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Here's my take on how PlayStation can continue to strive in Japan.

Kumomeme

Member
they can try make a portable version of ps4. let it run 720p 30fps. surely gonna sell like hotcakes.

also due to their first party ip full of western type of game, i believe they need a breakthrough japanese AAA exclusive. something that on level as gow or botw, that would attract japanese gamers and even the rest of the world. if anyone can do it, its them. the success of title could be gateway for more japanese exclusives game, be it jrpg or other genre and might sparks 'revival' of japanese AAA space interest back at there.
 
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K.S v2.0

Banned
Sony's strategy in Japan is to lean on their mobile games rather than PlayStation. Fate/Grand Order alone has grossed over $4 Billion for them. That's a game that didn't need a $150m budget and a 250-person AAA studio to make. IMO, that's a better path forward for them. Have SIE focus on PS5 and PSVR. Let Sony Music/Aniplex handle gaming in Japan via their mobile offerings.

Even though I play FGO (totally regret it, but sunk cost fallacy sigh)... It truly saddens me that the entire mobile landscape is literally an industry centered around wallet grabs and nothing else. I always say that a lot of these gacha titles, if they were converted into proper HONEST games without the scam/casino... would be frigging awesome.

But nope... Can't have nice things coz everyone is all about greed and nothing else.
 

iHaunter

Member
Japan is an incredibly small Market.

Sony has sold 113,000,000 PS4s (Roughly)
Nintendo has sold 68,000,000 Switches (Roughly)
Microsoft has sold 48,000,000 Xbox Ones (Roughly)

Sony is doing more right than Microsoft and Nintendo, they almost outsold both their competitors combined.

Edit: I excluded Xbox One X and PS4 Pro sales. Not sure if they're combined with the figures I found.
 
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Porcile

Member
As someone who earns an average salary in Japan, the price of the PlayStation products is off-putting. I never picked up a PS4 because it still felt expensive to me.
 

ranmafan

Member
As someone who earns an average salary in Japan, the price of the PlayStation products is off-putting. I never picked up a PS4 because it still felt expensive to me.
I have to agree with this here too. Until my recent unemployment I was making a nice average wage here too and I gotta say the prices are a bit high, especially for the system. It was never out of the price range for me to get but the game prices on the other hand really are all over the place. That’s always been an issue in Japan but some games are so insanely highly priced here, especially on PlayStation it’s a pain. Lower prices would help for sure.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Japan is an incredibly small Market.

Sony has sold 113,000,000 PS4s (Roughly)
Nintendo has sold 68,000,000 Switches (Roughly)
Microsoft has sold 48,000,000 Xbox Ones (Roughly)

Sony is doing more right than Microsoft and Nintendo, they almost outsold both their competitors combined.

Edit: I excluded Xbox One X and PS4 Pro sales. Not sure if they're combined with the figures I found.
Nah, Japan is one of the biggest markets. It’s larger than UK which many consider as a big market.
 

lachesis

Member
Half the price, half the physical size. Aggressive marketing with more local contents, on top of great exclusives like Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy.
 

Zannegan

Member
Sony is doing more right than Microsoft and Nintendo, they almost outsold both their competitors combined.
This only holds true if you forget that the Switch is 3 years out of sync. When all is said and done it could easily come close to or maybe even surpass PS4 numbers over the same time period.

All this to say there's nothing stopping Sony from trying to cater to Japan AND the rest of the world. On top of that, there's no clear indication that Sony's success elsewhere has been in any way related to their decline in Japan. It's pretty sad to see people in here acting like that correlation = causation. If Nintendo can be successful everywhere, then so can Sony, and it wouldn't necessarily take a Switch-like to do it.
 
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Astorian

Member
No one can support 2 platforms fully, if Japan doesn’t care about home consoles like the rest of the world then they shouldn’t really get a special treatment.
 

supernova8

Banned
So it seems that Nintendo is striving so much in Japan where some in the industry claim that Sony is slowly losing interest in Japanese gamers. Here's my suggestion to Sony revive the PlayStation Portable and make it where people in Japan would buy and not make the same mistakes you did that killed off the Playstation Vita. For me personally, I can see them coming back up from Japan where they can strive even more than they usually do. Also, I know it may be sensitive for some but they also need to cut down on the censorship where Nintendo which people still claim they are a "Family Company" allows some things to not be censored I hear a lot of gamers in Japan don't like that sort of things. So you tell me what's wrong with the picture. Another thing I wanted to mention, it would be nice if Sony revived some of their old classics like The Legend of Dragoon and Killzone and so forth. There are so many things I can think of for Sony to do but one of the main things I can see Sony doing in keeping themselves up float in Japan is to seriously consider reviving the Playstation Portable console.

What are your thoughts?

I'm thinking you meant "thrive" not "strive"
 

supernova8

Banned
Because that's their homeland and major devs like Square-Enix and Capcom and so forth are from Japan too. What an ignorant and stupid thing to even ask.

Well Square Enix and Capcom already started releasing their titles on non-Japanese machines (ie Xbox) a long time ago. Konami too releases its stuff on Xbox. The Japanese market is by default in decline because of its rapidly aging population. Sure they would be foolish to ignore Japan but to think Japan is super important is also incorrect.

Plus, do you actually live in Japan? Have you ever been to a Japanese electronics store? If not... pipe down ;)

I'm in Japan and I can tell you that Playstation and Nintendo both get very large store space allocation and Xbox gets a very small aisle in comparison. Whether Sony/Playstation has lost interest in Japan is debatable but the reality is that there is still plenty of demand for their products. I mean if you look at Mercari or Yahoo Auction (Japan's equivalent of craigslist/ebay), scalper PS5s are going for way more than Xboxes and they are selling for those prices. You can get an Xbox Series S/X for a little over MSRP on those sites, but you're having to pay double or more for PS5s because that's the reality of the demand.

It's clear that Japan is more interested in mobile/handheld (there are very TV commercials for console games but a lot for Nintendo and other smartphone games) and the Media Create data tells a compelling story.

As far as there is still demand for "full fat" consoles, Playstation is the clear leader there. I don't see them releasing another handheld, they have never beat Nintendo in that area (although PSP and Vita were great) and I cannot see them wasting resources there unless AMD comes out with a really slick mobile chip (maybe a tie-up with Samsung or something).
 
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SkylineRKR

Member
Japan in its heyday bought about 20-25 million Playstation consoles. Even that wasn't a whole lot in the grand scheme of things of today, Sony is obviously aiming at 100+ ww, even the failure PS3 came close to that.

Its not all on Sony, its true that on PS3 a lot of franchises left the home console but on PS4 the FF games, DQ and MH didn't help either. You could say Sony sells approx 10 million units these days. Which isn't even 10% of their total. So obviously they prioritize the rest of the world.
 
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ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
I am not sure why will anyone say there are still a lot of demand when the sales has collapsed in the last few years for PS4 there
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Nah, Japan is one of the biggest markets. It’s larger than UK which many consider as a big market.

UK is nothing, globally. But UK is part of the Europeean zone, and doesn't need a special localization or anything. UK roughly plays the same stuff most western markets play, and at native language. Europe is Sony's biggest market, where UK is a slice of.
 
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ranmafan

Member
I am not sure why will anyone say there are still a lot of demand when the sales has collapsed in the last few years for PS4 there
Well I live here, and I’ve been trying to get a ps5 for months along with tons of others here. It doesn’t take much work to see online the struggles people are going through to try and get a system. Most people have entered multiple lotteries, some over twenty times without a win. Simply cause Sony is holding back stock to Japan. There is still a sizeable ps fan base and the ps4 did sale well here in the long term and was on par with PS3. Of course it’s a huge decline from the PS2 days for many reasons I explained in an earlier post. But I can tell you if Sony could and would flood the market with more systems they would sale out immediately here. The switch has taken Japan’s market, but the Sony market still is there and there are plenty of people ready to make the jump to ps5.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
UK is nothing, globally. But UK is part of the Europeean zone, and doesn't need a special localization or anything. UK roughly plays the same stuff most western markets play, and at native language. Europe is Sony's biggest market, where UK is a slice of.
Yes but merging multiple countries against a single one is a bit disingenuous to the point. As far as singular countries go Japan is one of the biggest gaming markets on earth.
 

cireza

Banned
If this means that they make a portable console only to put the same games we have on home consoles, but in shit resolution/framerate, then no thanks.

A portable console needs to have dedicated efforts that are enjoyable with the shit ergonomics that come with it. I don't want to play Emotional Pretentious Cinematic Third Person Action Games on the go, nor do I want to play Collect Poop and Repetitive Fetch Quests in an Open World. I don't play them at home to begin with.
 
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Sony doesnt care.

PS4Portable.
PS4GO.

Instant 4000+ library. 1080p screen. comes with document software. Optional keyboard. Chrome. Kaboom. SSD of course. Voom voom.

Cant play discs though. GG.
 

Bryank75

Banned
If they could somehow pack the power or near enough the power of a base PS4 into a portable with enough battery life to last 3-4 hours without charge.
Then if your library from PS4 carried to the portable, I think you'd have something.
 
If this means that they make a portable console only to put the same games we have on home consoles, but in shit resolution/framerate, then no thanks.

A portable console needs to have dedicated efforts that are enjoyable with the shit ergonomics that come with it. I don't want to play Emotional Pretentious Cinematic Third Person Action Games on the go, nor do I want to play Collect Poop and Repetitive Fetch Quests in an Open World. I don't play them at home to begin with.
This reminds me of MGS Peace Walker for two reasons: 1) it was a PSP exclusive at the time and 2) it was structured into bite-sized missions.

A new portable must have exclusive games you can play in small chunks. SRPGs are great for that for example. But actually attempting that is too big of a gamble for the higher ups to greenlight it. Devs gave up on the Vita after realizing the development cost for portable hi-res games would be too high and they wouldn’t be profitable enough. In the end the Vita still had a solid library of games that were available on the PS3 as well, whereas the 3DS had tons of games you couldn’t play anywhere else (in part due to them being visually designed for a dual screen).

Also the PS4 remote play wasn’t crazy popular as far as I remember but that may be because not too many people had the Vita to begin with.
 
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Hudo

Member
Sony can't even support one platform fully (as the horrible launch lineup of the PS5 has proven), to try to support two platforms would be madness. It's what killed the Vita as well.
 
Sony can't even support one platform fully (as the horrible launch lineup of the PS5 has proven), to try to support two platforms would be madness. It's what killed the Vita as well.
What the hell are you talking about? Of the two systems that launched, it was the only one that has actual exclusives.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
I still need Derktron Derktron to explain to me why I'm ignorant. I won't accept someone calling me things like that if its just because a person disagrees with me.

No, not everything Sony puts out sells millions of copies but then why not just put more money into marketing these games instead of just the usual AAA blockbuster experiences?

The reason why everyone does it. Triple a games cater to the majority of gamers. The easier, the better.

What always happens for a company that's insanely popular is they grow lazy. Why would they risk money on smaller, more weird titles that may not sell well, compared to making what they do best?
Heavy story driven cinematic games with a little different games here and there like Spider Man.
People keep showing them that these few forms sells so no reason to change that.

Just be glad it's not like Microsoft still running in a form that doesn't sell, at least Sony has nailed that.

But in todays age money talks. A company that raises the basic game price to 80 euro, and who in the beginning wanted to not give free upgrade patches, clearly shows what matters the most.
 

Hudo

Member
What the hell are you talking about? Of the two systems that launched, it was the only one that has actual exclusives.
You mean Demon's Souls? Good game but a remake. I expected Sony to be there in full force, though. Both Microsoft and Sony have horrible lineups right now and I would not recommend buying either console as of right now. I would recommend everyone to wait (not that people have choice with the current stock situation, lol).

But hey, if people like Demon's Souls that much to warrant purchasing a PS5 right now, more power to them and I hope they have fun! But I really don't see Sony being able to support more than one system.
 
Maybe they should have designed a PSP5 and kits to port easily between both machines and share licenses of a game bought in one of the platforms.

But I think the main problem is the lack of investment. The people is asking for Silent Hill and Legend of Dragoon and meanwhile they dismantling Japan Studio...

Sony have to keep Japan, becausa around the world there are tons of players like me. We will go to the platform which receives most japanese games, because we grew up with PSX, SNES, PS2, etc, and we prefer by far games that come from there.
 
You mean Demon's Souls? Good game but a remake. I expected Sony to be there in full force, though. Both Microsoft and Sony have horrible lineups right now and I would not recommend buying either console as of right now. I would recommend everyone to wait (not that people have choice with the current stock situation, lol).

But hey, if people like Demon's Souls that much to warrant purchasing a PS5 right now, more power to them and I hope they have fun! But I really don't see Sony being able to support more than one system.
There hasn’t been a great system launch for any HD console and PS5’s launch is really no less then PS4s. Unless you thought Killzone and Knack were amazing. Calling Demon Souls a remake is true, but it’s a real remake, not a remaster or anything. They basically recreated a whole game form the ground up and it’s one of the best looking games for next gen. Just because they stayed true to what they were recreating, it’s nothing to scoff at. Miles is a port, but it also shows off the PS5 and Astro is a decent pack in.

The systems aren’t worth picking up? Sure, but that’s pretty much true for any new system.

In the world of HD games were they take longer to make and there’s les game releases in general, I’m not sure how the PS5 launch shows Sony couldn’t support a system.
 

Azurro

Banned
...

I don't understand why some people act like Japanese developers and Japanese gamers only care for mobile and handheld gaming. ...

Because this is literally the situation. PlayStation isn't in decline, consoles are in decline in Japan. No matter how great a console you create, with all the best Japanese games, including uncensored anime waifus and such, it will continue to sell less and less.

Their apartments are tiny and spend way too long in the train doing commute everyday. Handhelds are simply the way to go, that's why the Switch is so successful there, and why the 3DS was so successful there and so on. Consoles are more of a niche and if the console market is selling 120million+ consoles everywhere else, why focus resources on Japan? Hell, Japanese publishers are also not focusing solely on Japan and when they do, they release games with a very constrained budgets. Capcom, Square Enix, From Software, Namco, they create worldwide games with Japanese flavor, that is not going to change.
 

Azurro

Banned
Yes but merging multiple countries against a single one is a bit disingenuous to the point. As far as singular countries go Japan is one of the biggest gaming markets on earth.

No it isn't, because pretty much every other market is really happy with what PlayStation does, it's only the Japanese market that is an outlier. Therefore, Sony as a business has to decide whether to exclusively cater to the Japanese market or to cater to the rest of the world.
 

Bodomism

Banned
Japan is an incredibly small Market.

Sony has sold 113,000,000 PS4s (Roughly)
Nintendo has sold 68,000,000 Switches (Roughly)
Microsoft has sold 48,000,000 Xbox Ones (Roughly)

Sony is doing more right than Microsoft and Nintendo, they almost outsold both their competitors combined.

Edit: I excluded Xbox One X and PS4 Pro sales. Not sure if they're combined with the figures I found.
You're comparing 7 years sales of PS4 vs 3.5 years sales of Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo Switch is currently at 80 million units already and about to outsell PS4 ltd numbers.

We need to wait for the 1st of February to get an official financial statement from Nintendo for Nintendo Switch as the most profitable console of all time in half of PS4 lifetime.
 
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RAIDEN1

Member
When Sony's chips are down in Japan......Sega come back! This could be the start of the fightback! (If only..... :messenger_grinning_smiling: :messenger_grinning_smiling: )
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Well I live here, and I’ve been trying to get a ps5 for months along with tons of others here. It doesn’t take much work to see online the struggles people are going through to try and get a system. Most people have entered multiple lotteries, some over twenty times without a win. Simply cause Sony is holding back stock to Japan. There is still a sizeable ps fan base and the ps4 did sale well here in the long term and was on par with PS3. Of course it’s a huge decline from the PS2 days for many reasons I explained in an earlier post. But I can tell you if Sony could and would flood the market with more systems they would sale out immediately here. The switch has taken Japan’s market, but the Sony market still is there and there are plenty of people ready to make the jump to ps5.

or maybe they shipped significantly lesser there to manufacture artificial shortage.
 

ranmafan

Member
or maybe they shipped significantly lesser there to manufacture artificial shortage.
While that is also possible, we also have to look at the past launches to see that Sony has done similar things in regards to giving the west more systems. They even delayed the launch of the PS4 in japan four months in their words to “have a better Japanese launch lineup ready.” But everyone knew the real reason was the west needed more systems and that pretty much got shown when the Japanese launch only had to extra Japanese based games. It’s a good strategy for Sony but it comes at the expense of Japanese gamers getting frustrated and angry. Also rumor is Sony is planning on shifting systems here starting the end of the month both from the west and from freeing up supply lines from delisting almost all PS4 units on the market in Japan.

either way the situation here in regard to getting your hands on a ps5 is frustratingly bad. While the lotteries are more fair than dealing with the bots western gamers are dealing with, with such a low shipping number it’s a horrible wait and nothing but repeated bad news for those that lose, and also sometimes for those that win. And I should know, i got an order in through amazon japan. And I’m still waiting 54 days since that order as amazon oversold and can’t get the units from Sony. Tons of people are still waiting for their systems they bought in November. Hopefully they can fix the supply issues soon. And since they are finally starting to air commercials here in Japan lately for ps5, perhaps that problem will be fixed.
 

Woopah

Member
Its very very difficult for Sony. Basically they need third parties to create franchises that are as big in Japan as what Nintendo puts out (this happens in the West with COD, Assassin's Creed and the various sports games).

Right now in Japan Nintendo is as powerful as all the other publishers combined, and obviously their games aren't on PlayStation.
 

Mozza

Member
Why should Sony care about Japan when they own the rest of the world?
Because you can never guarantee to own the rest forever, and Sony being s Japanese company they do have a good shot at becoming popular in the region again, plus why not own all regions.
 
If they could somehow pack the power or near enough the power of a base PS4 into a portable with enough battery life to last 3-4 hours without charge.
Then if your library from PS4 carried to the portable, I think you'd have something.
Which now available hardware would be capable of this? Especially if it need to be compatible with (or emulate) the X86 instruction set.

I really don't believe this is possible, or at least feasible.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
With the new SD card's being able to do 4gb/s speed wise. I think you could make a pretty good mobile setup for a handheld. And if they kept it amd, they could easily scale down their games to run. Hell it would be better than a base PS4 by a large margin. If they used high SD cards they could get away with it at a decent price. Bring back second screen use, and be able to use it as a controller with PS5. Imagine playing co-op rpg like diablo and somebody using the handheld as a controller and map. Wii u tried this.

I think they can do this, the issue is they have pivoted and all dedicated handheld studios are gone. And to me i think if you made it the same OS/arch wise you should be able to play your library that you own.(Digital).

It can be done, the question is, does Sony want to make that kind of investment? Right now the switch is the handheld to get. And I dont know how compelling for Japan it is to play Playstation first party thats available on PS4/PS5 on a handheld. Capcom and the likes would have to optimize to run on playstation handheld. More work for them and their environment is different than sony first party.

It would take a huge investment from Sony to get others to have their software run on their handheld. But on the other hand a lot of them were making switch versions. ANd if the Playstation handheld is way more powerful and similar arc than PS4/PS5. Then maybe it would not be as bad?

Update:

Also imagine using via USB-C transfer your game's in seconds to your handheld from your PS5? Imagine transfering using usb-c and the ssd to ssd speed? You could use your PS5 as your download base if you were not there, you open the app on the handheld download your PS5 or handheld dedicated game on the PS5, it is ready to transfer instantly when you get home.
 
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Bryank75

Banned
Which now available hardware would be capable of this? Especially if it need to be compatible with (or emulate) the X86 instruction set.

I really don't believe this is possible, or at least feasible.
Yeah, from a thread I made a while back... we came to the conclusion that although we seem to be on the cusp of it, Getting that much power into a handheld and having a decent battery life is still outside the scope of current tech.
 
Yeah, from a thread I made a while back... we came to the conclusion that although we seem to be on the cusp of it, Getting that much power into a handheld and having a decent battery life is still outside the scope of current tech.
Unfortunately, yeah. It would also need to have a good amount of storage as well, so all things considered it would probably be very expensive. There's a reason why the Switch has such modest specs.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
latest
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Because you can never guarantee to own the rest forever, and Sony being s Japanese company they do have a good shot at becoming popular in the region again, plus why not own all regions.

I dont know man, seems like they have a tight iron grip that just becomes more and more tight. I can't imagine their role in the console business is gonna change really.

Also Sony has done a lot of shady stuff the last few years, and seems to be immune over things that would have crumbled Microsoft or Nintendo.
 
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So it seems that Nintendo is striving so much in Japan where some in the industry claim that Sony is slowly losing interest in Japanese gamers. Here's my suggestion to Sony revive the PlayStation Portable and make it where people in Japan would buy and not make the same mistakes you did that killed off the Playstation Vita. For me personally, I can see them coming back up from Japan where they can strive even more than they usually do. Also, I know it may be sensitive for some but they also need to cut down on the censorship where Nintendo which people still claim they are a "Family Company" allows some things to not be censored I hear a lot of gamers in Japan don't like that sort of things. So you tell me what's wrong with the picture. Another thing I wanted to mention, it would be nice if Sony revived some of their old classics like The Legend of Dragoon and Killzone and so forth. There are so many things I can think of for Sony to do but one of the main things I can see Sony doing in keeping themselves up float in Japan is to seriously consider reviving the Playstation Portable console.

What are your thoughts?
Sony would be crazy to bring back a portable-only gaming device now and especially after a viral pandemic. Even just for public commute-heavy Japan. Vita meant death for their handheld future lol
 
Portable with PS4 hardware (it can play PS4 games, PS5 can play its games) that outputs HDMI. The only way they've got a shot at competing with the Switch is if the thing starts with a sizeable games library. No proprietary memory, for god's sake.

The process of miniaturizing the PS4 for use in a portable would also let them release a budget-priced set-top box variant for the third world
 
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Lethal01

Member
Has there even been more "Japanese centric" games than GoT or Shenmue in recent years? Or does "Japanese centric" mean games with "lolis" & "waifus"?

Japan Centric means made for Japan. Not just "about japan". Just because you make game about samurai in Japan doesn't mean you are aiming to make a game most Japanese people want to play. Japan centric means making something that Japanese people would actually ask for.

That may mean more stylized games or perhaps games resemble to type of media popular in Japan whether that's for Anime or drama(not that Japan isn't also interested in western games). But that's just a piece of it.
 
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Lethal01

Member
Japan is an incredibly small Market.

Sony has sold 113,000,000 PS4s (Roughly)
Nintendo has sold 68,000,000 Switches (Roughly)
Microsoft has sold 48,000,000 Xbox Ones (Roughly)

Sony is doing more right than Microsoft and Nintendo, they almost outsold both their competitors combined.

Edit: I excluded Xbox One X and PS4 Pro sales. Not sure if they're combined with the figures I found.

Impressively stupid post. Great job.

The PS4 has been out for double to time of the switch... The Switch is at roughly 80million sales while PS5 has broken 10 million. I guess that means Nintendo is doing 10x better than Sony right?
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Japan Centric means made for Japan. Not just "about japan". Just because you make game about samurai in Japan doesn't mean you are aiming to make a game most Japanese people want to play. Japan centric means making something that Japanese people would actually ask for.

That may mean more stylized games or perhaps games resemble to type of media popular in Japan whether that's for Anime or drama(not that Japan isn't also interested in western games). But that's just a piece of it.

Thing is it sold very well in Japan.
 
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