I’d have to agree with that. I don’t ever hear western developers talking about building something for their Japanese fans.
Several games mostly 360 rpgs were made specifically to get japanese fans interested.
Japan and the West have both been making stale, formulaic, recycled garbage for a while; it’s just that Western garbage has a broader appeal and the formula isn’t quite as old.
Which 360 wjrpgs?
Not just Japan actually. Even PSP, which isn’t doing well in the States, has more lifetime US sales than PS3.
I’ve seen EA do it multiple times and Ubisoft with Assassins Creed. The problem is these companies are looking for a profit and it may not be the most profitable thing to make games for consoles that exclusively targets the Japanese market. Handheld are a different thing but even thats been a tough cookie to crack for them. The Japanese seem to be in love with brands like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Pokemon, and Monster Hunter and if your game doesn’t bear those titles then it be hard to penetrate that market. But your game doesn’t need to sell a milli for it to be successful to you. Companies like Atlus can make a game like person 3 portable have it sell about 200,000 and at the same time make it profitable. We don’t see Western companies doing this as to me they have a sink or swim mentality with their big budgeted projects. It 2 different design philosophies at work.
I like JRPGs cause I like to be told a story as someone in the thread said. Another thing that bothers me about like Mass Effect for example, while it is a great game, the story is severely lacking. ME2 was basically a bunch of sidestories then oh hay let’s go fight the badguys now. It just didn’t feel like there was enough leading up to it. I’d rather they cut out a huge chunk of the sidequest stuff and just spent ALOT more time on the main story. Not that they have to remove all of the extra stuff, but they should either integrate it IN the story or just trim the unnecessary stuff. Oh also, the romance stuff needs to be way better written. Should take more time to develop and not just be so goddamn sudden. Additionally, why can’t I choose actions in the grey area? Why is it ALWAYS PURE GOOD OR PURE EVIL. I mean you can sometiems choose one or the other, that’s why there’s a choice, but if you don’t stick all to one side you miss out on certain things and that’s bullshit. If you’re giving me a choice then make sure no matter what I choose it doesn’t hamper gameplay and ONLY changes the story and/or adjusts your characters personality.
Another problem I have is the severe lack of emotion in alot of these games. I will say that ME2 did much better job than ME1 in that aspect though.
I still think it’s funny that the best game for emotion in writing, acting, and facial animation is Uncharted 2 lol
I can see the appeal of Western style RPGs, I just hope that it doesn’t become the only way to make RPGs because I don’t like that style.
actually, they mention the 3DS, and either way consoles sales > handheld sales
The main problem is that once upon a time, Japan owned 50% of the market, now they own 10%. That’s not a capcom problem, or an SNK problem, or a Sega problem, this is ALL of Japan.
Seriously, how many times do I have to see Mario in every game? How different can you really make Sonic? When was the last TRULY good Final Fantasy game (not a game where you could at least call it playable, but TRULY good, like 4,6, or 7)? Hell, Capcom is REALLY bad for rehashing games. At least the SF games have been different from sequel to sequel (not vanilla to super/etc). But infinite Dante’s, or Resident Evils, or Megaman’s…
In Western gaming, you can have smaller companies release titles that become huge, or end up getting popular. On Japan, only the big companies really release on consoles, at least over here.
And as for my MK9 comment, I wasn’t stating that MK9 was going to be the greatest fighting game, but it’s the first BIG hyped fighting game from Western developers in awhile. And if it does good (which I think it should…seems more about being tournament worthy, as opposed to just flashy and rushed), it could open the floodgates to MORE Western developers making fighting games (similar to the early to mid 90’s where EVERYBODY was making a fighting game such as Primal Rage, BIO Freaks, Way of the Warrior, Killer Instinct, etc etc etc). Japan is owning the fighting market on experience, and sheer numbers
You must have missed out during the original XBOX days. They went out of their way to try and woo Japanese gamers (Panzer Dragoon Orta, Tru Fantasy Live, etc), it just didn’t work.
Personally, I find Japanese games too lacking overall. Not much when it comes to proper DLC or add-ons, and the only replay value seems to be getting 100% completion in a game, or grinding of some sort (whereas in Oblivion or Morrowind or Fable or whatever, I could make a new character and be evil instead, or do things a different way).
Report ? Japan Playing Catch-Up With the West ? Scrawl
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/japanese-rpg-developers-have-become-complacent-says-bioware/
wouldn’t a simple solution be to just hire more Western programmers/etc???
i’m sorry, but when I play a Western game, another thing i notice is character diversity. People in one game generally dont always look like people in another game (unless they’re something normal, like every day citizens). Every Japanese game I have played in recent memory either uses anime style characters (I have no problem with this, but many MANY people do), or a mishmash of generic characters (seriously, how many times do I need to play a dude with spikey hair (usually a messed up non natural colour), a token black guy who is usually ripe with stereotypes, or a really hot 16 year old girl who wears almost nothing and exists for the sole reason of being on rule34 someday???). And the stereotyping on Japanese games can get BAD (not racist, just overused)
When I play Gears of War, I get to play as a black guy, a spanish guy, a white guy, a redneck, etc etc etc. THAT’S variety.
If they’re serious about this, then stop being stereotypical of Western things. Japanese developers, watch more Western movies/tv, read more western stories/comics. Dont fear an american console/electronics, just because it isn’t japanese (like when you had to put your xbox in a solid black bag, if you bought it during the early part of last decade in Japan, so nobody else could see it). Look at the love Western audiences still do give to Japanese movies, toons, or games. People DO love them. But you don’t see that love reciprocated.
edit: I was’t aware that japanese development schedules are so much different than ours. Seems they tend to just randomly add shit as they think it up, rather than pre-plan shit out in advance, like western developers do
I would like to stop you there. Handhelds have a bigger install base worldwide than consoles with 132 million DS’ sold worldwide to date making it the most successful piece of gaming hardware this gen. The PSP sold about 62 million to date worldwide. Some of the best selling software this gen has been on either of these 2 consoles; Dragon Quest 9, Monster Hunter, and Pokemon B&W all of which sales come mostly from japan.
Hideo Kojima was saying what Capcom just said…but like 7 years ago.
Grass is always greener on the otherside.
I did actually miss most Xbox games, but I was discussing the present. From your quip, currently it seems like they toned down Mario spin off games. I have to respectfully disagree on VII and VI for truly great FF games. I wasn’t too fond of those. X for me was the last one where I enjoyed both the story and the gameplay. XII’s only grace for me was its addicting new battle system.
Game quote? I hardly ever see black protagonists in video games so I’m even more surprised that Japanese games would have black protagonists.
Both games have the main character released from a form of confinement and thrown into a heat of the conflict and a dire situation. Both main characters are legendary soldiers who are known to be unstoppable. Both of them are stoic and utter few words. In these two games humanity is struggling to keep up in a war against an unknown race of humanoid creatures who are on the verge of wiping out humanity. Both main characters have a tough as nails , unstoppable black sidekick. Further into the game they discover weapon and vital information that can lead to an absolute victory for humanity.Second game the threat gets worst and now they are taking the fight to humanities strongholds and now the introduction of dangerous parastic race of monsters is now becoming rampant due in part to the main character activating a weapon of some sort and now the war has become a three way war. Yeah these games are not alike .
you can bitch about the mario spinoffs, Sonic games and ff games you think are bad all you want. The fac of the matter is people keep buying them so they keep making money.
Whoa whoa whoa. I think we’re going to have some problems here, specs.
This is pretty accurate. Instead of talking about why JRPGs are inferior to Western RPGs (which makes no sense since it just comes down to a matter of preference), we should be talking about how the forumulas for not just JRPGs and Western RPGs are the same for their respective regions, but for pretty much every other genre as well.
There needs to be another Contra Hard Corps.
Japan’s been successful on the handheld front in every market. Very successful. It’s not good to see a giant investment like PS3 disappoint in sales, but in these news reports they can’t grasp the idea that consoles aren’t the flagship gaming platform it once was… at least not for this generation.
Wouldn’t it change the culture of game development in Japan, when console-length handheld games sell enough to keep companies afloat, while they bleed dev money to make a console game that barely scrapes 1 million copies worldwide?
wait a tick…Japan owns the handheld market mainly because there is no direct competition to them. The closest really would be shit like Apple, with their iPods and iPads and shit. They don’t dominate it because they’re so good at it. Just nobody else really makes them aside from Sony and Nintendo, at least not hardcore
Obviously this means they need to make Love Plus for consoles.