Japanese Game Developers Go West

donniebaseball23 writes "More and more Japanese game studios and publishers are looking toward the West. But as the industry becomes more global, is this really such a bad thing? From the article: 'Gameplay is an art that transcends borders, and it simply makes good business sense to keep your eyes open for opportunities no matter where they present themselves, as Zenimax, EA and THQ clearly have. Far from ruining the Japanese gaming industry, it may in fact save some of the best Japanese developers from considering retirement or a career change. They'll be able to make games on their own terms with their own original IP, and shouldn't it ultimately be about these creative types being able to realize their visions?""

Comments

Yeah, right...

[lyinhart]

From the article: "One, the percentage of the worldwide market composed of Japanese titles has shrunk, and if you exclude Nintendo, would be shown to have drastically shrunk worldwide." Okay, where is he getting this supposed information, or did he should pull it out of thin air? He didn't even cite any numbers either. So that's bunk.

"...major Japanese game publishers have become much more conservative and sequel driven". Uh... and this is a recent trend? Square has been milking Final Fantasy like a cow since the 1990s. Westerners didn't know because they skipped on releasing a whole bunch of games in the series. Same deal with Capcom and Rockman on the NES, except we actually received Mega Man game after Mega Man game outside of Japan. Heck, Konami released a good number of Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania games, some of which were just different versions of the first game.

As for the globalization that the whole article is about. Um... we've had that for years. Sega was founded by an American guy for goodness sake. Namco worked with Bally/Midway to release Pac-Man games (which was supposedly a tumultuous relationship). Japanese companies have founded American divisions who've screwed up countless localization jobs. Action games like some of the ones in the Mario and Sonic series have been developed with Western audiences in mind, because, well, you can make lots of money catering to the West.