Japanese Gamers, Retailers, Developers Sum Up 2003

Thanks to Game Science for their news story compiling the results of an end-of-year survey in Japanese videogame magazine Famitsu. Among the intriguing results: the most popular game of 2003 for readers was Namco's GameCube RPG Tales Of Symphonia, with another GC title, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, coming in second, and Square's Final Fantasy X-2 for PS2 was voted the most disappointing title of the year. Elsewhere, game developers and shops voted Western-developed Grand Theft Auto III the game that "sold better than your expectations", and Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII is the most-awaited Japanese title of 2004 among developers, retailers, and gamers, with that company's Dragon Quest VIII firmly ensconced in second place. Finally, as an aside, the Game Science site has collected a neat conglomeration of Happy New Year postcards from Japanese game developers.

Re:Top 2 most popular games in Japan?

[Zangief]

By some reason, American media is trying to present the gamecube as a dead console, and Nintendo as a company ready to fall in bankruptcy. This is hardly so, since they dominate the portable market, and are second (and by far lately) in the console war.

The Gamecube is alive and kicking, and if xbox were the console of another company, like sega, xbox would be dead. There is no real reason to own a xbox now; if you love FPSs, you should get a PC, for almost the same price.

trailer

[qbproger]

for those of you interesting in a Tales of Symphonia trailer without having to sign up for gamespot one can be seen here:
http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_tale sofsymp honia.html

Re:Such hope is kind of sweet, really

[Anonymous Coward]

no, its not that unusual- FFX-2 was the first ever pure sequel in the series- IE where the successor game was directly based on events in the first. And, im playing it now, and yeah it is disappointing- Same world, same characters, except you only get to use 3 throughout the whole game (well, I can really only say that definitively for the first half), the real time battle system is ok, but the job/skill system it uses is in my opinion a bit on the weak side. The story too is kind of weak- they tried to be a bit more non-linear, and it does not work that well.
However, in spite of all this, it doesnt mean I have lost faith in the FF series at all. Ive played 6 of the titles including the original on the NES, and they have all been incredible games. Even FFX-2 is not really BAD, it was just kind of lame comparitively.
As a more direct comparison, during the golden age of bond movies (sean connery years), if one didnt live up to expectations, did that really mean you werent going to watch any new ones that came out?

Re:Top 2 most popular games in Japan?

[edwdig]

In Japan, the GameCube sells about as many consoles per week as the Xbox sells in an entire year. Weekly GameCube sales are also on average about 75% the level of PS2 sales. The GameCube isn't doing bad in Japan at all. It would probably be a lot closer to the PS2 if the PS2 didn't have a year and a half jump on the GC.

Bashing GameCube is the trendy thing to do, but it's not very accurate. Nintendo's games and well made 3rd party games (i.e. Soul Calibur 2) sell really well for the GameCube. The only stuff that doesn't sell well on the GameCube is half assed ports of multiplatform games. Publishers get confused and blame Nintendo for the GameCube version bombing when they released it 6 months after the PS2/Xbox versions and it looked better on the PS2 (which is a lot less powerful).