledge is a medium-size blip that is very hit or miss. Sound familiar? *cough*SE*cough*
As has been said many times in this topic alone, the majority of japanese people don't buy video games period. Using a game like Uncharted as an analogue to Square-Enix's output is glossing over the very real trends that dominate japanese media consumption.
True, I meant that in comparitive terms among the gaming community that does exist and does buy games. It's the only thing I can personally reference.
Honestly, I'm not exactly convinced a majority of Americans--313 million of them--buy games either. Certainly not by anything we'd call "regularly".
And I'm sorry, this is from 2008. I'd imagine the number has dipped a bit, but it should be largely the same. I remember seeing a similarly shocking report a while back that went something like 1-in-X number of Americans identify themselves as a Gamer, where X was a single digit number.
I have to strongly disagree with that. Even with the ongoing economic slump, smart phone and tablet devices had to have cranked that number even higher, at least in America. In 2008, I had a 360 and a DS to game on; now I have those and two different portable devices I can game on, all of which I managed to purchase with a little patience and good spending habits despite being pretty broke most of the time.
And that's besides the point of what I want to know from this thread. What I really want to know is why Japan keeps withholding Metal Wolf Chaos from us. OK, fine, they think it might offend us. But hasn't it occurred to anybody who might be in a position to port it over here to actually ask Americans if they would be offended? Because it's the exact kind of Japanese quirkiness I love and we almost never get any more. Instead we get all sorts of lame garbage that's either tedious, poorly written, or terribly localized.
Seriously, I want be a President flying a giant war machine.
You should have been grateful for presidential junk groping back when you had it.
But yes, playing =/= buying. Seriously. Especially given the huge family market in this industry.
Japan is insular, yes, but their general population's interests align pretty well with the western market. Japanese devs develop for japan primarily.
I agree with this point and want to discuss a point related to it.
A lot of westerner's seem to believe that many of the recognisable brands are developed for westerners. They aren't, they never were, they never will be. They were developed for japan and westerners happen to like it too. They became recognisable because countries outside japan liked them enough for japanese publishers to continue releasing the sequels outside their own country. But they still developed those sequels for japanese consumers first.
It is insane to believe that a company or publisher in another country honestly spends millions of dollars developing a game they never intended to sell well enough to recoup costs in their own country. No other publisher on the planet works like that. Why is japan considered special?
Companies develop stuff for export all the time. Less often in media, admittedly, but an export-centric focus is not terribly uncommon.
Really? I'd assume more often in media if you take the US out of the equation. Any movie that's made in <not america> never intends to recoup it's costs in it's home country alone.
Japan is insular, yes, but their general population's interests align pretty well with the western market. Japanese devs develop for japan primarily.
I agree with this point and want to discuss a point related to it.
A lot of westerner's seem to believe that many of the recognisable brands are developed for westerners. They aren't, they never were, they never will be. They were developed for japan and westerners happen to like it too. They became recognisable because countries outside japan liked them enough for japanese publishers to continue releasing the sequels outside their own country. But they still developed those sequels for japanese consumers first.
It is insane to believe that a company or publisher in another country honestly spends millions of dollars developing a game they never intended to sell well enough to recoup costs in their own country. No other publisher on the planet works like that. Why is japan considered special?
Companies develop stuff for export all the time. Less often in media, admittedly, but an export-centric focus is not terribly uncommon.
Really? I'd assume more often in media if you take the US out of the equation. Any movie that's made in <not america> never intends to recoup it's costs in it's home country alone.
Well, it's an unrelated field, but in Russia, pretty much all nation-wide release films are intended to be circulated throughout the CIS--minimal language translations, audience that can almost immediately relate, simply popularity trends. Same goes for Russian games (and similarly games coming out of Ukraine and Belarus have to succeed in Russia, or at least do modestly well).
Japan is insular, yes, but their general population's interests align pretty well with the western market. Japanese devs develop for japan primarily.
I agree with this point and want to discuss a point related to it.
A lot of westerner's seem to believe that many of the recognisable brands are developed for westerners. They aren't, they never were, they never will be. They were developed for japan and westerners happen to like it too. They became recognisable because countries outside japan liked them enough for japanese publishers to continue releasing the sequels outside their own country. But they still developed those sequels for japanese consumers first.
It is insane to believe that a company or publisher in another country honestly spends millions of dollars developing a game they never intended to sell well enough to recoup costs in their own country. No other publisher on the planet works like that. Why is japan considered special?
Companies develop stuff for export all the time. Less often in media, admittedly, but an export-centric focus is not terribly uncommon.
Really? I'd assume more often in media if you take the US out of the equation. Any movie that's made in <not america> never intends to recoup it's costs in it's home country alone.
I was specifically thinking of America, simply because I don't really have any idea how much non-Hollywood/British films are distributed internationally in Europe (like, say, Dutch-produced films showing up in Italian theaters, as an example.) Maybe someone living on the Continent could weigh in and confirm/tell me I'm talking out my ass.
I do know that a number of foreign countries have "locally produced content" laws regulating how much (media) stuff can be imported from elsewhere - Australia and Canada are the two that immediately come to mind - which, when combined with language barriers, would seem to comprise pretty high barriers to entry for content intentionally developed for export. I dunno.
Edit: It's also likely that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to produce content (again, thinking primarily of movies & television here) overseas for various reasons, most notably that your average Dutch movie star/director is probably not charging the money that Bruce Willis/Ridley Scott does.
Edit The Second: Plus, one makes the movie they have the budget for. If you're not going to get a huge distribution, you don't spend eighty million on CGI, and that's that.
EDIT: More topically, the Japanese have probably been raking it in for the last....30 years at least, with all the media (TV, films, music) they export to Taiwan every year, without fail. Aside from the contracting-out translation costs, which I imagine is done locally, pure profit. And they've been doing it longer than we've had fair elections.
You can watch The Nanny, Seinfeld and The Simpsons too, but Japanese TV is a juggernaut. We even get their commercials sometimes. The Chinese are competing a little too, kind of recently, CCTV stuff--with some weird stuff, like a soap-opera set in the People's Liberation Army--but they got a ways to catch up.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2012
I was very much restricting those comments to video games in my head, even though I didn't specifically say that. It's understandable that it was misunderstood, nobody is a mindreader, but I've clarified now, so just treat them as if they are from now on.
I also changed country to culture a bit later, after realising that's what I was thinking the whole time. So treat it as if it's culture too.
The point is...economic rather than cultural differences underpin the changes in the japanese gaming industry.
And they're not making games specifically for westerners or even particularly trying to. They're making them for their own relevant cultural "domestic market" ie most of asia and exporting the ones that work in western markets. Taking ideas from western games does not mean they are developing them for westerners. Western games developers have been influenced by japanese game mechanics too, so that's two way and doesn't mean much. I don't think anyone actually claimed this in this thread incidentally. But I see it a lot in big threads about japanese games and it's something that has bothered me for a while. I just figured it was the right thread to bring it up as a side point.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
There may be a little too much gloom and doom in this re: the state of the games market in Japan, and the Oricon article about AKB48 paints an image that isn't necessarily representative. If you look at, say, iTunes top singles right now, you have to go down to position 14 before you hit AKB48. J-Pop has taken a huge hit in the last few years, sure, but I would blame that mostly on the Korean invasion.
But, back to games. I moved back to the states in September of 2010. So, granted, that's been a year and a half or so.
When I was living in Japan, I was in Kawasaki, which is not exactly a subculture haven. My station was Mukougaoka-yuen, which was solidly in the middle of a residential area.
There were FIVE stores that sold videogames within 3 blocks of the station. One was a Book-Off and another was the local department store, sure, but the other three were speciality media stores. Only one of those stores was a creepy otaku sort of hangout. There were also two arcades.
I do think that the Japanese industry is correcting itself from the post-Wii boom, which followed the brain-training-fueled DS boom of a few years ago, so I'm not surprised that they're posting weaker numbers right now, but they're not doing a repeat of '84 in the states.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
There may be a little too much gloom and doom in this re: the state of the games market in Japan, and the Oricon article about AKB48 paints an image that isn't necessarily representative. If you look at, say, iTunes top singles right now, you have to go down to position 14 before you hit AKB48. J-Pop has taken a huge hit in the last few years, sure, but I would blame that mostly on the Korean invasion.
But, back to games. I moved back to the states in September of 2010. So, granted, that's been a year and a half or so.
When I was living in Japan, I was in Kawasaki, which is not exactly a subculture haven. My station was Mukougaoka-yuen, which was solidly in the middle of a residential area.
There were FIVE stores that sold videogames within 3 blocks of the station. One was a Book-Off and another was the local department store, sure, but the other three were speciality media stores. Only one of those stores was a creepy otaku sort of hangout. There were also two arcades.
I do think that the Japanese industry is correcting itself from the post-Wii boom, which followed the brain-training-fueled DS boom of a few years ago, so I'm not surprised that they're posting weaker numbers right now, but they're not doing a repeat of '84 in the states.
Well, I don't think anyone would claim it's 84 all over again. But I wouldn't mind seeing Raccoon City buried in a landfill based on name alone.
EDIT: More topically, the Japanese have probably been raking it in for the last....30 years at least, with all the media (TV, films, music) they export to Taiwan every year, without fail. Aside from the contracting-out translation costs, which I imagine is done locally, pure profit. And they've been doing it longer than we've had fair elections.
You can watch The Nanny, Seinfeld and The Simpsons too, but Japanese TV is a juggernaut. We even get their commercials sometimes. The Chinese are competing a little too, kind of recently, CCTV stuff--with some weird stuff, like a soap-opera set in the People's Liberation Army--but they got a ways to catch up.
Well, the past decade has seen competition from Korean entertainment. Japanese media has been in a slow decline, even in Taiwan. But I suppose it's heartening to think that almost everything Japan related ends up in Taiwan sooner or later. The same can't be said about some of other of Japan's export destinations.
Well not exactly relating to this, but in Turkmenistan the main types of games we get are Japanese. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition as well as Final Fantasy are extremely popular and retailers cannot keep up with the demands for both Japanese and Chinese type games. I don't think that Japan is "going down" but rather moving away from the West into other streams such as the Middle East and Central Asia where there is no Western game penetration. The only western games we did get were Age of Empires series, Total War and Civilization. Nothing that was too "american" was brought in ever. I personally did not know that Mass Effect and others like it existed until I got here.
Here in Canada, I find the glut of Western games to be off putting and wished there were more chinese/japanese games instead.
Can I interest you in Final Combat? TF2 ripoff with Moe Medic.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Well not exactly relating to this, but in Turkmenistan the main types of games we get are Japanese. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition as well as Final Fantasy are extremely popular and retailers cannot keep up with the demands for both Japanese and Chinese type games. I don't think that Japan is "going down" but rather moving away from the West into other streams such as the Middle East and Central Asia where there is no Western game penetration. The only western games we did get were Age of Empires series, Total War and Civilization. Nothing that was too "american" was brought in ever. I personally did not know that Mass Effect and others like it existed until I got here.
Here in Canada, I find the glut of Western games to be off putting and wished there were more chinese/japanese games instead.
Can I interest you in Final Combat? TF2 ripoff with Moe Medic.
I doubt this will come out as the government is more weary of games with guns.
Which government? China or Canada?
More to the point though: Why do you want more Chinese/Japanese games?
That 70% quote is grossly misleading. I mean "so ridiculously out-of-whack as to be useless." It essentially includes every possible form of interaction that could be considered a video game. And that is a gross misrepresentation of the video game market. For instance: that 70% figure includes 6 year olds that go to the website on the back of a cereal box to play "Where's Lucky's Charms" or whatever. It would also included my mom, who has only ever really played Bejeweled and Solitaire (i.e. has never bought a video game for herself). And once your survey starts including people that play Solitare on their computer you know you've got a messed up survey.
You know what figure is more telling in that survey? That 3% of the population owns 2 or more consoles (...in 2008). I can't find fancy new Nielsen surveys, but the one from 2008 puts modern gen console ownership around 50 million. Or there's this, where:
U.S. population 305,529,237
Gamers 169,900,000 (55.61%)
Non-gamers 135,629,237 (44.39%)
Gamers w/out current-gen console 88,857,700 (29.08% - more than half of the "gamers")
U.S. population w/out current-gen console 224,486,937 (73.47%)
Which of course, neglects (supposedly dying) PC markets and mobile markets. But as far as I understand it, mobile devices are all the rage in Japan and a vast majority of people have mobile phones capable of ridiculous feats, including playing all manner or random games.
Also: many games made in Europe are created for an international/cross-border release. This is even true of things like STALKER, where GSC would never hope to recoup the costs solely from the Ukrainian market. Or CD Projekt RED (with The Witcher) who do not market explicitly towards Poles (even though the game's mythology integrates Polish mythology). Or Paradox, who would never hope to rely on the Swedish market alone. Or Ubisoft. Or Vivendi. Or Bohemia Interactive (Flashpoint and its successors).
In fact the only markets that can support mainstream releases (i.e. not niche "download this from our website for a 70 koruna donation!") are the (now mostly) interchangeable UK/US/CAN/AUS markets, Germany, Russia (if they actually made things instead of pirating them) and Japan (and arguably France and South Korea). China may work its way there eventually. Everyone else essentially defaults to catering to an international market for a profit.
Also I'm not all that knowledgable about the actual state of developer/publisher interaction in Japan. But I do have a question:
There's no doubt that publishers generally impact the development of games, but for most of the publishing of games happening in this thread (i.e. games created outside of Japan and being published my a major Japanese company): isn't the content going to be, for the most part, set in stone? I know they've had interesting Halo and Half-Life arcade things, but for the games themselves what can the Japanese publisher really impact? The Japanese publishers aren't financing the game, so aside from localization what possible creative control could they really assert?
EDIT: More topically, the Japanese have probably been raking it in for the last....30 years at least, with all the media (TV, films, music) they export to Taiwan every year, without fail. Aside from the contracting-out translation costs, which I imagine is done locally, pure profit. And they've been doing it longer than we've had fair elections.
You can watch The Nanny, Seinfeld and The Simpsons too, but Japanese TV is a juggernaut. We even get their commercials sometimes. The Chinese are competing a little too, kind of recently, CCTV stuff--with some weird stuff, like a soap-opera set in the People's Liberation Army--but they got a ways to catch up.
Well, the past decade has seen competition from Korean entertainment. Japanese media has been in a slow decline, even in Taiwan. But I suppose it's heartening to think that almost everything Japan related ends up in Taiwan sooner or later. The same can't be said about some of other of Japan's export destinations.
I mean, it used to be too easy in Taiwan. Who are the competitors now? Well, there's obviously the domestic firms, which do decently well.
Korea? No, not really. The most prolific Korean television programming is probably dramas which are also popular in Japan, and they're competing with, and losing to stuff from Taiwan, Japan, and yes, China. Japan's share declining is probably just a reflection of the fact that they were, and still are, a huge force in Taiwanese television, which has developed a competent domestic studio base within my lifetime. We have way less British television as well (goodbye, AXN), but I wouldn't base the decreasing about of British TV in Taiwan as a sign of British TV worldwide (funny it happened just as British shows were being remade into huge successes in the US). Japan really couldn't go any further (plus, the government has its own perogative, or it better have if it wants to retain the appearance of competence). I wouldn't be surprised if more people watched Kasou Taishou in Taiwan than every other Korean show combined.
Frankly, I wish Korean dramas would beat stuff that involves puppets wearing clothes from the Yuan Dynasty. I see no reason why they wouldn't. But people like those way more than Korean programs.
Now, Korean electronics are doing really, really well. Samsung is huge over there. But in the media front, they're losing. New Chinese movies regularly beat Korean ones, especially anything that gets heavy coverage. Hell, Chinese films get stopped because they hit the import quota often (I know 1911 did, and that flopped, from what I heard). Is there even a quota for Korean films? The most popular Korean movies are almost universally older films (Old Boy came on TV during at least two different weeks when I was there last). Which is not to say Korean television is bad or are their movies. The one's I've seen are great. They either just market them really bad, or the airwave companies and government are biased. Last time I visited, I watched an ungodly amount of television, and I didn't see a single commercial for a Korean film. Did South Korea not make any films up to and during summer of 2011? I doubt that.
They need to look at what the Japanese did thirty years ago, I guess. Or lobby the government to promote them more. Korean games are more popular than Chinese games, but that's not saying much.
Japanese feature-length films are probably the weakest "link" in the chain, and they are still prolific--especially the easy money gimme classics (anything made by Kurosawa or anything with a Toho opening from more than 20 years ago--a lot of which are NOT classics, in retrospect). In the meantime, Korean TV studios wish their programs were as popular in Taipei as they are in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, Doraemon is still more popular than the Christian God. Japan could vanish in the the mist, and they'd still market everything you could buy at a convenience store with Doraemon.
I am getting waayyy off topic, but really, what Korea needs is their Doraemon. Someway, somehow. Once you have a Doraemon, you're a juggernaut. Until recently, the American Doraemon was probably Snoopy, I'd wager, but the Koreans have yet to clear that hurdle.
Well not exactly relating to this, but in Turkmenistan the main types of games we get are Japanese. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition as well as Final Fantasy are extremely popular and retailers cannot keep up with the demands for both Japanese and Chinese type games. I don't think that Japan is "going down" but rather moving away from the West into other streams such as the Middle East and Central Asia where there is no Western game penetration. The only western games we did get were Age of Empires series, Total War and Civilization. Nothing that was too "american" was brought in ever. I personally did not know that Mass Effect and others like it existed until I got here.
Here in Canada, I find the glut of Western games to be off putting and wished there were more chinese/japanese games instead.
Can I interest you in Final Combat? TF2 ripoff with Moe Medic.
I doubt this will come out as the government is more weary of games with guns.
Which government? China or Canada?
More to the point though: Why do you want more Chinese/Japanese games?
Turkmenistan.
Because that is what I grew up with. I prefer playing them because when I go home on vacations and after my studies here in Canada are over I'll go back, and the only type of games are what comes through Japan/China. Thus I would find no use playing MW3 (or whatever) because I'll stop anyway when I go back. FF XIII-2 is selling excellently in Turkmenistan (even though like 40% of the country can even afford games) and others I don't remember now.
The main reason I came into the thread was that it might be a downfall in the West but in other places, it is rising and stimulating our own game industries. Kazakhstan has one with imported Japanese/Chinese workers to help set it up.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
Ah yes, the game that redrew the Taiwanese PC gaming industry, spawned its own supporting industry, even a TV series (although personally I thought the competing series Xuan-Yuan Sword was much better, at least early on). Exported to Japan, and by all accounts bombed. Even within Asia, import-export of games is a dicey proposition.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
Ah yes, the game that redrew the Taiwanese PC gaming industry, spawned its own supporting industry, even a TV series (although personally I thought the competing series Xuan-Yuan Sword was much better, at least early on). Exported to Japan, and by all accounts bombed. Even within Asia, import-export of games is a dicey proposition.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me in the least. It came out in Japan in 1999. Shit, what a mistake. Hell, in 1995, it would have had a tough time, but 1999? Only on the PC?
They could have fucked it up worse, I guess. They could have made it a Mac game, but that would have required the 5 people who owned Macs in 1999 in Taiwan to have developed it.
One thing though--it did very well in China. Then again, it was 1996, like there was a lot of competition in China. A third of a million in the copies sold in China (forget however many were pirated back in 1996), that year? Outstanding.
EDIT: I wonder how it did South Korea. I don't think it ever even got distributed or translated legitimately. If it did, it bombed. If they didn't, it's too late now. That was one of the tricks the Japanese did--they sent stuff to Taiwan immediately (I remember watching Stand Alone Complex in Taiwan the same year it came out in Japan), and then they show it forever. Akazukin Chacha is still on TV in Taiwan, even though the children who watched it probably grew up and had their own children. Hope they're watching it too.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
Maybe they are Taiwanese games, all I know is that they come through China to get to Turkmenistan.
Yes I did play that, it was the first game that was localized in Uyghur which is similar to Turkmen except its in Cyrillic rather than Arabic scripted. The guy who ran the store, whose still there and is no a somewhat larger chain was a Uyghur and he imported Chinese to translate the games. It was pretty awesome BTW, I haven't played it in a long time.
Sounds about right. I mean, I don't know the logistics, but seeing how Turkmenistan is landlocked, getting it direct from Taiwan wouldn't do anyone any good.
Chinese RPGs are a pretty new development (they get called that because they are, in fact, Chinese language RPGs--the same way only some English RPGs are from the UK, though this is pretty obvious of course), so the big names of the past are largely, even exclusively Taiwanese. There's also the fact that they might not have been legitimate copies, but whatever, you got to play them.
The fact that it was localized is also good to know. FFVII was the first Final Fantasy to have gotten localized (I'm pretty sure it beat FFVI in that regard, even though that came out in Taiwan earlier). It takes a big title to make that jump. It was so huge, Taiwan's the one other country that got that awful Super Famicom "port" of it, hah.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
Ah yes, the game that redrew the Taiwanese PC gaming industry, spawned its own supporting industry, even a TV series (although personally I thought the competing series Xuan-Yuan Sword was much better, at least early on). Exported to Japan, and by all accounts bombed. Even within Asia, import-export of games is a dicey proposition.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me in the least. It came out in Japan in 1999. Shit, what a mistake. Hell, in 1995, it would have had a tough time, but 1999? Only on the PC?
They could have fucked it up worse, I guess. They could have made it a Mac game, but that would have required the 5 people who owned Macs in 1999 in Taiwan to have developed it.
One thing though--it did very well in China. Then again, it was 1996, like there was a lot of competition in China. A third of a million in the copies sold in China (forget however many were pirated back in 1996), that year? Outstanding.
EDIT: I wonder how it did South Korea. I don't think it ever even got distributed or translated legitimately. If it did, it bombed. If they didn't, it's too late now. That was one of the tricks the Japanese did--they sent stuff to Taiwan immediately (I remember watching Stand Alone Complex in Taiwan the same year it came out in Japan), and then they show it forever. Akazukin Chacha is still on TV in Taiwan, even though the children who watched it probably grew up and had their own children. Hope they're watching it too.
AFAIK, it never made it to Korea. In those days all eyes were still on Japan. Those puppets you mentioned? Yeah, even that was exported to Japan... then to the US, of all places. Take a wild guess at how it did... Oh well. I used to dream of winning the lottery and licensing the Okami engine to do a full remake of the first three Xuan Yuan Sword in all their ink drawn glory. The art direction on those were truly stunning for the time.
ChaCha is too old, although toddlers might still watch it. Crayon Shin Chan on the other hand... yes, the kids who watched that have kids of their own now, and they all watch it together. Which brings us back... I don't know anybody in the US, outside of hardcore animefans, who are remotely familiar with Crayon Shin Chan or even Chibi Maruko Chan. Yet these are bread and butter money makers.
Shinchan got a comedic reinterpretation from Adult Swim a while back, but Maruko not so much.
I heard you can watch those awful puppet dramas in certain parts of California. Good riddance. I think even my family is tired of them.
Kasou Taishou is timeless though. If South Korea did their version of that, it'd be watched like gangbusters.
I never played Xuan Yuan Sword much at all. My loss, I imagine, but really, after Legend, it was all about Rich, especially 3 and 4. Nomadic, you ever play the Rich games? They were sort of like Monopoly--turn-based financial domination simulator with a very good sense of humor.
EDIT: Also, hearing the opening to Maruko Chan in English coming out of a DDR Machine (I think it was DDR) was the last thing I thought I'd experience when I came to the US.
Well not exactly relating to this, but in Turkmenistan the main types of games we get are Japanese. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition as well as Final Fantasy are extremely popular and retailers cannot keep up with the demands for both Japanese and Chinese type games. I don't think that Japan is "going down" but rather moving away from the West into other streams such as the Middle East and Central Asia where there is no Western game penetration. The only western games we did get were Age of Empires series, Total War and Civilization. Nothing that was too "american" was brought in ever. I personally did not know that Mass Effect and others like it existed until I got here.
Here in Canada, I find the glut of Western games to be off putting and wished there were more chinese/japanese games instead.
Can I interest you in Final Combat? TF2 ripoff with Moe Medic.
I doubt this will come out as the government is more weary of games with guns.
Which government? China or Canada?
More to the point though: Why do you want more Chinese/Japanese games?
Turkmenistan.
Because that is what I grew up with. I prefer playing them because when I go home on vacations and after my studies here in Canada are over I'll go back, and the only type of games are what comes through Japan/China. Thus I would find no use playing MW3 (or whatever) because I'll stop anyway when I go back. FF XIII-2 is selling excellently in Turkmenistan (even though like 40% of the country can even afford games) and others I don't remember now.
The main reason I came into the thread was that it might be a downfall in the West but in other places, it is rising and stimulating our own game industries. Kazakhstan has one with imported Japanese/Chinese workers to help set it up.
Do Japanese development houses actually have localization agreements and distribution, or is it just importers (or maybe something even less legitimate?). Do you have sales numbers?
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That, and Bioware heavvvilllyy marketed ME3 as a "great time to get into the series". Not necessarily successfully, but they did.
I have to strongly disagree with that. Even with the ongoing economic slump, smart phone and tablet devices had to have cranked that number even higher, at least in America. In 2008, I had a 360 and a DS to game on; now I have those and two different portable devices I can game on, all of which I managed to purchase with a little patience and good spending habits despite being pretty broke most of the time.
And that's besides the point of what I want to know from this thread. What I really want to know is why Japan keeps withholding Metal Wolf Chaos from us. OK, fine, they think it might offend us. But hasn't it occurred to anybody who might be in a position to port it over here to actually ask Americans if they would be offended? Because it's the exact kind of Japanese quirkiness I love and we almost never get any more. Instead we get all sorts of lame garbage that's either tedious, poorly written, or terribly localized.
Seriously, I want be a President flying a giant war machine.
I say it's likely dipped because literally every single publisher's fiscal year end report that I have read has mentioned a decrease in sales. It seems across the board.
But I guess I also didn't take into account the rise from mobile gaming. I would still bet it's dipped slightly, though.
Companies develop stuff for export all the time. Less often in media, admittedly, but an export-centric focus is not terribly uncommon.
You should have been grateful for presidential junk groping back when you had it.
But yes, playing =/= buying. Seriously. Especially given the huge family market in this industry.
Really? I'd assume more often in media if you take the US out of the equation. Any movie that's made in <not america> never intends to recoup it's costs in it's home country alone.
Well, it's an unrelated field, but in Russia, pretty much all nation-wide release films are intended to be circulated throughout the CIS--minimal language translations, audience that can almost immediately relate, simply popularity trends. Same goes for Russian games (and similarly games coming out of Ukraine and Belarus have to succeed in Russia, or at least do modestly well).
I was specifically thinking of America, simply because I don't really have any idea how much non-Hollywood/British films are distributed internationally in Europe (like, say, Dutch-produced films showing up in Italian theaters, as an example.) Maybe someone living on the Continent could weigh in and confirm/tell me I'm talking out my ass.
I do know that a number of foreign countries have "locally produced content" laws regulating how much (media) stuff can be imported from elsewhere - Australia and Canada are the two that immediately come to mind - which, when combined with language barriers, would seem to comprise pretty high barriers to entry for content intentionally developed for export. I dunno.
Edit: It's also likely that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to produce content (again, thinking primarily of movies & television here) overseas for various reasons, most notably that your average Dutch movie star/director is probably not charging the money that Bruce Willis/Ridley Scott does.
Edit The Second: Plus, one makes the movie they have the budget for. If you're not going to get a huge distribution, you don't spend eighty million on CGI, and that's that.
EDIT: More topically, the Japanese have probably been raking it in for the last....30 years at least, with all the media (TV, films, music) they export to Taiwan every year, without fail. Aside from the contracting-out translation costs, which I imagine is done locally, pure profit. And they've been doing it longer than we've had fair elections.
You can watch The Nanny, Seinfeld and The Simpsons too, but Japanese TV is a juggernaut. We even get their commercials sometimes. The Chinese are competing a little too, kind of recently, CCTV stuff--with some weird stuff, like a soap-opera set in the People's Liberation Army--but they got a ways to catch up.
I also changed country to culture a bit later, after realising that's what I was thinking the whole time. So treat it as if it's culture too.
The point is...economic rather than cultural differences underpin the changes in the japanese gaming industry.
And they're not making games specifically for westerners or even particularly trying to. They're making them for their own relevant cultural "domestic market" ie most of asia and exporting the ones that work in western markets. Taking ideas from western games does not mean they are developing them for westerners. Western games developers have been influenced by japanese game mechanics too, so that's two way and doesn't mean much. I don't think anyone actually claimed this in this thread incidentally. But I see it a lot in big threads about japanese games and it's something that has bothered me for a while. I just figured it was the right thread to bring it up as a side point.
But, back to games. I moved back to the states in September of 2010. So, granted, that's been a year and a half or so.
When I was living in Japan, I was in Kawasaki, which is not exactly a subculture haven. My station was Mukougaoka-yuen, which was solidly in the middle of a residential area.
There were FIVE stores that sold videogames within 3 blocks of the station. One was a Book-Off and another was the local department store, sure, but the other three were speciality media stores. Only one of those stores was a creepy otaku sort of hangout. There were also two arcades.
I do think that the Japanese industry is correcting itself from the post-Wii boom, which followed the brain-training-fueled DS boom of a few years ago, so I'm not surprised that they're posting weaker numbers right now, but they're not doing a repeat of '84 in the states.
Well, I don't think anyone would claim it's 84 all over again. But I wouldn't mind seeing Raccoon City buried in a landfill based on name alone.
Well, the past decade has seen competition from Korean entertainment. Japanese media has been in a slow decline, even in Taiwan. But I suppose it's heartening to think that almost everything Japan related ends up in Taiwan sooner or later. The same can't be said about some of other of Japan's export destinations.
I mean, you can also schew the popularity of Racing games if you add in/take out Mario Kart, or platformers if you do the same with Mario games.
It's part of the reason why Nintendo doesn't fit in this discussion well at all.
Can I interest you in Final Combat? TF2 ripoff with Moe Medic.
Nintendo is like the Holy Spirit.
Which government? China or Canada?
More to the point though: Why do you want more Chinese/Japanese games?
You know what figure is more telling in that survey? That 3% of the population owns 2 or more consoles (...in 2008). I can't find fancy new Nielsen surveys, but the one from 2008 puts modern gen console ownership around 50 million. Or there's this, where:
U.S. population 305,529,237
Gamers 169,900,000 (55.61%)
Non-gamers 135,629,237 (44.39%)
Gamers w/out current-gen console 88,857,700 (29.08% - more than half of the "gamers")
U.S. population w/out current-gen console 224,486,937 (73.47%)
Which of course, neglects (supposedly dying) PC markets and mobile markets. But as far as I understand it, mobile devices are all the rage in Japan and a vast majority of people have mobile phones capable of ridiculous feats, including playing all manner or random games.
Also: many games made in Europe are created for an international/cross-border release. This is even true of things like STALKER, where GSC would never hope to recoup the costs solely from the Ukrainian market. Or CD Projekt RED (with The Witcher) who do not market explicitly towards Poles (even though the game's mythology integrates Polish mythology). Or Paradox, who would never hope to rely on the Swedish market alone. Or Ubisoft. Or Vivendi. Or Bohemia Interactive (Flashpoint and its successors).
In fact the only markets that can support mainstream releases (i.e. not niche "download this from our website for a 70 koruna donation!") are the (now mostly) interchangeable UK/US/CAN/AUS markets, Germany, Russia (if they actually made things instead of pirating them) and Japan (and arguably France and South Korea). China may work its way there eventually. Everyone else essentially defaults to catering to an international market for a profit.
Also I'm not all that knowledgable about the actual state of developer/publisher interaction in Japan. But I do have a question:
There's no doubt that publishers generally impact the development of games, but for most of the publishing of games happening in this thread (i.e. games created outside of Japan and being published my a major Japanese company): isn't the content going to be, for the most part, set in stone? I know they've had interesting Halo and Half-Life arcade things, but for the games themselves what can the Japanese publisher really impact? The Japanese publishers aren't financing the game, so aside from localization what possible creative control could they really assert?
I mean, it used to be too easy in Taiwan. Who are the competitors now? Well, there's obviously the domestic firms, which do decently well.
Korea? No, not really. The most prolific Korean television programming is probably dramas which are also popular in Japan, and they're competing with, and losing to stuff from Taiwan, Japan, and yes, China. Japan's share declining is probably just a reflection of the fact that they were, and still are, a huge force in Taiwanese television, which has developed a competent domestic studio base within my lifetime. We have way less British television as well (goodbye, AXN), but I wouldn't base the decreasing about of British TV in Taiwan as a sign of British TV worldwide (funny it happened just as British shows were being remade into huge successes in the US). Japan really couldn't go any further (plus, the government has its own perogative, or it better have if it wants to retain the appearance of competence). I wouldn't be surprised if more people watched Kasou Taishou in Taiwan than every other Korean show combined.
Frankly, I wish Korean dramas would beat stuff that involves puppets wearing clothes from the Yuan Dynasty. I see no reason why they wouldn't. But people like those way more than Korean programs.
Now, Korean electronics are doing really, really well. Samsung is huge over there. But in the media front, they're losing. New Chinese movies regularly beat Korean ones, especially anything that gets heavy coverage. Hell, Chinese films get stopped because they hit the import quota often (I know 1911 did, and that flopped, from what I heard). Is there even a quota for Korean films? The most popular Korean movies are almost universally older films (Old Boy came on TV during at least two different weeks when I was there last). Which is not to say Korean television is bad or are their movies. The one's I've seen are great. They either just market them really bad, or the airwave companies and government are biased. Last time I visited, I watched an ungodly amount of television, and I didn't see a single commercial for a Korean film. Did South Korea not make any films up to and during summer of 2011? I doubt that.
They need to look at what the Japanese did thirty years ago, I guess. Or lobby the government to promote them more. Korean games are more popular than Chinese games, but that's not saying much.
Japanese feature-length films are probably the weakest "link" in the chain, and they are still prolific--especially the easy money gimme classics (anything made by Kurosawa or anything with a Toho opening from more than 20 years ago--a lot of which are NOT classics, in retrospect). In the meantime, Korean TV studios wish their programs were as popular in Taipei as they are in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, Doraemon is still more popular than the Christian God. Japan could vanish in the the mist, and they'd still market everything you could buy at a convenience store with Doraemon.
I am getting waayyy off topic, but really, what Korea needs is their Doraemon. Someway, somehow. Once you have a Doraemon, you're a juggernaut. Until recently, the American Doraemon was probably Snoopy, I'd wager, but the Koreans have yet to clear that hurdle.
I could be mistaken, but I think when you say "Chinese games", you mean Taiwanese PC games (which are big in China too). Especially if you mean older ones. Nomadic, you ever play Legend of Sword and Fairy? I'm not sure how long you were last in Turkmenistan, but that was a huge game about 15 years ago, the equivalent to Final Fantasy VII when that came out in Taiwan.
Ah yes, the game that redrew the Taiwanese PC gaming industry, spawned its own supporting industry, even a TV series (although personally I thought the competing series Xuan-Yuan Sword was much better, at least early on). Exported to Japan, and by all accounts bombed. Even within Asia, import-export of games is a dicey proposition.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me in the least. It came out in Japan in 1999. Shit, what a mistake. Hell, in 1995, it would have had a tough time, but 1999? Only on the PC?
They could have fucked it up worse, I guess. They could have made it a Mac game, but that would have required the 5 people who owned Macs in 1999 in Taiwan to have developed it.
One thing though--it did very well in China. Then again, it was 1996, like there was a lot of competition in China. A third of a million in the copies sold in China (forget however many were pirated back in 1996), that year? Outstanding.
EDIT: I wonder how it did South Korea. I don't think it ever even got distributed or translated legitimately. If it did, it bombed. If they didn't, it's too late now. That was one of the tricks the Japanese did--they sent stuff to Taiwan immediately (I remember watching Stand Alone Complex in Taiwan the same year it came out in Japan), and then they show it forever. Akazukin Chacha is still on TV in Taiwan, even though the children who watched it probably grew up and had their own children. Hope they're watching it too.
Sounds about right. I mean, I don't know the logistics, but seeing how Turkmenistan is landlocked, getting it direct from Taiwan wouldn't do anyone any good.
Chinese RPGs are a pretty new development (they get called that because they are, in fact, Chinese language RPGs--the same way only some English RPGs are from the UK, though this is pretty obvious of course), so the big names of the past are largely, even exclusively Taiwanese. There's also the fact that they might not have been legitimate copies, but whatever, you got to play them.
The fact that it was localized is also good to know. FFVII was the first Final Fantasy to have gotten localized (I'm pretty sure it beat FFVI in that regard, even though that came out in Taiwan earlier). It takes a big title to make that jump. It was so huge, Taiwan's the one other country that got that awful Super Famicom "port" of it, hah.
AFAIK, it never made it to Korea. In those days all eyes were still on Japan. Those puppets you mentioned? Yeah, even that was exported to Japan... then to the US, of all places. Take a wild guess at how it did... Oh well. I used to dream of winning the lottery and licensing the Okami engine to do a full remake of the first three Xuan Yuan Sword in all their ink drawn glory. The art direction on those were truly stunning for the time.
ChaCha is too old, although toddlers might still watch it. Crayon Shin Chan on the other hand... yes, the kids who watched that have kids of their own now, and they all watch it together. Which brings us back... I don't know anybody in the US, outside of hardcore animefans, who are remotely familiar with Crayon Shin Chan or even Chibi Maruko Chan. Yet these are bread and butter money makers.
I heard you can watch those awful puppet dramas in certain parts of California. Good riddance. I think even my family is tired of them.
Kasou Taishou is timeless though. If South Korea did their version of that, it'd be watched like gangbusters.
I never played Xuan Yuan Sword much at all. My loss, I imagine, but really, after Legend, it was all about Rich, especially 3 and 4. Nomadic, you ever play the Rich games? They were sort of like Monopoly--turn-based financial domination simulator with a very good sense of humor.
EDIT: Also, hearing the opening to Maruko Chan in English coming out of a DDR Machine (I think it was DDR) was the last thing I thought I'd experience when I came to the US.
Do Japanese development houses actually have localization agreements and distribution, or is it just importers (or maybe something even less legitimate?). Do you have sales numbers?