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Why do you think Sony are neglecting so much Japanese games?

What counts as Japanese to you because Sony have about the same Japanese support they always had. They close down their Japanese studio and suddenly they are neglecting Japan? What about all the other studios and publishers?
 

Keihart

Member
IIRC Japan studio used to also be a direct line of communication with japanese devs but since the "restructuring" there is no direct line with japanese devs anymore, anyone wanting to contact sony now has to do so in english to the american branch.

I don't think they care too much anymore. I said that Persona would go multiplat after this whole Jim Ryan shitpocalipse and seems like i was not mistaken.
 

Isa

Gold Member
I get what you mean, but I don't think there will be much change in Sony's actions for the foreseeable future. They want big marketable games for a mass market as opposed to smaller and often less impressive tech pieces that focus on a few niche things in a genre that is out of fashion. Open World is among the current kings of PR buzzwords and I know several people who either hated or never heard of a FromSoft game only to now buy Elden Ring and love it thanks to that. Also they want bigger returns on investments, and niche games will only sell a fraction of what they're looking for. Sony also seems to really want to invest heavily in GAAS titles with MTX and while Japan does have that market in the bag, they primarily stick to the Mobile Market.

Now for the super niche "weeb" games haters love to lambast, I think most of the them will either find a way onto PS platforms in some pre or post-censored form, one need only look to Switch and PC for the full experience, or disappear entirely as pressure causes developers to leave such as the Senran Kagura case. I would love to be wrong and see the Corporate culture shift but since so many are involved in ESG scores and Twitter mobs I don't think this will change, maybe ever depending on how the world goes. Frankly I've given up on Sony for those types of games and support them elsewhere, but there are still a few good titles releasing on PS platforms every few months. I do lament the lack of weird and risque titles though.
 

Plantoid

Member
When he says japanese games he's not talking about resident evil or dark souls, he is talking about those weird obscure weebo and anime games the japanese like, and the answer is simple, because the average western gamer doesn't care about that
 

CamHostage

Member
Sony just did a State of Play this month focused mainly on Japanese games. This included virtually every major Japanese publisher (although the Japan-themed indies came from Malaysia and Poland plus Returnal isn't Japanese; PSN gets some doujin games but generally the independent Japanese development community focuses on Steam and mobile.)

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/03/08/state-of-play-returns-this-wednesday/

(*BTW, if you watch the Japanese stream, you won't find any further titles that Japan got but we won't get, which sometimes happens in State of Play/Nin. Direct streams.)


(*BTW, I'm not one for the "Japan sux right now!" attitude, but if you want some insight into how gamers felt about all these Japanese game reveals, there's like 17 pages of commentary on this Japan-focused PlayStation State of Play...)

As far as internal studios, it is true that Sony did restructure/liquidate the stalwart Japan Studios and that the company dedicated PS fans knew and loved is no more, but it still has Team Asobi, and can pursue development partnerships via indie or third-party relationships in a different manner from the old internal-producer/external-developer approach they worked with for the run of Japan Studio. Frankly, Japan Studio struggled coming into the PS3 generation and never found its footing on PS4 or PS5. (Albeit the epitaph technically credits Japan Studio with two PS5 launch games, Demon's Souls and Astro's Playroom.) When PSP was alive, Japan Studio had a platform that was in its wheelhouse, but the Vita floundered worldwide (even in Japan) and the studio never fit. Supposedly there was an ambitious sci-fi space project called Rayspace in one of the internal development group, maybe that could have been a hit and turned things around, but the project languished in development for over 6 years without ever being revealed before the closure.
 
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Astral Dog

Member
There are two main reasons

1 because their big western games sell much more than their japanese studios wich all started to bomb, Sony's leadership started courting more and more western developers until thats the direction most of the company follows. Vita was more or less succesful in Japan but still had strong competition from the 3DS and demeed a waste of resources

2.because the PlayStation is such a strong brand,and competition so weak last generation Sony didn't need to do anything to have japanese companies at their feet, Wii U and Xbox ONE were non factors, Play Station 4 had the whole console market in Japan until Switch arrived.still big exclusives like Final Fantasy or any game that can't run on the Switch is a big advantage for them

And last, unlike Sony Nintendo will always place the Japanese market as a priority, wich goes into their handheld console design(wich is 'unpopular' among PS/PC geeks because of its percieved weakness) when they are succesful they form healthy third party relationships that turn into software, Switch is at times critisized by some for focusing on anime games but thats their main market and it works for them
 
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Its funny how both microsoft and sony get criticized for ignoring Japan.

Its like if the two home console manufacturers are both ignoring japan whos giving them attentio, Nintendo? 3rd parties outside of a handful barely do well on switch, they are getting what are essentially japanese indie and AA games.

People just need to be honest and admit the console/AAA gaming market for japan has shrunk considerably in the last decade. Japan isn’t the force of gaming it used to the in the 90’s and 00’s outside of Nintendo. Thats why every major japanese publishers are scaling and designing their games for western audiences now.

Sega, capcom, square enix, etc. almost all their major franchises are now meant to appeal to a global audience.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Money.

Japanese gamers tastes heavily skew to Nintendo, anime, Monster Hunter and whatever quirky games they have there. Also, their interest in consoles dropped like a rock past 10 years. They are a handheld market now.

If Sony doesn't want to make portable games or any kinds of games that resemble above, sales will be ultra low. And trying to commit a large of resources for that style of gaming will be limited to Japanese region sales unless they can pull off franchises that seem globally loved like Nintendo games, Pokemon and MH.

Sony has no interest as all their games are western style, biggest studios are in USA, and they even shut down their Japan studio. Sony gaming is a USA focused division.

Also, does anyone know if Japanese gamers are big into GAAS mtx? If they arent, that would explain more Sony focus on western markets because they definitely love mtx gaming. I dont think I've ever seen charts showing how much spending/interest there is on mtx by region.
 
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CamHostage

Member
They didn't kill it, they restructured it changing its leadership, firing some people, rebranding it to Team Asobi and branching off their XDEV local 2nd party publishing side to make it report to their global XDEV team instead of to a local gamedev team.

Not only that, but Japan Studio was rarely a "studio" making its own games.

When you look into the credits of the Japan Studio list of games, you see Level-5 and Q-Games and Shift and Dimps and Pyramid and Alfa System and Game Republic and Millennium Kitchen and FromSoft and Clap Hanz (always an independent studio, despite it workin exclusively with Sony doing Hot Shots/Everybody's Sports until 2021's Clap Hanz Golf for Apple Arcade) and lots of other developers. They "made" these games you think of as Japan Studio titles.

Japan Studio was as much if not moreso a Producer's Office as it was a development group. A producer at Japan Studio contracted these other companies (sometimes with pitches by the developer, sometimes with titles that the producer themselves were drafting and would help create, occasionally with a franchise like Bleach or GitS that they were looking for development partners on. There were still creative interests at Japan Studio even when the producer wasn't a co-director (the producer might handle casting since Sony Japan would be handling the VO, for example,) but the game designers were generally external.

The number of games actually developed inside the walls of Japan Studio are relatively few. In their final years, their in-house crew made the Knack games, the Gravity Rush games, and the Astrobot games, and that's about it; before that, they had the forgettable (but memorable for the few who played them) titles like Puppeteer and Rain or the VR game Kung Fu Rider but couldn't get any big franchises running, while the bulk of the office toiled away on Last Guardian trying to make that actually work before finally Ueda left and the project could be refocused between Japan Studio developers and GenDesign as well as other assisters.

It's just not that many games that Japan Studio developed. It's not how the studio was built to operate, even from the beginning. (It's actually the way a lot of Japanese studios are shaped; look at Nintendo's credits and you'll see some names which are not Nintendo R&D groups, including a few that Sony Japan Studio has worked with.) There's a lot to like if you appreciate the producer-driven structure of Japan Studio, and so it is a tragedy for fans that it's gone, but game producing has changed over the years. (PlayStation USA long ago closed its own producer-driven / sometimes-internal group 989 Studios, and although Japan Studio's closure is big news since it was a founding arm of the company and leaves little visible presence in Japan for PlayStation, Sony US and UK have both had their cuts and restructurings too.) Development studios that used to come to publishers to get their games out have now gone indie, and many of the 3rd Party studios Japan Studio used to contract now sometimes bring their indie games to PlayStation. (We'll see where indies like Bokeh Studios and EPIGRAsm turn up, but it just makes sense that Slitterhead will probably be playable on a PlayStation.) Japanese games will keep coming to PlayStation, just not through the same channels we were used to, and it'll be up to the independent developers, rather than the producers holding the purse strings, if they see their games as being right for the platform. That's what XDEV does, and that's why XDEV makes sense to supplant the old Japan Studio business model.

Frankly, this was the way the market has been going for a long, long time now, and Sony's restructuring of Japan Studio was long overdue; the liquidation might have even been more extreme than it needed to be (maybe Project Silent could have stayed too if the situation wasn't so dire) if Sony hadn't hesitated so long to pull the trigger.
 
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Keihart

Member
Not only that, but Japan Studio was rarely a "studio" making its own games.

When you look into the credits of the Japan Studio list of games, you see Level-5 and Q-Games and Shift and Dimps and Pyramid and Alfa System and Game Republic and Millennium Kitchen and FromSoft and Clap Hanz (always an independent studio, despite it workin exclusively with Sony doing Hot Shots/Everybody's Sports until 2021's Clap Hanz Golf for Apple Arcade) and lots of other developers. The number of games actually developed inside the walls of Japan Studio are relatively few. In their final years, their in-house crew made the Knack games, the Gravity Rush games, and the Astrobot games, and that's about it; before that, they had the forgettable (but memorable for the few who played them) titles like Puppeteer and Rain or the VR game Kung Fu Rider but couldn't get any big franchises running, while the bulk of the office toiled away on Last Guardian trying to make that actually work before finally Ueda left and the project could be refocused between Japan Studio developers and GenDesign as well as other assisters.

It's just not that many games that Japan Studio developed. It's not how the studio was built to operate, even from the beginning. (It's actually the way a lot of Japanese studios are shaped; look at Nintendo's credits and you'll see some names which are not Nintendo R&D groups, including a few that Sony Japan Studio has worked with.) There's a lot to like if you appreciate the producer-driven structure of Japan Studio, and so it is a tragedy for fans that it's gone, but game producing has changed over the years. (PlayStation USA long ago closed its own producer-driven / sometimes-internal group 989 Studios, and although Japan Studio's closure is big news since it was a founding arm of the company and leaves little visible presence in Japan for PlayStation, Sony US and UK have both had their cuts and restructurings too.) Development studios that used to come to publishers to get their games out have now gone indie, and many of the 3rd Party studios Japan Studio used to contract now sometimes bring their indie games to PlayStation. (We'll see where indies like Bokeh Studios and EPIGRAsm turn up, but it just makes sense that Slitterhead will probably be playable on a PlayStation.) Japanese games will keep coming to PlayStation, just not through the same channels we were used to, and it'll be up to the independent developers, rather than the producers holding the purse strings, if they see their games as being right for the platform. That's what XDEV does, and that's why XDEV makes sense to supplant the old Japan Studio business model.

Frankly, this was the way the market has been going for a long, long time now, and Sony's restructuring of Japan Studio was long overdue; the liquidation might have even been more extreme than it needed to be (maybe Project Silent could have stayed too if the situation wasn't so dire) if Sony hadn't hesitated so long to pull the trigger.
Honestly, i was kinda happy that Toyama left, he had mentioned before(and after) the Bokeh videos about how they were having problems pitching projects because Sony wanted bigger games than what they were pitching.
If i had to speculate, Gravity Rush 2 was so unnecessarily big because of this, that game was glaringly over ambitious to the studios capabilities.
 
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Keihart

Member
Money.

Japanese gamers tastes heavily skew to Nintendo, anime, Monster Hunter and whatever quirky games they have there. Also, their interest in consoles dropped like a rock past 10 years. They are a handheld market now.

If Sony doesn't want to make portable games or any kinds of games that resemble above, sales will be ultra low. And trying to commit a large of resources for that style of gaming will be limited to Japanese region sales unless they can pull off franchises that seem globally loved like Nintendo games, Pokemon and MH.

Sony has no interest as all their games are western style, biggest studios are in USA, and they even shut down their Japan studio. Sony gaming is a USA focused division.

Also, does anyone know if Japanese gamers are big into GAAS mtx? If they arent, that would explain more Sony focus on western markets because they definitely love mtx gaming. I dont think I've ever seen charts showing how much spending/interest there is on mtx by region.
Japenese mobile devs are the best at syphoning money with mtx, just take a look at all those waifu and husbando collecting games, they make bank.
I think one of the biggest ones is from squenix
 

CamHostage

Member
Honestly, i was kinda happy that Toyama left, he had mentioned before(and after) the Bokeh videos about how they were having problems pitching projects because Sony wanted bigger games than what they were pitching.
If i had to speculate, Gravity Rush 2 was so unnecessarily big because of this, that game was glaringly over ambitious to the studios capabilities.

Yeah, you kind of get the feeling that even the designers knew it wasn't working. From the outside, it's all tragedy (and for probably the bulk of people who lost their jobs, it was not a happy ending,) but for some of the leads, probably they were staying at Japan Studio because it was the world-renown Japan Studio (and because it's scary to leave the nest and start a new business, especially in Japanese gaming where there's not a great track record for that.) Actually working there, making one title every few years which goes on to sell an underwhelming number of copies, while everybody around you is working on this 6-year seemingly-boondoggled RaySpace (and this is after a lot of those people spent 7+ years on the previous Sisyphean nightmare, The Last Guardian,) sometimes those situations are a relief when the rusty building finally collapses. It's terrifying to be in it (I've actually had a job that went down like this,) but it had been just as terrifying waiting for it to finally happen.

And, as you say, sometimes it's darkest before the new dawn.
 
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Lethal01

Member
Dunno, but negatives are prolly due to sexualized characters and ideologies in Japan vs western shit. Positives are prolly due to how shit Japanese developers are at making actual levels in their games and overall quality, with only From being the single exception. Even P5R which I loved had garbage dungeons.
Nintendo has fantastic levels

But Kojima is making a game for Sony. Platinum is in the gutter, they are done.

Have you considered that maybe there are no devs worth acquiring from Japan, and it would take Sony aquiring an entire japanese publisher.

As shitty as babylons fall was Astral chain which came out pretty recently was great and Bayonetta 3 is likely to be another hit.

One game doesn't mean a studio can't go back to making great games.
 
Do you play games or sales?

Bloodborne don't have the sales reputation, but is the best game ever.

I feel like this generation is a mix of sales vs metacritic score.
I dislike their games, and they don’t sell well.

Bloodborne was a coded mess, but it sold well. Ill never touch it at its current state. The game would have done much better multi-platform, simply isnt a system seller.

Sony should just buy Capcom, they know how to market to the mass market.

Sony keeps giving Japanese developers huge budgets and all they do is fail. They finally cleaned house at Studio Japan, and people are bitching, all they been doing there for years is burning money.
 

Woopah

Member
Sony has become more global and focused on GAAS third party titles as they make a lot of money by taking a cut from MTX. And there's definitely elements of that strategy than can be criticized (such as requiring developers to submit some things in English rather than in Japanese).

However, they are still making investments in Japan, especially with Square Enix. For the most part, the future for Japanese third parties is going to be multiplatform games released simultaneously worldwide. Switch and PlayStation will be the main ecosystems for them so Sony won't lose too much.

Their only potential loss will be games that at largely or entirely focused on the Japan market, but we'll have to see if that happens over the next 3-4 years.
 
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yurinka

Member
Not only that, but Japan Studio was rarely a "studio" making its own games.

When you look into the credits of the Japan Studio list of games, you see Level-5 and Q-Games and Shift and Dimps and Pyramid and Alfa System and Game Republic and Millennium Kitchen and FromSoft and Clap Hanz (always an independent studio, despite it workin exclusively with Sony doing Hot Shots/Everybody's Sports until 2021's Clap Hanz Golf for Apple Arcade) and lots of other developers. The number of games actually developed inside the walls of Japan Studio are relatively few. In their final years, their in-house crew made the Knack games, the Gravity Rush games, and the Astrobot games, and that's about it; before that, they had the forgettable (but memorable for the few who played them) titles like Puppeteer and Rain or the VR game Kung Fu Rider but couldn't get any big franchises running, while the bulk of the office toiled away on Last Guardian trying to make that actually work before finally Ueda left and the project could be refocused between Japan Studio developers and GenDesign as well as other assisters.

It's just not that many games that Japan Studio developed. It's not how the studio was built to operate, even from the beginning. (It's actually the way a lot of Japanese studios are shaped; look at Nintendo's credits and you'll see some names which are not Nintendo R&D groups, including a few that Sony Japan Studio has worked with.) There's a lot to like if you appreciate the producer-driven structure of Japan Studio, and so it is a tragedy for fans that it's gone, but game producing has changed over the years. (PlayStation USA long ago closed its own producer-driven / sometimes-internal group 989 Studios, and although Japan Studio's closure is big news since it was a founding arm of the company and leaves little visible presence in Japan for PlayStation, Sony US and UK have both had their cuts and restructurings too.) Development studios that used to come to publishers to get their games out have now gone indie, and many of the 3rd Party studios Japan Studio used to contract now sometimes bring their indie games to PlayStation. (We'll see where indies like Bokeh Studios and EPIGRAsm turn up, but it just makes sense that Slitterhead will probably be playable on a PlayStation.) Japanese games will keep coming to PlayStation, just not through the same channels we were used to, and it'll be up to the independent developers, rather than the producers holding the purse strings, if they see their games as being right for the platform. That's what XDEV does, and that's why XDEV makes sense to supplant the old Japan Studio business model.

Frankly, this was the way the market has been going for a long, long time now, and Sony's restructuring of Japan Studio was long overdue; the liquidation might have even been more extreme than it needed to be (maybe Project Silent could have stayed too if the situation wasn't so dire) if Sony hadn't hesitated so long to pull the trigger.
Since the PS1 Japan Studio developed in-house games, sometimes co-developed/outsourced part of the game development (nothing rare, always has been super common in all big companies since decades ago) and other times they published games totally developed by third party studios, which is a 2nd party game (2nd party is when the publisher owned by a console platform holder publishes a game developed by a 3rd party studio, meaning a development studio not owned by the platform holder).

XDEV (which means External Development) is basically the team/part/department of SIE's PlayStation Studios (previously known as Worldwide Studios) dedicated to mostly 2nd party publishing or -more rarely- supporting internally developed 1st party teams with outsourcing. They originally had a 2nd party publishing team inside Sony Liverpool for the European games, another under Sony Santa Monica (not sure if they had more in USA) for the American games and another one in Japan Studio for the Japanese games.

First the Liverpool team branched off to become a separated team different from Sony Liverpool to become its own studio and named it XDEV. Then they did the same in Santa Monica and later in Japan Studio. These teams continue being the same but instead of being inside an internal development studio they are now a separate team that work together in a global XDEV team.

These XDEV teams continue doing their thing but more coordinated with the other XDEV teams and not having to report to a local gamedev team, and the local gamedev teams now can focus on doing their own internal games. This XDEV teams reorganization was a global thing, not specific to Japan Studio.

Regarding their output for the last generation, these are their internally developed or co-developed Vita games:
-Open Me! (basically a tech demo)
-Paint Park (paint free app)
-Gravity Rush
-Soul Sacrifice and Soul Sacrifice Delta (co-developed by Marvelous)
-No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either! (co-developed with SmileBoom and, SEAStories Studio)
-Destiny of Spirits (co-developed with Q-Entertainment)
-Freedom Wars (co-developed with Dimps and Shift)

Internally developed or codeveloped PS4 games:
-The Playroom (co-developed with Firesprite)
-Everybody's Golf (co-developed with Clap Hanz)
-Knack
-Knack II
-Gravity Rush 2
-The Last Guardian (later part co-developed with -mostly former Japan Studio staff- genDESIGN)
-The Playroom VR (co-developed with Firesprite)
-Astro Bot Rescue Mission
-No Heroes Allowed! VR (co-developed with Acquire)
-PaRappa the Rapper Remastered
-LocoRoco Remastered
-LocoRoco 2 Remastered
-Patapon Remastered
-Patapon 2 Remastered

Internally developed or codeveloped PS5 games:
-Astro's Playroom

2nd party Vita games:
-Everybody's Golf 6 (developed by Clap Hanz)
-Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines (Alfa System)

2nd party PS4 games:
-Bloodborne (FromSoft)
-Déraciné (FromSoft)
-The Tomorrow Children (Q-Games)
-Shadow of the Colossus remake (Bluepoint)
-Gravity Rush Remastered (Bluepoint)
-Death Stranding (Kojipro)

2nd party PS5 games:
-Demon's Souls remake (Bluepoint)
-Death Stranding Director's Cut (Kojipro)
 

KàIRóS

Member
This is news to me, are we living in a different timeline or something?

Literally 90% of the Playstation games I have are japanese so genuinely wtf are you talking about?
 

EDMIX

Member
So yeah, as everyone know and notice Sony has been neglecting a lot Japanese games in the recent years, what make this even weirder is that iconic japanese devs, games and IPs are the main ones that build and defined the Playstation brand since decades.

So in gaf members opinions why do you think Sony are neglecting so much Japanese gaming industry so much specially recently?

A better question might be why are those games not moving units.

Its logical why you'd see Sony or any publisher move a way from a studio when their sales keep being very low. Thats like saying why is Sony neglecting racing games as if it was the racing that made them mad with Driveclub or something.

Yea not the issues with the studio, delays and low sales at all, but racing is what they hate /s


So.....why hire more for this if they hate Japanese games and neglect them? Hiring more is neglect or? Soooooo you sure this isn't an issue with the exact team at Sony Japan as oppose to "Japanese games" as this is some weird way to show neglect if you ask me. =)
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
So.....why hire more for this if they hate Japanese games and neglect them? Hiring more is neglect or? Soooooo you sure this isn't an issue with the exact team at Sony Japan as oppose to "Japanese games" as this is some weird way to show neglect if you ask me. =)
Ya it could be simply a case of execs thinking the team is shit and wants to clean house with new people.

No different than any office. Doesn't have to be a regional office. It could be head office. A new director or VP gets hired and one of two things happen:

1. Nothing really changes as the new boss likes his crew

2. Uh oh. The past year he's fired half of them and replaced them. And some of those new workers are people he knows. The boss wants new blood and wants to go his way because the current people arent up to snuff or look like resistant people who wont change
 
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KellyM

Member
Sony is doing the right thing.
Japanese weeb games don't sell as popular Japanese themes and tropes translate poorly to western audiences, like googly eyed 12 year old genius generals with over-designed costumes and other dumb shit? That is niche outside Japan. Normal people find 'little sister' characters constantly whining about "onii-chan" super weird.

Tales of, Atelier and Disgaea will never be mainstream, but some companies like FROM and Capcom break the mold and manage to appeal to a wider market.
I say your wrong, look at most Nintendo games. They tend to fit the japanese style and sell well in Japan and in the west.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Elden Ring has been very successful in Japan recently, so it's not like it's impossible for non-Nintendo games to do well.
It can happen, but the taste in games from Japanese gamers seem very skewed.

There's got to a be cultural reason why, but they typically don't like violent bloody games, but somehow a franchise like RE does well there.

It seems Japanese gamers don't like serious sports games or racing games (even J-League sports which would make more sense than NA or Euro leagues), but a simmy racer like Gran Turismo sells well.

Other parts of the world just seem more willing to play Japanese made games, than Japanese gamers playing western style games.
 

EDMIX

Member
It can happen, but the taste in games from Japanese gamers seem very skewed.

There's got to a be cultural reason why, but they typically don't like violent bloody games, but somehow a franchise like RE does well there.

It seems Japanese gamers don't like serious sports games or racing games (even J-League sports which would make more sense than NA or Euro leagues), but a simmy racer like Gran Turismo sells well.

Other parts of the world just seem more willing to play Japanese made games, than Japanese gamers playing western style games.

Agreed. Resident Evil is one of the wildest exceptions as its a massive IP, yet anything not RE in Japan, moves little units. Even if its like it, sorta like it etc. So...I don't really get it lol Maybe it is a cultural thing and they grew up with RE, but horror games in general outside of RE are not popular or something.

Even how massive Metal Gear Solid was, its odd to see other games that are action, stealth that do way less in Japan, yet do massive numbers else were.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Getting final fantasy 16 exclusive is a bigger move for japanese audience than smaller titles.
We’ll see in the next few years.

PS4 defo had a resurgence in Japanese games compared to PS3, from Nioh and Persona 5 to Dragon Quest being good again
 

SNG32

Member
It seems like that but it’s just that PC is cutting in and getting more and more Japanese titles including some of Sony’s catalog.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
Make It Rain Money GIF


For example... Just google the sales and reviews of Gravity Rush 2(ps4), White Knight Chronicles (ps3) and Siren(ps2) compared to Horizon(ps4), The Last of Us(ps3) and God of War(ps2)...

Japan lost.
I think the opposite.


I do not agree with that sentence.
 

Keihart

Member
A better question might be why are those games not moving units.

Its logical why you'd see Sony or any publisher move a way from a studio when their sales keep being very low. Thats like saying why is Sony neglecting racing games as if it was the racing that made them mad with Driveclub or something.

Yea not the issues with the studio, delays and low sales at all, but racing is what they hate /s


So.....why hire more for this if they hate Japanese games and neglect them? Hiring more is neglect or? Soooooo you sure this isn't an issue with the exact team at Sony Japan as oppose to "Japanese games" as this is some weird way to show neglect if you ask me. =)
yeah, i've said this before, after yoshida started Drifting away from Worldwide studios, Japan Studios kept being pushed into things they are not well suited to, no wonder Toyama's team spent so much time without getting anything out and there were no more second party collaborative games being developed, instead they went out like a wet fart with a couple of remasters and some years of support to other devs and some never shown projects.

I'm still on the opinion that closing Japan studios was a stupid decision brand wise, but it sure made sense strategically with the direction PS is going now.
Patapon and No Heroes Allowed would of been amazing brands if pushed correctly on the west with little investment.
 
They still have imo by far the best, most enjoyable gameplay and creativity though. A little boost from Sony’s budget can propel their games to the next level. Imagine a Bloodborne or a Yakuza sequel for example with a Horizon budget behind it.
The yakuza studio honestly isn’t technically less impressive than GG. I was pretty impressed with kiwami 2 when it first came out. Course it helps that yakuza is actually good.

And GG isn’t pushing any boundaries, not since kz2.
 
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SSfox

Member
It's not easy to compete against Nintendo in Japan.

Still, they could have kept Vita alive for games that had more japanese appeal (Gravity Rush, visual novels, etc)

I'm not a vita fan or any portable console post NDS, but Vita has a lot of cool games, this remind me how it still bug me that Muramasa still never got a PS4 port!!!
 
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SeraphJan

Member
People have to understand, Japanese style game does not only work in Japan, in fact Japanese style game are very prominent all around Asia.

The market is not as small as you think.
 
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Woopah

Member
It can happen, but the taste in games from Japanese gamers seem very skewed.

There's got to a be cultural reason why, but they typically don't like violent bloody games, but somehow a franchise like RE does well there.

It seems Japanese gamers don't like serious sports games or racing games (even J-League sports which would make more sense than NA or Euro leagues), but a simmy racer like Gran Turismo sells well.

Other parts of the world just seem more willing to play Japanese made games, than Japanese gamers playing western style games.
I don't think it's the style, it's more that having a strong brand in the West does not mean your brand will also be big in Japan. For instance, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet & Clank are big in the West but almost non-existent in Japan currently. That's not because the country has a cultural aversion to cartoon platformers.

On the other hand, more violent games like Monster Hunter, COD, Ghost of Tsushima, Yakuza, Musou titles, Metal Gear and (as you mentioned) Resident Evil have done very well in the market at various times.

Its certainly possible for Western made games to do well in Japan (Minecraft, Fortnite and Apex Legends are other examples), but Western success does not guarantee Japanese success.

Also on the topic of realistic sports games, not only has Gran Turismo done well but we have Konami's next baseball game coming out in April and they tend to be pretty successful.
 
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Ladioss

Member
Japanese games are fun to play, play less on 'realist' aesthetics and are largely free of woke tropes. A set of attributes I suspect Cali!Sony see as 'immature' and not worthy of the PS branding - or even 'dirty'.
 

ItsTheNew

I believe any game made before 1997 is "essentially cave man art."
They’re worried that one of the developers might have a teenage character with a little cleavage and be only one race.
 
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