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The State of Gaming in Japan
dean73 writes to mention an article at the SeekJapan site entitled The State of Gaming in Japan. The article runs down the seventh round of the console war from the Japanese perspective. IE: The one where Microsoft is probably going to lose. From the article: "The Xbox 360 comes to us now with a reduced price, a screwed-up slogan ('do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360') and a slew of games targeted at the Japanese audience. The trump card is Hironobu Sakaguchi: the Final Fantasy creator's studio, Mistwalker, is due to deliver the first of two Xbox-only RPGs, Blue Dragon, on December 7th. Given that the Xbox has until now lacked any decent Japanese-style RPG (the cocaine of the J-geek world), this might prove just the ticket, and Microsoft is predicting a big hit."
Really? I guess that would make the manga/movie X a little hard for them to swallow. Not to mention the Japanese rock band X Japan.
Most countries that don't use the Roman character set are still quite familiar with it. In fact, you'll find common examples of English in nearly every country in the world. It always amazes me when I'm given a box of candy from Russia that has the label in English. Go figure.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...is that the Japanese version of Engrish?
I wonder if the Japanese laugh at it and will use it as an inside joke like "all your base are belong to us"? Of course, perhaps they're more cultured and civilized than us.
And I thought japanese are big on XXX stuff ;)
but I'd have thought the Japanese situation was fairly obvious: The Wii will sell well with its 'novelty' controller and family friendly games; The Ps3 will 'sell out' at launch and will move as fast as they can be produced/fast as people can afford them, and Microsoft will come trailing last selling just enough they can say its a 'success'.
Others have already said that your idea that the Japanese are unfamiliar with the letter 'X' as preposterous. They learn English in school and are inundated with western media. Algebra doesn't get taught with just kana for variable names. They get it.
It is interesting to note that where many American quizzes refer to "true/false" questions, it's pretty common for a Japanese quiz to use a circle as "correct" and an X as "incorrect." I doubt that would become a negative product connotation (like the apocryphal Chevy "No-Go" Nova story), but it's another useless bit of trivia to add to this mostly worthless thread anyway.
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No, I think someone just watched Perfect Hair Forever, and decided to lift Action Hot Dog's lines. Presumably the next ad will feature an old man asking his schoolgirl age companion to bend over and turn on his 360.
Which seems to explain the UI logic of the PS2 in Japanese games, where the circle button confirms your choice and the X button cancels it.
As for the commercials I have yet to see at least one.
I do hope their Japanese TV commercials do not end up like this.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Very true, in fact they're in love with the letter X - Rockman X, X Japan, Guilty Gear XX, they just don't stop using it...
But it's because they don't have it in their language they're obsessed with it. The closest spelling I can get to it in romanised katakana is EKUSU. (that's three Japanese letters, E, KU, SU)
Wow, talk about obvious. Throughout this past generation, most weeks there have been more GBA releases in the United States than any of the three home consoles. The GBA has been monstrously popular all over the world and developers can make GBA games for virtually nothing compared to the cost of developing for home consoles (and, the [low] quality of GBA games, on average, tends to reflect this). It's looking more and more likely that this pattern is moving over to the DS and will continue throughout the 360/PS3/Wii generation.
The weirdest quote from the article...
"If [Steve] Jobs adds an Apple logo to the PS3, I think users will say it can be sold at $2,000. However it's not possible for the PlayStation brand. That is the difference in the computer world between the PlayStation brand and the Apple brand."
Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO & President
I believe that the gaming industry started in the US with Atari. In fact the US was the 'world center' of the gaming industry for many years until the crash of 83-84 when it shifted to Japan.
I believe that the gaming industry started in the US with Atari. In fact the US was the 'world center' of the gaming industry for many years until the crash of 83-84 when it shifted to Japan.
It's debateable where the gaming industry "started". Nintendo was making handheld and light gun games for longer than Atari even existed, for example. The Magnavox Odyssey is no doubt the first programmable home console, but in the modern era where the DS and GBA are the top-selling systems, I don't think you can say that marks the beginning of the video gaming market.
It is definitely *not* the case that the US was the "world center" of the gaming industry until the crash, though. Japan's video game industry development pretty much paralleled our own - it's just that neither country's consumers really knew what was going on in the other. When the crash came, the Japanese companies that had been immune to it (because there was no crash in Japan) simply moved in to fill the void here. But it's not as if they didn't exist before 1983-1984 - they did, they were successfully making and selling games; you just never heard about it.
I would say the two countries' video game industries pretty much developed simultaneously, but in isolation from each other.
Actually, it makes sense that the numbers are so low. If I were in Japan, it'd be stupid to buy a console now, since I know in a month, there's going to be a nice bundle offered for the system. Wait until mid-December, and we'll see how the sales go.
I'm certainly not saying that the 360 is suddenly going to hit it big in Japan by any means. It's very close to "doomed" status. If sales continue to be poor post-Blue Dragon, then that'll be the final nail in the coffin. But if there's a decent size uptick in sales (especially considering that PS3 launch numbers have been reduced in Japan), then that's a sign of some life. I'm confident, though, that the top selling systems in Japan will be the Wii, the DS, and then the PS2, perhaps in that order. (The PS3 will have one huge week, then be gone, until the supply problems are smoothed out)
-- jchenx
According to Joystiq your number is off by a factor of ten. The 10,000 limited editions were apparently all preordered very quickly, too. And that's just preorders for the limited edition bundle. I think it's going to do better than you're making out. Nowhere near enough to crack the Japanese market, but they probably don't need to - the US and European markets are bigger, and if they can maintain a large hold on those markets, then having a smaller presence in Japan won't really hurt them that much.
You're right, I couldn't find my source so I was going from memory.
That will boost the Xbox numbers here by a lot, certainly there hasn't been anything like a Must Have Game for the 360 in Japan in the year since it launched. But if the only games they keep releasing here are translations of American sports and shooters, well, they're screwed, because those games just don't sell in Japan. Get some RPGs, fighting games, something based on a good anime franchise, a trading card game, or a port of a game-center game and they might have a chance.
But look at the top 50 games in Japan this week. Not a single xBox game on the list. The console has been out a year...
The problem with the 360 launch is that it takes time to develop a decent RPG for a system, so that's why launch titles rarely (never?) have any decent RPGs, unless they happen to be ports. The Final Fantasy games always debuted at least a year after the console launched, if that gives you any indication. Unfortunately, MS needed that kind of support sooner, which just wasn't possible. We'll see in a few months if it really is too late for the console, or if it's in fact too early too early to tell.
-- jchenx