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Jim Ryan - The Sony stance is that the Japanese market remains incredibly important to us,”

Yes! Give us more versions of the games we've already played instead of new games you cowards!
Re-releases have a place in this industry, like it or not. Imagine the new audience that concept could bring to niche games like that.

Or they could just make yet another action adventure game that's 15 hours long with little to no replayability. For me, that market is familiar and stale.

It's timed exclusive, like FF7R.

In that sense, Sony is not funding development of the game. They're paying for the exclusivity of the game on their platform for x number of months.
Proof?
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
“The Sony stance is that the Japanese market remains incredibly important to us,” he said. “We have not been as excited about the engagement of the Japanese game development community as we are now for many years.”
“I’d also observe that we’re making a statement by launching in Japan day and date with the US, and that is not what we did with PS4. So I read that stuff. A lot of that commentary is inaccurate, and Japan – as our second largest market and as Sony’s homeland – continues to be really important to us.”

Chinga a tu madre Jim Ryan
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
It's timed exclusive, like FF7R.

In that sense, Sony is not funding development of the game. They're paying for the exclusivity of the game on their platform for x number of months.
and yet they still went out and paid for that exclusivity which is thus giving the studio more money to hopefully meet more of a vision for the game they want to make. So they are serious and supportive Japanese devs but in ways some people may not like.
 
Smells like typical PR. He'll say whatever is necessary to calm any doubts and please the Playstation devotees.

Several unique Japanese-made IPs lay dormant and unused, such as. Ape escape, Willd arms, and others, including various quirky games.
Incredibly mismanaged and undermarketed their Japanese output, besides GT,
they lost Ueda,
demoted Yushida,
forced their Japanese studios to communicate in English,
and most recently Toyama, and other talent, have left the building too.

All of the above doesn't inspire much confidence, if any at all. I swear, Sony has changed their mentality significantly since at least the mid-PS3 days. But, of course the Sony clique will likely eat his words up as the absolute truth and gospel.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
“The Sony stance is that the Japanese market remains incredibly important to us,” he said. “We have not been as excited about the engagement of the Japanese game development community as we are now for many years.”
“I’d also observe that we’re making a statement by launching in Japan day and date with the US, and that is not what we did with PS4. So I read that stuff. A lot of that commentary is inaccurate, and Japan – as our second largest market and as Sony’s homeland – continues to be really important to us.”

In english

Fuck you and go to hell Jim ryan
 

JonkyDonk

Member
I hope he is right. They really should make more Japaneses games to diversify their output. They made a big mistake not buying FromSoft back in the day.
 

sackings

Member
Hes right about the developers. Japanese gamers, not really considering how much their market has shrunk
 

Kokoloko85

Member
"Supposedly" is a good guess as any.

For any corporation, money speaks louder.
Sony wants games to help boost PS5 sales even more. Square-Enix wants big sales numbers.

Timed exclusivity solves both problems. When sales decline, Square-Enix has the privilege of releasing on other platforms for the full launch price, even one year later.

Yes but the advertisement was console exclusive.
They normall only write that for exclusives. They mention something else for timed exclusives
 

YukiOnna

Member
If you're able to show more 3rd party support outside of AAA, investment in your Japanese Branch, and removal of censorship/editing content rules then that would help me believe those words. Otherwise, PC and Nintendo is the way to go in that regard.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Sony needs to let Japan go. The Japanese people clearly have. They dont give a shit about console gaming anymore. All the numbers for both games and console show this. I have no idea why Sony is wasting launching in Japan when the demand is much higher in western countries.

Japan should be treated like a third world market like the middle east or south american markets. Europe and NA markets should take precedence and then maybe they can launch in Japan in March or something. its just a waste of units.
 
Are people honestly this stupid and ignorant? What did you expect a CEO of a major company say? Something like "Yeah you are right, we do not give a fuck about Japan anymore. Fuck Japan. USA and Europe only, bye"
 
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D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
It really has been depressing to see PlayStation lose a lot of its Japanese identity and seemingly turn into just another American-centric western brand.

I understand the reasons why (money), but it still kind of sucks as someone who grew up with the brand.
 
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OrtizTwelve

Member
It would be a bad business move to lose focus on the Japanese market. It appears PlayStation isn’t as big as it used to be, and it seems Nintendo and the switch has taken the country by storm, but PlayStation should continue to involve and promote Japanese game development. While Japanese games aren’t as prevalent as they used to be, their games often tend to be great — polished and unique.
 
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Lethal01

Member
To be fair, that is more a damnation of the Japanese market in total as it is anything else. The Yakuza director gave the impression he is almost ashamed that an American developer had to be the one to make a game like that.

Yakuza creator is clearly a big fan of a healthy dose of realism and real Japanese culture.
Where as the average Japanese consumer wants their anime game with cool over the top super powers.

We have way more than enough realistic games to appease people like him, we need more cool over the top action. He should be proud that Japanese creator have been picking up the slack for ages now.
 

Lethal01

Member
Didn’t they just release two at PS5’s launch and have a third coming out soon?

Astroboy and what?

I don't understand why there's so much hate for Jim Ryan. What did he do?

They've been heavily censoring Japanese games for years to the point of having entire features missing and having developers not want to primarily target playstation.

As well as other bad decision concerning the Japanese market, the blame falls on the head.
 

K.S v2.0

Banned
Considering 8 out of 10 titles are going to be woke agitprop mental illness pandering garbage like the Lez of Us 2, I'm sitting here waiting for Get Woke Go Broke™ to largely fulfil itself.

Sony Commiefornia only has control coz the Japan is now all about mobile scamminggaming. At some point things will shift back once Get Woke Goes Broke enough.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Proof of the pudding is in how much investment they put into the Japanese Dev scene.

I'm not overly concerned with them slimming down internal operations provided they continue to build strong relationships with other Japanese developers, because the truth of the matter is that everyone's benefited from it.

Its an uncomfortable truth that Nintendo, wildly successful though they may be, are very much technological outliers. You build for their platforms and everything else requires major retooling. Playstation first gives them a platform holder with some brand name value domestically, but also allows ready access into the global PC and Xbox markets. Its good for business.

Xbox should be able to offer a similar advantage but I suspect a lot of Japanese devs will be less than thrilled at the prospect of serving a primary platform that is basically a non-starter in their home country. This is not a matter of national pride just a scenario where they have to appeal to a foreign audience if they want any sort of success.

This is a big deal for franchises like Nier, which would never have gotten a second shot had there not been enthusiasm/interest in Japan.
 
I feel like if they actually cared greatly about the Japanese market and Japanese games, he could have come up with a more human an enthusiastic way of saying it. The response is so robotic and corporate. Even as a primarily PlayStation player I can really see what people like about Phil Spencer. He actually seems like he enjoys and cares about this industry. Ryan just feels like a boring figurehead.
 

borborygmus

Member
In corporate speak, publicly saying "we totally care about thing" usually means "we don't give a shit about thing but we think you're retarded so here are some nice words."
 
Astroboy and what?



They've been heavily censoring Japanese games for years to the point of having entire features missing and having developers not want to primarily target playstation.

As well as other bad decision concerning the Japanese market, the blame falls on the head.
Most of that happened before Jim Ryan took the lead anyway. Most of the censoring, the lack of crossplay and whatnot happened during the bulk of the PS4s reign was under Andrew House.
 
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Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief
I've been saying for a while that Japan isn't a priority for Sony anymore but I think that is different from saying "Sony doesn't care about Japanese people" Kanye West style.

Japan is their second largest market. PS3 and PS4 both sold ~10MM units each there. PS4 sales were actually down compared to PS3, a console that had considerably more problems with price and Japan's slow response to the HD era. 10 million consoles isn't a bad install base but when you compare with the PS1 at ~20MM, PS2 at ~25MM, PSP at ~20, and even Vita at ~7MM the numbers don't look as good. Meanwhile Nintendo has seen a ton of success with the Wii, DS/3DS, and Switch. Switch has moved 16MM units in 3.5 years; over 60% more than PS4 in 7 years. More and more Japanese developers are shifting to Switch. Nintendo succeeded in capturing the handheld, mobile, and medium scope console market in Japan. The only games in Japan that are skipping Switch are the handful of HD releases like Final Fantasy.

All of that to say, there isn't a lot of potential for PlayStation to grow in Japan. They've been shrinking for a while actually. This is without the same level of competition that they had in the early days; Sega is out of the picture and Microsoft hasn't even made a dent in the market since the original Xbox which actually wasn't a complete flop. Sony has seen a ton of growth in the West on the other hand. They've been growing steadily in the rest of the globe. For Sony investing in these reasons provides a much better ROI. They're seeing more growth opportunities in other markets and it would wiser to allocate resources that way. As a result they've repositioned the console as a global one with the move to to the West, the X/O change, the censorship incidents, the reduction in the Japan Studio, etc are all more evidence that Sony is positioning PS as a global console and not one as rooted in Japan.

That is not to say that Sony is giving up on Japan. They'll continue to invest in big titles like Final Fantasy and I could see them inking a deal on Persona 6 as well. Japan Studio will continue to function as a publisher of sorts for exclusive Japanese developed titles. Those games make a big impact in markets outside of Japan as well. They'll work to hold Japan as a ~10MM unit market but they're pushing for growth in other areas.
 
Of course... I like games with quality

tenor.gif
 

Lethal01

Member
Most of that happened before Jim Ryan took the lead anyway. Most of the censoring, the lack of crossplay and whatnot happened during the bulk of the PS4s reign was under Andrew House.

Sure, only got worse with him there.
Just explaining why others are mad.
 

jakinov

Member
That's great and all but as certain other industry exec taught us - actions speak louder than words and shipping slightly over 100k consoles to Japan vs rumored 300+ k to UK is very telling.
Well they are saying that the Japanese market is [still] very important not that they are most or one of the most important (at least right now). The number of units don’t take into account the differences in markets and strategy. I haven’t looked at the numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised that UK would be more likely to purchase software and adopt a new generation console than Japan (especially with the current lineup) and that you would only see spikes during launch weeks of major games that Japanese gamers tend to like. Also, there was a article years ago about how low the attach rate in Japan is for the PS4. Also ones about shrinking console

I think there’s also a social argument for picking the UK too. America is the most important market; and making sure the UK gets more consoles arguably indirectly helps that market. The US and the UK share a common language and have overlap culturally and socially. A lot of UK influencers are US influencers and vice versa. Making sure there’s enough stock for potentially a celebs or that random medium popularity Tik tok, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter influencer is more important than making sure, some random Japanese gamer gets it who probably likely won’t buy games at launch. I would also argue that even the UK (or the US) has influences on people all over the world.

I don’t think the low numbers is telling of Sony not caring about Japan, I think it’s more telling that the Japanese market isn’t what it used to be. As a business they will allocate what is necessary to optimize the business and not allocate units because of their history as a Japanese organization or to signal that they still care about the region. Rmemeber that the ultimate goal is that the supply is plentiful and there’s no issue walking in a store and getting one, that fact for now that they
priories certain regions doesn’t mean much. It’s a different story if there’s a surplus everywhere except Japan because they refuse to put more money making Japanese SKUs.
 

Fbh

Member
Like gravity rush...wait.

Make better ones?
I love the world, art style and music of Gravity rush 2. But as a sequel it was disappointing IMO.

Besides, one japanese game not selling as well as expected shouldn't be an excuse to completely give up. It's not like they gave up on cinematic third person action games because The Order 1886 bombed.
 
Sony needs to let Japan go. The Japanese people clearly have. They dont give a shit about console gaming anymore. All the numbers for both games and console show this. I have no idea why Sony is wasting launching in Japan when the demand is much higher in western countries.

Japan should be treated like a third world market like the middle east or south american markets. Europe and NA markets should take precedence and then maybe they can launch in Japan in March or something. its just a waste of units.

As someone who mostly plays weebshit I agree with you: console gaming is over in Japan.
You are wrong with the Middle East though: that's a growing market.
 
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