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MGS Creators on 'Masochistic' PS2, U.S. Popularity
Thanks to GameSpy for its article interviewing Hideo Kojima and Scott Dolph of Konami about the continuation of the Metal Gear Solid series. Notable sections include Kojima's comments about the programming difficulties of Sony hardware: "People on my team are masochistic. They enjoy the difficulty of working with PlayStation 2 and we assume that PlayStation 3 will be even more difficult. We know nothing about the system; but it's from Sony, so we assume so", as well as Dolph discussing Metal Gear Solid's regional popularity: "You know, it sells better in the United States. There are more people who buy the game and are waiting for the game. Also, the hype from the U.S. travels and that helps sales in Japan. If the game is big in the U.S., it will do better in Japan. And I do not think that the hype works for you the other way around."
I guess you can call me a fanboy, but I've been with MG since it's humble beginnings on the MSX computer.
:D
Worked all my way up to the PSX version, PC version, PS2 version and last but not least, the GC version (which is just a remake of the PSX version with updated graphics and a Nintendo reference here and there that could have been kept out of there in my opinion).
From what I've seen online (movies, interviews, snippets, rumors), MGS3 is going to be one hell of a game.
In this episode, you also have to keep yourself fed, by eating snakes even.
Enough bla bla, I love it, period
This is the sig that says NI (again)
"And I do not think that the hype works for you the other way around."
That's a pretty big understatement. Even now, with more games being released than ever, many of the huge games in Japan are either too complicated to translate (See: Mojib Ribbon) or the developers don't think that American audiences will like the game. On the other hand, games like Ratchet and Clank made a big splash here and went to sell millions in Japan. The Japaense are warming up to games coming from the West, so why aren't we working to bring more games from the East?
So...hype goes from U.S.-to-Japan, but not the other way around? Kojima is a genius, but I have to disagree with him here - I think that, in most cases, hype from Japan travels to the U.S. The Japanese in general (there's always been a small market for western stuff) are just warming up to the idea of U.S. hype and all. I think that, much more often, we see the cool games that Japan has (and let's face it, they do have all the cool games ^_^) and either wait patiently for them to cross the Pacific, or, knowing that they will never come here, import them. I think that they would be a market for more Japanese games, especially the "odd" ones - not talking about dating sims (although *cough* I'm sure they'd be a market for those too...a large market...ahem) but the really weird ones, like Vib Ribbon (and it's psuedosequel, Mojib Ribbon, and it's other sequel, Vib Ripple) and the one where you roll debris up into a ball (I'm not going to even try to spell it...). I think the situation is improving for everybody - we're getting more quirky Japanese games (We got Guitaroo Man, which if you haven't played, you should; we got the Eye Toy, which I honestly expected to stay in Japan and Europe; and Fresh Games is supposed to bring us more unique games like Mr. Mosquito, although we haven't heard much from them recently...) and the Japanese are beginning to get a more mainstream taste of our culture (GTA3 came out there not long ago). Just my thoughts...
> So...hype goes from U.S.-to-Japan, but not the other way around? Kojima is a genius, but I have to disagree with him here
It's said by Scott Dolph guy of the marketing department, NOT Kojima.
We need to remember the Japanese games playing demographic as compared to the US or the UK. Overall there is a much wider Japanese demographic, therefore there is a wider (not necessarily larger, don't know the figures on that) market within Japan which translates to a wider range of games available. There is a market for these "wierd" Japanese games in the rest of the world, but it's pretty small as a percentage of these home markets, compared to Japan.
Feel free to disagree or disabuse any of these notions.
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The summary points to the last page of the article. Here is the link to the first one.
"You know, it sells better in the United States. There are more people who buy the game and are waiting for the game."
If that's the case, then why not release those sweet limited edition packages in the U.S.? I realize that LE packages for games are considered something for the eastern market only, but why? I would buy a Limited Edition Metal Gear Solid 3 package for sure if it came with the U.S. version of MGS3.
PS2 difficult??!!?? Ugh?!? Unbeliever must DIE!!!
Q.
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Ratchet and Clank did not sell "millions" in Japan. More like half a million.
Also, the hype from the U.S. travels and that helps sales in Japan. If the game is big in the U.S., it will do better in Japan. And I do not think that the hype works for you the other way around."
"Earth to Squaresoft...Squaresoft, come in. Square, *listen* to the man!"
May we never see th
If Metal Gear is more popular in the states, then why do they publish a special edition with lots of bonuses like soundtracks and dogtags in Japan and not in the US?
You know what I'd like to see? The heads of the US divisions of the big Japanese game companies (ie Nintendo, Sega, Konami, Capcom, etc) all just simultaneously quit their jobs, pool their money, and open up a studio devoted to localizing strange Japanese games with niche markets. They could make a killing with that idea.
This differs from Eidos' "Fresh Games" (ugh) label in that Eidos started it shortly before their entire company went to pot (around the time of the Tomb Raider movie, 'coincidentally') and then blamed it for the decline in revenue (also 'coincidentally'). I don't think there were more than four games released under the "Fresh" label (Mr. Mosquito, Mad Maestro, Legaia 2, and something just recently that didn't register in my brain).
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Don't get me wrong, the gameplay was fun, and I would have enjoyed it if it weren't for the movie they were playing inbetween scenes. Maybe they couldn't code up enough gameplay scenarios (because it's hard) so they just threw in movies ('cause it's easy).
"People on my team are masochistic. They enjoy the difficulty of working with PlayStation 2"
Then he's a fucking idiot. All things being equal, the PS2 would have been abandoned long ago. It's underpowered and deserves to die. The only reason people still make games for it is because of the market penetration. Xbox and even the Gamecube are easier to to develop for and are more capable platforms.
"You know, it sells better in the United States. There are more people who buy the game"
Duh. Could that have anything to do with there are 2.2 times more people in the US than Japan? (290 million vs 127 million, source). And they've sold more Playstation 2 consoles in the US than in Japan? Well I never!
If the game is big in the U.S., it will do better in Japan. And I do not think that the hype works for you the other way around.
You mean the Japanese publishers suddenly find themselves with more cash to market a game at home if it does well abroad? That's an absolutely stunning revelation.
This whole interview reminds me of the episode of South Park where the Japanese are going around talking about the "huge American penis" to distract the Yanks from the Jap invasion plans - it's complete bullshit designed to make American gamers feel good about the absolute piece of shit that is the MGS series.
If I could point to one thing that MGS does that's particularly brutally retarded - it would be that they still have boss fights. I loved the demo of MGS (because it was a fair fight against the enemies you encountered) - but I absolutely loathed the full game. I tried MGS2 and hated that as well. Splinter Cell and Syphon Filter are both *far* better series if you ask me.
Back when MGS2 was being devellopped, the thinking was that the future of gaming lay in merging games and movies (on account of cinematics were so important to square, and they were making a movie, etc).
but Final Fantasy was too much like a game, and sucked as a movie, and MGS2 was too much like a movie, and that distracted a lot of people from its awsome gameplay.
If you'll read the article, Hideo says he thinks games should be games, and not try to be movies.
He learned his lesson.
You can't take the sky from me...
Hrm, from what I've read about Asia, and my Asian friends here, becoming more Western/American is very popular there; whereas to a lot of Americans, "turning Japanese" has nothing to do with Japanese culture.
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