Japanese Survey Shows Tricky Market For Western Games

Thanks to GameSpot for their article discussing the results of a survey of over 1,000 Japanese gamers, conducted at this year's Tokyo Game Show. Among the more telling trends was a definite lack of interest in Western-developed games: "The percentage of respondents currently own non-Japanese software? Just over 1 percent. And only 4 percent expressed interest in buying such software in the future." The survey also revealed the true dominance of the RPG in Japan, as "...39 percent of respondents identified it as their favorite genre. This is far ahead of every other genre: strategy gaming, the second most popular choice, tallied only 7 percent of the votes." Finally, although it may be that Tokyo Game Show attendees "tend to be hardcore gamers", thus skewing the results, "ownership of [Xbox] ranked lower than five consoles that aren't even in production", including the Dreamcast and Saturn.

But what about US interest in Japan's games?

[cybermancer]

I can't say that I am familiar with many titles from Japan that are not written for the US market. Is this common or am I unique?

Re:Which games converted to japanese?

[bugbread]

I most certainly wouldn't say "excuse me" to my neighbour when I sneeze in my own apartment, even if my neighbour can hear me. And a non-japanese neighbour will most certainly not say "it's okay I didn't hear you".

Good thing, neither would the Japanese.

I can see to some extent where you're coming from, though I get the idea that you think the Japanese are a lot stranger than they really are (I know I had pretty high expectations of weirdness when I came to Tokyo, which I realized were unfounded the longer I lived here). I'm not sure where you're from, but as an American, I'd say that Indians and Chinese seem the most different from me. And, somehow, I suspect that FPS are not the game of choice in India.

So, yes, the Japanese are culturally different than Americans, and as such like different games than the Americans.

What I think is a more interesting issue is: If Japanese don't buy American games because of the cultural differences, why do Americans buy so many Japanese games?