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Its Time For Japanese Developers To Stop Hoarding Their RPGs (Kotaku)
- Thread starter entremet
- Start date
Oh, no kidding?! I'm going to bed now, I'll check that out in the A.M. thanks, Takao.
SMT
this show is not Breaking Bad why is it not Breaking Bad? it should be Breaking Bad dammit Breaking Bad
Hey, I would so buy their games, and I'm a somebody!
I don't know if some of the preceding games suffered from a lack of publicity, I would pin that down as a top reason.
If you wanna sell something, you have to sell the concept first, and seeing as how it is North-America, it wouldn't hurt introducing the franchises to the West as a means to invest in a solid launch.
I really hope that it was just bad publicity, are Western Japanese-lovers truly niche individuals?
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
If they're having trouble publishing it overseas, why don't they at least put English subtitles as an option? I'm alright even if it's Engrish, so long as I get to play it.
Devilgunman
Member
According to Pachter, it's not that expensive to localize a game to the west. We're talking about few hundred grands-ish. So it's not that they can't, they just don't want to. Why would they release something that's very unlikely to make a profit? We got almost, if not all, big name jrpg to the west. The missing ones, especially anything on handhelds, were all destined to be bomba.
Uh, yes it did. It meant that Nintendo planned on localizing it at all. That's pretty important news.well with the whole operation rainfall thing, having europe confirm FE hardly ment anything
There exists no reason to believe that the Nintendo Direct that Nintendo of America held weeks after E3 wasn't meant to be the intended presentation for formally announcing Fire Emblem. It wouldn't make any sense for them to go out of their way and announce the game as part of damage control again when they really didn't have to. Given the short amount of time between E3 and that particular Nintendo Direct, that would provide a very reasonable explanation as to why Reggie mistook Fire Emblem as part of Nintendo's E3 announcements when it wasn't in reality, and therefore giving Fire Emblem's Nintendo Direct announcement much more credibility as being Nintendo of America's intended announcement.
So, to reiterate, Jason's leak is most likely not as important as many people would like to think. He allowed the public in on something that we were probably going to find out before the end of the month anyway.
That said, I don't understand why you don't understand that my post was responding to a comment that neither specified Europe or America. Before this thread, as I have logically explained, America was realistically already going to confirm it with or without Jason's leak; Europe has confirmed it in three different Nintendo Direct presentations already. Jason did not provide the megaton that was Fire Emblem being localized, he just leaked America announcing it early. To say that we probably wouldn't know that the game was to be localized by now without Jason is wrong.
Femmeworth
Banned
But it's not the developers hoarding them, it's the publishers.
I always wondered about this. I probably sound ignorant, but I always thought Atlus had some games that made them enough money like Persona (and publishing games like Demon's Souls) that enable them to put out more risky games like Catherine (and publish games from Sting for example).
I highly doubt a lot of the games Atlus USA put out are profitable. Maybe these games break even because of a hardcore fanbase and the name Atlus and of course the great pre-order goodies, but that's it.
idlethreats
Member
This entire opinion piece is premised on the apparent success of Xenoblade and TLS in North America, and yet we don't even know what constituted "success" (or, sales that were "quite well") in either case. For both games, each publisher had access to a pre-existing English language script/voice work - I'm only speculating, but I would imagine that this factor significantly cut down on the cost of localizing each title, which might mean that the threshold for copies sold in order to be profitable was lower. Nintendo also probably had some financial support/kickback from Gamestop, which could have further lowered that sales threshold for them (my guess is that the only reason Nintendo released Xenoblade in North America is because Gamestop stepped in to help mitigate the financial risk). And, as has been previously mentioned, both games benefited from a major, high profile grassroots campaign that was entirely orchestrated by fans well in advance of their respective releases. XSEED/TLS as well probably benefited a great deal by piggybacking off the name brand/reputation of a very high profile publisher like Nintendo, a situation that is not really common and one which was probably not an insignificant factor in why TLS was a success for them.
Treating these two games as "proof" that JRPGs will be supported in the West is just silly because they unfortunately appear to be pretty unique and anomalous.
Treating these two games as "proof" that JRPGs will be supported in the West is just silly because they unfortunately appear to be pretty unique and anomalous.
Pretty much this. I just skip over his byline for the most part these days.
To be fair, Kotaku has had a lot of turnover in the past year or so - it's not even really the same site anymore, so it's a bit disingenuous to hold the Kotaku of today responsible for the Kotaku of yesteryear.
I would imagine that overhead is a big factor here. Nintendo needs to sell a lot more copies of a game than, say, the six-person XSEED does in order to be profitable because the cost of operating their business is much higher.
This is the point I agree with the most here. That and the PSP has been ruined by piracy, especially to the ruin of niche games. XSEED stated that the day Unchained Blades released, there were more links to torrents than to stories about the game.
If you have a psp I can send you my umd copy when I'm done with it, should be by the end of October, or if you don't I'll sell you the psp with it for cheap since it's the last umd game I have in my backlog.
It's not nearly as good as VC1 and the characters are unbearable but the gameplay is still fucking great.
I wish more Japanese rpg devs would just throw english subtitles in their games when they know/don't think it will be localized. Hell even sell it as DLC I don't care
Digital only sales can be much worse than (the already bad sales of) retail releases (and people usually don't want to pay nearly as much money for digital than they might for a physical copy, meaning EVEN LESS profit), so even the little that publishers make from physical copies might not happen with digital only stuff.
cj_iwakura
Member
Mine:
Half Minute Hero 2
Initial D: Street Stage (WTF, Sega, easy money)
Oreshika/OMDB
Type-0(Not hyped for it, but I would buy if localized)
Growlanser 1
Tokyo Mana Harashi (Or whatever that Atlus-published sim was called)
Dangan Ronpa
Elmina-... oh wait.
(not counting the DJ MAX games, I had no qualms importing Clazziquai Edition and would happily do it again)
entremet
Member
What era had the highest localization for JRPGs then?
cj_iwakura
Member
I'd say Saturn/PS1. FFVII kicked down the floodgates, and they came pouring in.
ChosenPredator
Banned
hm i agree with it too as a kid i was always jealous and wondered why we couldn't have half the games they had.
Doctor Decimate
Member
are we playing "blame Japan" again?
semiconscious
Gold Member
sooo this!
how, after all this time, is this not a standard with japanese games? are they just not interested in selling their games outside of japan? is there some kinda opposition in the west (publishers/distributors) to subbed-only japanese game localization? are they afraid their audience just isn't 'literate' enough to handle it? how the hell, after all this time, is 'language' still such a tremendous obstacle?...
i can't be the only one who hasn't (unless forced to) watched a dubbed version of a foreign film in the last dozen years or more. this whole issue of getting more japanese games over here seems to be tied to some kinda antiquated bullshit premise - 'dub or nothing'. haven't the yakuza games demonstrated that this fixation is bullshit?...
anyway, yeah - english sub the damn games, & let the marketplace take care of the rest
...
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
I'd say PS2 or PS3 eras.
PS1 just had a lot of quality RPG's to choose from.
sooo this!
how, after all this time, is this not a standard with japanese games? are they just not interested in selling their games outside of japan? is there some kinda opposition in the west (publishers/distributors) to subbed-only japanese game localization? are they afraid their audience just isn't 'literate' enough to handle it? how the hell, after all this time, is 'language' still such a tremendous obstacle?...
i can't be the only one who hasn't (unless forced to) watched a dubbed version of a foreign film in the last dozen years or more. this whole issue of getting more japanese games over here seems to be tied to some kinda antiquated bullshit premise - 'dub or nothing'. haven't the yakuza games demonstrated that this fixation is bullshit?...
anyway, yeah - english sub the damn games, & let the marketplace take care of the rest
I'd imagine that would take a lot of time and manpower. Also, some games (like The LEgend of Heroes-games) have lots of text. It's not as easy to just translate in 1 on 1 I think. I mean, it has to be translated in such a way that it doesn't compromise on the story being told while still sounding natural in both languages, and it has to be possible on a technical level, meaning that text has to fit into text-boxes for example. I'm not a developer but it seems to me games have to be tested again and again to make sure the dual translation doesn't break the game somehow. I don't think it's as easy as just offer dual translation.
A lot of games that are translated badly get heavily criticized for that. It's possible that this criticism translates directly in bad sales.
Assuming that the eShop has a similar fee as the other virtual stores, pulishers get a 70% take for their eshop games. At retail their take is probably closer to 30-40%. So, even at a lower price they COULD make more money. The problem would lie in the number of people who actually buy games on the eShop. If you could expect to move 50-100k units on eShop, then it would be a viable alternative. If you could expect to move 1-5k units, then not so much. I sort of expect that eShop sales are closer to the latter than the former.
idlethreats
Member
With respect to voice overs, the folks from XSEED have talked about this a few times in the past (on their forums, I think) and basically, using the existing Japanese voice work isn't free. They have to get permission/license the voice work for publishing/distribution in North America/Europe since the original voice work was usually only contracted for domestic Japanese release. Somestimes licensing the Japanese voice work for North American distribution costs more than just re-recording in English. Sometimes some Japanese voice actors won't sign off on it, etc. They can't just keep the Japanese voices in and sub over them w/o investing time and money into securing those rights in most cases, it seems.sooo this!
how, after all this time, is this not a standard with japanese games? are they just not interested in selling their games outside of japan? is there some kinda opposition in the west (publishers/distributors) to subbed-only japanese game localization? are they afraid their audience just isn't 'literate' enough to handle it? how the hell, after all this time, is 'language' still such a tremendous obstacle?...
i can't be the only one who hasn't (unless forced to) watched a dubbed version of a foreign film in the last dozen years or more. this whole issue of getting more japanese games over here seems to be tied to some kinda antiquated bullshit premise - 'dub or nothing'. haven't the yakuza games demonstrated that this fixation is bullshit?...
anyway, yeah - english sub the damn games, & let the marketplace take care of the rest
In light of this, it must be particularly painful for the people at XSeed, Altus, etc to read that certain gamers are skipping a particular release because it doesn't offer dual language support. I have seen that statement from people on GAF a number of times. I think a lot of people just assume that including Japanese voices is easy and free, and that developers who release English-only voice overs are just being lazy.
I'd add on top of that that a first-party publisher has a separate set of goals to a third-party publisher. A third-party publisher only wants to make a profit on the game, but a first-party publisher can also be 'paid for' in terms of raising the profile of the *ecosystem* the game is released on. Xenoblade in Europe may or may not have made a profit, but it absolutely sent the right message about Nintendo's intent for the future at a time when they needed to sow the seeds for the Wii U.
There are lots of great games that don't ever get released outside of Japan, but they're mostly niche games, and more often than not cater to the otaku crowd. I'm perfectly okay with them not being localized, because the stereotypes about the Japanese are bad enough as it is.
True, but you're forgetting NoA's twitter post that pretty much said "Guys, Fire Emblem 3DS is coming out to NA, don't get mad, stay tuned for more information!" immediately after Reggie was asked at the presser. Given the complete information asymmetry between that Reggie knew and what the actual E3 presenters new, it's just as reasonable to assume that Jason definitely had something to do with the Nintendo Direct announcement later (which itself was extremely light on substance other than a placeholder logo and "Stay tuned until 2013!") than otherwise.
Holy smokes, Lucha, seriously?! PM'ed.
This shizz still blows my mind... I can't believe that stuff still gets left in Japan when companies like Atlas and X-Seed show that a publisher can make plenty of money by pandering to niches through limited releases. It's just crazy. Not everything needs an indefinite printing run guys.
I don't want to get too into this topic but just want to comment about this... iirc Sega actually was guaging interest on it at one point.
Took a bit to find the link but: http://www.siliconera.com/2012/06/0...ed-demo-of-hatsune-miku-project-diva-f-at-e3/
I'd say this gen has been at least as good as PS1/2 era. Sure, there are a few big games missing (most notably Last Ranker, FF Type-0 and Valkyria Chronicles III, though Type-0 will almost 100% surely be localized at some point), but on the other hand we've gotten games from the likes of Falcom that were pretty much absent from earlier gens in the west.
I don't think the problem is lack of localizations, it's the simple fact that big JRPG publishers like Capcom & Konami have almost abandoned the genre and a lot have moved to handhelds, which a lot of people ignore.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
And they're the people who should know this best.
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
We got quite a bit of Falcom stuff in the 8bit and 16bit gens too. Faxanadu, Ys I-III, Tombs & Treasures, Brandish, Legend of Heroes, Popful Mail, Socerian and Legacy of the Wizard. They were across all major platforms almost too, not simply limited to PSP/PC.
The likes of Falcom were ignored in the past because of their publishing titles on PC. We had Falcom games released here, but they were ported by other companies onto consoles/handhelds. Konami released Ys 6, and Bandai released google translated versions of the Gagharv Trilogy for Legend of Heroes alongside other iterations released in the past.
I will say that this gen has been good for PS3 localizations. There's absolutely nothing of note (inb4 ToV cry babies) that hasn't been localized. The constant announcement of Gust, and Compile Heart's stuff is proof of that. Almost disappointingly so, since as someone else mentioned it shows there's still a market for RPGs in the west ... just ones that pander and are on consoles.
Catherine was a risk for Atlus Japan to green light. Not so much for Atlus USA once those JP figures rolled in.
Super Robot Taisen OG 2 won't
Also we are getting fewer RPGs on PS3. It is almost 6 years since the release of PS3 and Atlus only developed on game. I think by year 6 for PS2, Atlus developed a dozen games already.
I'm sure thats alot easier to say then to do! I can imagine trying to self-teach myself the language from some books or something and end up crying within minutes lol.
Not being interested in a pair of first person dungeon crawlers and an action game means I don't support actual jrpgs -_-?
Ya that's kinda a dumb reason to skip out on a game. I used to have hopes that some day games would be more like anime in the west by having dub/sub voiceovers. Then it got to the point where even anime rarely gets that treatment anymore! Now if they do something cheap like completely stripping a game of voice acting where it once had some in another region, thats where I'll get alil up in arms!
Lumpy Onion
Member
Agreed. Outside of type zero there really ain't much out there that is being hoarded. I guess we could start scraping the barrel for titles, but I think we are getting tha majority of the good ones already.
Lindsay reminds me that I would've liked to play .hack//LINK one day. Oh well, I heard it wasn't that great anyways.
OG's the series without licensed mechs, right? I wouldn't say hope is dead for that. And yeah, part of the reason we're getting pretty much every PS3 RPG is because there's a lot less RPGs on it than its' predecessor. I don't think people would care at all about Idea Factory's latest if this was the PS2.
Super Robot Taisen OG 2 won't
Also we are getting fewer RPGs on PS3. It is almost 6 years since the release of PS3 and Atlus only developed on game. I think by year 6 for PS2, Atlus developed a dozen games already.
OG's the series without licensed mechs, right? I wouldn't say hope is dead for that. And yeah, part of the reason we're getting pretty much every PS3 RPG is because there's a lot less RPGs on it than its' predecessor. I don't think people would care at all about Idea Factory's latest if this was the PS2.
The cutscenes have been translated! As are a bunch of item/monster/character names! Believe in the power of fans and it may get fully finished... some day!
probably more painful when people won't buy a game because it is digital download only.
idlethreats
Member
What? We have no idea how much money XSEED or Atlus are making off their niche releases. Presumably enough to stay afloat, but that doesn't mean they're raking in profits hand over fist. We do know, for example, that Trails in the Sky did not sell well enough for them to be able to justify focusing all their efforts of localizing Second Chapter as quickly as possible, less the company go under. And as I have previously said, what it takes for a game to be profitable for companies like XSEED (which only has ~6 employees, last I heard) is significantly different than what it takes to constitute success for a much larger company like Nintendo or Square Enix. Nintendo needs to sell more copies of a game that XSEED or Atlus to justify their higher overhead costs.
Valkyria Chronicles 3. VALKYRIA CHRONICLES 3. *sobs quietly in the corner*
You make some good points -- and I really appreciate your thoughts -- but what I'm arguing is that despite common consensus, there is a market for good JRPGs in North America. There are people who will spend their money on Japanese RPGs that they think could be good, whether that's due to an effective marketing strategy, critical consensus, or even just straight-up word of mouth. I'm not arguing that every JRPG will turn a profit, or that every JRPG would even sell very well -- I'm saying there's an audience here. Companies like XSEED are certainly not turning a massive profit by localizing niche games, but they do have loyal fans.
Xenoblade and The Last Story may have sold well based on the factors you mentioned, and you're right in that they benefited both from a European localization and a free marketing campaign in the form of Operation Rainfall, but they're not selling to people who aren't interested in JRPGs. I don't think it's unrealistic to think that those people would also spend their money on other great RPGs from Japan if those RPGs actually made it here.
idlethreats
Member
Well sure. I never said that there was no market or audience for JRPGs in North America anymore, just that holding up Xenoblade and TLS as the definitive proof of it seemed shakey for the reasons I speculated about.
Is there really a common consensus that the JRPG market is dead in North America though? Certainly its seen better days and of course there are a lot of games that aren't being brought over, but we're still getting tons of stuff over here: off the top of my head, this year has seen three Final Fantasies (four if you count TR), two Tales games, two Pokemon RPGs (one an SRPG based on feudal Japanese history no less), Kingdom Hearts 3D, Growlanser and Gungnir PSP, Unchained Blades, the aforementioned Xenoblade and TLS, Disgaea Vita, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Atelier, SMT Devil Survivor 2, Ys Origin, Lunar iOS and we still have Crimson Shroud, Ragnarok Tactics, Class of Heroes II, Ragnarok Odyssey and P4 Golden to come with Ni no Kuni, Etrian Odyssey IV and Fire Emblem (hopefully) close on their heels.
Where we've been hurting for a lack of localized JRPGs - the PSP and to a lesser extent, the NDS - seems to very much be a platform specific issue and sadly, in this case I think publishers are probably right that the market isn't there. In the early to mid years of the NDS and PSP's lifespan, we saw a plethora of JRPGs coming over, and then they started tapering off, I would suspect due to the poor performance of previous titles. I remember an Atlus rep snarkily stating that there was no way they'd bring over My World, My Way PSP based on the way the DS version sold over here (presumably, they stopped bringing over the Luminous Arc, Summon Night and Class of Heroes games for the same reasons). Likewise, Sega was pretty clear that VCIII wasn't coming over because no one bought VCII, and we know that the sales of Trails in the Sky FC forced XSEED to de-prioritize localizing Second Chapter. I would love for the audience to be there for these games, but I think publishers already have the hard sales data to know that it isn't, sadly.
cj_iwakura
Member
Persona 2 isn't first person, that's Persona 1. And the first person dungeon crawler is the source of the JRPG, so... yeah.
I didn't know Persona 2 was third person! I played like 10 minutes into the first one, got disoriented as heck and shelved it. With the way people lump the first 2 games together against the latter 2 I dumbly assumed they were of the same mold. I'll see about giving the second game a try, but I dun wanna end up playing half a game again and potentially not seeing the other half released ala Trails!
As for first person dungeon crawlers being the origin of jrpgs~ I don't care an likely not many other people do either. When people talk about jrpgs these days they're more likely than not refering to games where you can actually see your characters outside of some menu screen, traveling the world not endless corridors. I may be wrong but I doubt you'd find to many average peoples relating jrpgs to Class of Heroes over FF.
I think we've gotten a lot of nice in-roads towards JRPGs, and Japanese games in general, this generation. XSEED, Atlus, 76sixty, Rising Star US, GungHo's recent US publishing branch. Gaijinworks, Monkeypaw... There's a lot of companies rising up to plumb that niche. We've even start to see things like Cladun X2, the Ys series, and Recettear appear on Steam!
I think we'd see more games, if people were not so stingy on release options. Consumer and Corporation alike. People comlain about Under Defeat HD getting a $30 retail release here in America, or the price of New Little Kings Story or One Piece on PSN... I'm happy to see both personally, as years ago, we probably whouldn't have seen either make US release at all, and would be left to importing.
As much as we can say "I want that Niche RPG! THERE'S A MARKET FOR IT!!!", how do you think many companies feel when they see things like Binary Domain and Vanquish fail to sell strongly? "Those are quality games in well-established modern genres! What kind of chance does our niche-even-in-our-land product have?!?"
I'd love to see more creative strats applied to getting nearly EVERY game to have a world-wide release. Download only, limited special editions, breaking them game up into multi-part episodic releases, getting them released on more consoles outside their country of origin, PSP up-ports to Vita, Day one PSP / Vita compatability, Sub only, but with added features (Like adding 2P mode to RPGS, or making battle arenas have leaderboards), or selling an import at a higher price, but including all current / future DLC for free, as a show of good faith to the consumer.
There's so many ways to get things to consumers now-a-days, it just feels sad to see any decent game not get a chance at an overseas market...
Hey, top of new page: Buy Growlanser IV and Ragnarok Odyssey!
I think we'd see more games, if people were not so stingy on release options. Consumer and Corporation alike. People comlain about Under Defeat HD getting a $30 retail release here in America, or the price of New Little Kings Story or One Piece on PSN... I'm happy to see both personally, as years ago, we probably whouldn't have seen either make US release at all, and would be left to importing.
As much as we can say "I want that Niche RPG! THERE'S A MARKET FOR IT!!!", how do you think many companies feel when they see things like Binary Domain and Vanquish fail to sell strongly? "Those are quality games in well-established modern genres! What kind of chance does our niche-even-in-our-land product have?!?"
I'd love to see more creative strats applied to getting nearly EVERY game to have a world-wide release. Download only, limited special editions, breaking them game up into multi-part episodic releases, getting them released on more consoles outside their country of origin, PSP up-ports to Vita, Day one PSP / Vita compatability, Sub only, but with added features (Like adding 2P mode to RPGS, or making battle arenas have leaderboards), or selling an import at a higher price, but including all current / future DLC for free, as a show of good faith to the consumer.
There's so many ways to get things to consumers now-a-days, it just feels sad to see any decent game not get a chance at an overseas market...
Hey, top of new page: Buy Growlanser IV and Ragnarok Odyssey!