All right, I finally have some time to do my E3 2016 Japanese publisher and developer review.
Bandai Namco:
- Namco didn't show very much at E3, but I think the main game they did show (Dragon Ball XenoVerse 2) pretty much sums up how I feel about the publisher. Dragon Ball XenoVerse shipped over 3 million copies. Despite this, XenoVerse 2 appears to be a conservative, standard licensed title (low) budget follow-up to the game. On the one hand, this type of behavior ensures that Namco is never disappointed by how their games sell. On the other hand, this type of behavior ensures that Namco's titles never break out of being moderate successes and that any title that does exceed expectations tends to have issues sustaining a large sales volume. The biggest exception to this was the Dark Souls series, but that was co-published and co-funded by From Software, who had much greater ambitions than their actual publisher. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Tales game in 2032 that looks nigh identical to Berseria given how this company operates.
- The other thing worth noting is that Tekken 7 continues to assert that Namco sees themselves as a very multiplatform company. I think this is helpful for them given their relatively predictable nature of releasing lower budget niche titles often helped by popular licenses or their former glory dating back to the PS1 era, since they can easily reach all of their fans regardless of where they have migrated to over the years. People generally aren't buying a video game system for Namco titles, so they should be wherever their audience goes for other reasons.
Capcom:
- So, I'm of two minds about Resident Evil 7. If we ignore the title for a moment, I think a Resident Evil game that builds on the huge success of games like Amnesia and the interest generated by projects like Silent Hills is a fantastic idea. I tried the demo and I thought it was both clever and well made, and is something that feels very modern in terms of appealing to horror fans. As a spin-off, I would consider this to be the best thought out spin-off they've ever made, and a very apt move for keeping people interested in the Resident Evil brand as something that can positively surprise them. As a mainline game, it instead feels like Capcom wanted to only spend 20-30% as much as Resident Evil 6 cost to make and the developers did the best they could with what they had. It also strikes me as something that has decidedly less widespread appeal than the action horror style of Resident Evil 4 through 6, with the latter still selling 6.5 million copies despite very poor reviews. I think they would be pretty fortunate to hit their 4 million target as an LTD figure for RE7.
- I feel this also cements the end of Capcom as a AAA developer and that their projects will cap out at AA (more specifically ~$20-25 million) going forward.
- Similarly, I expect most of their series to continue their slow decline given that full priced retail AA games don't do super well in today's market outside of a few exceptions. I'm interested to see how they handle Monster Hunter's transition to the NX where presumably the cost of making high end games will go up quite a bit. Capcom is still a premium, top of the line developer on 3DS, but are they willing to maintain that next generation?
- As a side note, while not a Japanese publisher, I think there's a good opportunity for Bethesda and Tango to take complete control of the Resident Evil style action-horror genre now that both Dead Space and Resident Evil are out of the picture. Tango has been hiring a ton of staff and a bunch of the job postings mention multiplayer as well, so I suspect it's a full, co-op enabled competitor to the type of games Resident Evil 5 and 6 were. Bethesda has done a really good job overall either carving out their own niches or reviving game styles that have since died out, and this would be another shining feather in their cap.
Square Enix:
- Square Enix's 2015 Japanese E3 line-up consisted of Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Kingdom Hearts 3, I Am Setsuna, Star Ocean 5, Nier 2, Dragon Quest Heroes, and World of Final Fantasy. Square Enix's 2016 Japanese E3 line-up was basically the same, except with Kingdom Hearts 3 replaced by Kingdom Hearts 2.8 and Dragon Quest Heroes replaced by Dragon Quest Builders. I feel this pretty clearly displays that the reason their E3 2015 line-up seemed so strong was that they revealed ~2.5 years worth of games all in one go, and thus had basically nothing to follow it up with.
- As for the actual games, I don't actually have very much to weigh in with that hasn't already been said, since about half of them are localizations of already released products. Kingdom Hearts 2.8's next-gen part seems to look nice and run well, which suggests that Kingdom Hearts' development is likely going well. As for the mid-tier games, I need to see them actually come out (and ideally some financial reports as well) before fully weighing in on their sales performance, but I remain skeptical for everything not named Dragon Quest. The real test remains the same as last year's assessment: Will these sell enough to continue on as series instead of a bunch of failed one-offs? Please note that the skepticism in this category is more about sales potential than individual product quality relative to expectations.
- I did want to make a special note for Final Fantasy XV, which I felt had a particularly poor showing at E3. Maybe they just have a series of really unfortunate demonstrations for this game and the core product is great, but my level of skepticism around this title - one that's now only 3.5 months from release - remains high. I expect it to do at least 4-6 million worldwide even if it reviews poorly, but for this one I'm more curious about its ability to generate long term benefits for the brand instead of simply bringing in a sack of money.
Koei Tecmo:
- Koei didn't really show much at E3. I think Berserk Musou is a great idea from the perspective of brand selection - the series' fans are longing for a new game and it should look visually attractive to new audiences - but I can't weigh in on the product without seeing the actual game.
- Nioh continues to look like Koei Tecmo's most promising title for garnering international success. The path is a bit less wide open now that From Software has confirmed they're still actively developing "Dark Fantasy RPGs", but the game's timing seems to be good for fitting in between those, and I think them taking feedback to heart will help the game a lot in the long run. Also, very importantly, this is actually a game that could increase in sales which each sequel instead of falling apart after the first game. This is something Koei Tecmo has been really struggling to do, especially for their bigger selling titles.
Sega:
- Sega's Japanese showing at E3 consisted of two localizations of games already released in Japan (Project Diva X and Yakuza 0) and Persona 5. Persona 5 looks like it's basically Persona 4 with significantly higher production values, notably improved dungeons, and some tweaked mechanics. I think that's generally what most people were expecting based on the trailers, so no surprises there. That said, given how long it has taken them to make a game like that, I wonder if we will see a notable slowdown of their output as we transition generations. With the exception of Etrian Odyssey, Atlus usually aims to make notably high production value games (relative to Atlus' size and resources) on the systems they work with, and even Etrian Odyssey has been increasing on that front lately.
- This is a pretty paltry line-up overall, but I think most of us wrote off Sega Japan as being a notable player in the dedicated space long ago.
Sony:
- Sony announced a grand total of one new Japanese game at E3, and it was a concept trailer for Kojima's new title that's presumably at least three years out. I'm assuming it was made to help the studio hire since he made it clear what genre the game was in later interviews.
- In their conference, Sony also only bothered to show one of their three in house Japanese games (The Last Guardian in a short trailer) and released the trailers for Gravity Rush 2 and Gran Turismo Sport separately.
- As for Japanese titles they're partnered with, Nier 2 and Nioh's trailers were also released separately. Final Fantasy XV was present at both conferences.
- In general, my takeaway from their E3 conference was that they don't really view their Japanese titles as big attractions for the West, especially at their flagship E3 showing as opposed to their more niche and targeted PlayStation Experience showing. Mind, Gran Turismo will presumably be shown in Europe where the franchise has a lot more relevance.
- Given they showed basically nothing though, I don't think there's much to infer about their individual Japanese titles from E3 that we didn't know already.
Nintendo:
- I'll be nice and leave out any assessment of the NX until they reveal the system as opposed to going off their not astonishing NX-related statements and announcements at E3.
- Zelda had a very strong showing. It's a game where Aonuma and the team clearly went out and played a bunch of major AAA action-adventure games, looked through the mechanics and design ideals, and thought about how they could integrate them into Zelda in a way that made sense and was true to the franchise. They then poured in quite a few ideas they'd been considering like the tons-of-microdungeons idea that was originally going to define A Link Between Worlds. Zelda used to be a flagship AAA action-adventure series in the same way GTA, Batman, or Assassin's Creed are today, so this made a ton of sense and the results speak for themselves. We've seen Nintendo doing this type of modernization with how they handled turning Mario Kart and Smash into modern live services or the creation of new IPs like Splatoon, and it's easily one of Nintendo's most successful initiatives this decade.
- Pokemon looks about as good as you could expect on the 3DS, and I don't just mean that graphically. I feel the new director is setting the series up for a bright future as it heads onto the NX. The game still has a fair amount left to reveal, so I don't have too much to add here, but I remain pretty optimistic on the Pokemon company's newfound aggressiveness toward promoting and advancing the brand.
- Announcing a couple extra 3DS games was probably a good idea. This should smooth out the remaining few months before the NX hits for people who really value first party titles, and one of them shows a continued investment in new brands with at least a reasonable amount of budget.
- There wasn't too much to talk about in aggregate, but this is the extreme twilight of two systems, so I think that's okay. It's not like this was a year where everyone was knocking it out of the park anyway.
Konami:
- Not Applicable.
Overall I would consider it a pretty dire showing for Japanese games, even if individual publishers and/or games showed well. That said, I think we're at the point where this is considered expected instead of disappointing, so I don't think people are especially bummed out here. We'll see what Japanese publishers and developers dig up for the various conferences and unveilings this Fall.