Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies

Thanks to 1UP for its feature discussing the still-declining state of the Japanese videogame industry, despite recent figures showing a small increase in sales for the first half of 2004. Nevertheless, it seems that "Japanese hardware and software revenues [were] down 11% in 2003 and nearly 40% since the peak of the PlayStation generation in 1997". The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action." In a similar vein, a OPM-reprinted column from Andrew Vestal suggests a solution: "One possible catalyst [for design change] is the upcoming Final Fantasy XII. In an interview, character designer Akihiko Yoshida readily admits that 'many team members are huge fans of non-Japanese games,' and... the game disposes of large parts of console-RPG design expectations." He concludes: "It's possible the game will act as a Trojan horse, introducing Western design philosophies to a wide swath of Japanese gamers and designers."

Comments

Narrow vision of Japanese games

[Taulin]

I probably can't dispute the statistics ( i.e. Japanese sales down X percent ), but I don't think it has anything to do with the decline of Japanese games.

1) The market before seemed saturated with Japanese games because there were not that many companies in other countries making games for their systems. This makes sense since their consoles were normally not sold overseas for a year or so after the Japan release. This has changed since consoles now are released in all the major companies only months apart, and all interested game companies can get dev kits faster (thanks Sony!).

2) Japan has never exported that many games. You always here about all the of games that never leave Japan soil, and it's true. As one who just moved back from Japan and went to Akihabara almost every weekend for the last two years, I see no decline in their ingenuity and originality. The problem is many Japanese games are culturally fit, and with the rich/strange culture they have, there are many sides that don't go well elsewhere. Games like Densh de Go, and the Tokimeki series are easy to play for long and short periods of time, offer great fun, and many cases depth. You will never see these games out of Japan, though.