Lost Odyssey And Japan's Western Gaming Success

Gamasutra has on offer today an extremely honest interview with Feelplus president Ray Nakazato, a veteran of Capcom and Microsoft and an expert on the Japanese gaming market. Nakazato discusses a variety of topics with obvious candor, including struggle that western game companies have in Japan, the state of various in-development game titles (such as Lost Odyssey), and the history of the Japanese game market. "In the early days of the games market, Japanese games were pretty interesting back then, while many games from overseas were seen as being bad. Now, you'll find a lot of interesting and fun games coming from North America and Europe, but because of that experience that we have from the early 1990s, people tend to stay away from Western games.""

Maybe True

[jrwr00]

maybe... if the game seems ok from the desc on the box i might by it, look at metroid prime for the GC, wasnt that made in the USA

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[SighKoPath]

I haven't RTFA yet, but I'm going to assume that they are talking about Western games in Japan. Western games are accepted and do well in the West (assuming they're actually decent games), but often struggle in Japan.

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[SethraLavode]

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that Metroid isn't a very popular series in Japan. It's very much a franchise that Nintendo has kept around for its North American fans and tailored it with a Western audience in mind.

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[Anonymous Coward]

But not because they were Japanese. It was because they were good games taht people like to play. We hear this argument all the time with xbox. As if the Japanese somehow "owe" "us" because we like their game systems. You know, I'm from America and I don't like xbox. Maybe if we start making games that a large number of players over there will like and want to play they'll actually buy them.

It might take a while, given how long we've tried to just shove American-style games down their throats without a

Different culture likes different things

[Astarica]

Japan is hostile to foreign games to begin with. For example you don't actually hear World of Warcraft talking about how they do in Japan even though they seem to own the rest of the world, because Japanese prefer FF11 over that. But even if that's not the case, there's no reason to assume one culture has to like the games from another culture. It is probably safe to say that the USA will never be into dating sims line the way Japanese are. This doesn't inherently say anything about the quality of the said games, but merely a reflection of the culture.

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[Frumply]

WoW is not talked about in Japan because there is no official service for WoW in Japan. I believe the reason was that it wasn't a worthwhile venture to enter Japan, where everything would have to be retranslated, and having to compete in a market where MMOs with cutesy characters (Ragnarok Online, FF11) are extremely popular and styles similar to WoW not entirely appreciated.

Also, I'm not sure about your impression of the 'dating sim' genre, but that is just another very small piece of game sales in Japan.

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[Astarica]

The article mentions Diablo sold over 200K. There's like 2 or 3 dating sims that sold more than 100K. Consider Diablo probably sell well over 2 million outside of Japan, that'd be equivalent of having a dating sim sell 1 million here if the markets are at all comparable. Clearly they are not. Also a niche market where you can occasionally sell 100K is still better than 0, which is the size of the market for domestic dating sim in the USA (none exists, you can always import though).

Dating Sims sales are good.

[MMInterface]

His point was valid. He didn't actually overstate the size of dating sims in Japan. He just said they would never do as well in the US. But the sales are really good. Ignoring mega hits that commonly top the charts like To Heart, the market is saturated, the games are cheap to make and they are $80-100 dollars a pop. You would not see lines around the block like this in the US and there is a nich market for otaku goods in the US, it just is nowhere near as big and our good christian fellow would never put u

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[Anonymous Coward]

FFXI has one thing going for it that WoW doesn't, though: it runs on consoles. Specifically, the PS2 and Xbox 360 (both versions require a hard drive). PC games have never been that big in Japan - there's a reason you routinely see Japanese games available for consoles and never see any in the PC game section.

Given that distributing internationally for PCs is even easier than for consoles (no NTSC/PAL issues, no region restrictions, etc.), it should tell you something about the Japanese PC gaming market.

If

Interesting.

[MaWeiTao]

I found some of the insight into the Japanese gaming industry to be interesting. Particularly how they develop games out there. It explains why interfaces in Japanese games, and electronics in general, tend to be so convoluted and controls in some cases unnecessarily complex. Its would help explain why Japanese consoles tend to be harder to develop for.

I also find it interesting that Nakazato finds Japan game developers tend to be behind in terms of technology and innovation. I guess it depends on what is defined as innovation. Many argue a unique controller is innovative. Others argue that more sophisticated, realistic gameplay supported by advanced graphics is innovation. Both are valid in their own right.

I could argue that many Wii and some DS games are glorified, repackaged flash games. I could also argue that advanced graphics add nothing at all to gameplay and in fact draw away resources that could be used to produce a better game. But that isn't always true in either case. Both have their place.

But I do agree than in general Western games, well PC games in particular, have always been sophisticated, at least on the back-end. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that those games are move fun. And Americans generally only have access to the best Japanese games, so we don't see all the drivel flooding the Japanese market.

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[blahplusplus]

"But I do agree than in general Western games, well PC games in particular, have always been sophisticated, at least on the back-end. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that those games are move fun."

I have yet to experience any earth shattering games like civilization from Japan. IMHO many of the best games are american. Japan has lost the title for best games, many japanese companiesare international now and are more "american" / western.

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[Talgrath]

And I personally didn't find Civilization all that interesting; it's a matter of taste.

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[ZombieRoboNinja]

It's redundant in a broader sense, because everyone on Slashdot has read it a million times already.

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[Corpuscavernosa]

Alright, I'll give you that but still...