• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

With the recent Japanese game resurgence, should western developers be wary?

barybll

Banned
As someone who vastly prefers japanese games and believes that the western industry got stale as fuck aside from companies like CDPR.

Nah, its just an anomaly, japanese developers are very insular, they aim to please their national crowd first, international appeal second.

Not to mention that the budget difference between western productions and japanese productions are wildly different.

After april we gonna go back to nintendo releases and the 21th iteration of neptunia or atelier games being the face of japanese gaming
 
Playing... what a shock that Japanese people play international titles.
While also mentioned that he didn't use ideas from those games for Zelda.

Reaching is not even the right word anymore.

He explicitly fucking said he used the idea of discovering cities from Skyrim in that second quote. What is wrong with you?
 

Chmpocalypse

Blizzard
No I meant the perception of how popular some people think Gravity Rush is.


The bolded is getting less and less true as this gen goes on, Western games have been getting less realistic, just looking at some examples of the most popular western games in this quarter
-Horizon Zero Dawn is a sci-fi game about shooting robot dinosaurs with arrows
-For Honor is a fighting game about Samurais fighting Knights and Vikings
-ME:A is purely a sci-fi exploration RPG shooter with sci fi magical abilities

The main difference is that developers focus a lot more on believability and making sure that things make sense in context. Hell, I'd say the greatest thing about Zelda is that Nintendo took that same exact mindset and went full ham with it by making sure that nearly EVERY aspect of the game has a believable reaction to the player's actions in a way that makes sense, which is partly inspired by the game design of many western titles like Far Cry.

Great post!

The purported "uniqueness" of many Japanese titles (some of which aren't all that original except in how haphazardly they speak to the human condition through hamfisted melodramatic caricature) is of a very niche nature, and very much holding those devs back commercially. It's good they get to do their own thing, though. Diversity is great!
 

redcrayon

Member
The u.s. alone has consistently had higher output than Japan even at their peak alone outside of the nes/7800 if you only include consoles. It's just Japan has a higher output then most every other country combines, and sometimes Asian countries not Japan are put under japan.
Fair point.
 

Shadoken

Member
Lmao... this thread , Quality doesn't always translate to sales. Western games have much bigger mass appeal to Casuals so they have much higher sales.

The west can release nothing but crap this whole year and the Japanese games wouldn't outsell them (Maybe something like Zelda and RE might but otherwise no). The Japanese games are still usually in niche genres.

Open world.

You do know Yakuza is made by Sega who made Shenmue which was also open world right?

And Yakuza is hardly an open world in the first place. Its a very small sandbox game.
 

Shadoken

Member
Shenmue was multiple levels of small corridors with bad controls and pop-in literally happening in real-time.

Your point being? Yakuza is still way more similar in terms to size to something like Shenmue than a typical open world game. So yes Yakuza is also just multiple levels of small corridors.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Lmao... this thread , Quality doesn't always translate to sales. Western games have much bigger mass appeal to Casuals so they have much higher sales.

The west can release nothing but crap this whole year and the Japanese games wouldn't outsell them (Maybe something like Zelda and RE might but otherwise no). The Japanese games are still usually in niche genres.



You do know Yakuza is made by Sega who made Shenmue which was also open world right?

And Yakuza is hardly an open world in the first place. Its a very small sandbox game.

Except plenty of Western games also do well critically. So its not like there is some obvious quality advantage Japanese games have.
 

Shadoken

Member
Except plenty of Western games also do well critically. So its not like there is some obvious quality advantage Japanese games have.

I should have written it better , I meant to say " Even IF the west released nothing but crap this whole year". Your average western Ubi/EA game would still outsell Yakuza or Gravity Rush regardless of quality.

Until Japanese games start releasing high quality AAA games in more mainstream genres ,they arent really going to be a big concern for western publishers.
 

kswiston

Member
Can anything out of Japan other than Pokemon, the Mario umbrella of titles (Super Mario, Kart, Smash), and maybe Animal Crossing break 10M?

Until Japan can clean up in sales, I don't think EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, etc will care much.
 
Can anything out of Japan other than Pokemon, the Mario umbrella of titles (Super Mario, Kart, Smash), and maybe Animal Crossing break 10M?

Until Japan can clean up in sales, I don't think EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, etc will care much.

Maybe Breath of the Wild due to it's amazing critical reception, but that's probably me hoping on my part.
 
None of the Zelda games have sold 10, so I don't think Breath of the Wild has a chance.

I would agree, but since this game is Open World and is pretty much the best rated game of this generation I think it has a far better chance of reaching 10 million than past titles.
 

petran79

Banned
As someone who vastly prefers japanese games and believes that the western industry got stale as fuck aside from companies like CDPR.

Nah, its just an anomaly, japanese developers are very insular, they aim to please their national crowd first, international appeal second.

Not to mention that the budget difference between western productions and japanese productions are wildly different.

After april we gonna go back to nintendo releases and the 21th iteration of neptunia or atelier games being the face of japanese gaming

Also production is different. They make their storyboards like in film and animation instead of writing hundred pages of text like Western developers. Also some of their ways may seem awkward to Western developers.
In Retrogamer there was an interview of one developer who worked at Sega AM1 and he couldnt believe how they worked, despite the hardware they used. They didnt even have the necessary tools Europe and America used since the 80s.

Younger generation gave Japan the cold shoulder unfortunately.
 

Sesha

Member
As someone who vastly prefers japanese games and believes that the western industry got stale as fuck aside from companies like CDPR.

Nah, its just an anomaly, japanese developers are very insular, they aim to please their national crowd first, international appeal second.

Not to mention that the budget difference between western productions and japanese productions are wildly different.

After april we gonna go back to nintendo releases and the 21th iteration of neptunia or atelier games being the face of japanese gaming

After April we are looking at Tekken 7, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and FF14's Stormblood expansion. In 2018 we are possibly looking at Resident Evil 2 Remake and Devil May Cry 5, along with maybe one of the three huge titles SE is working on if it can squeeze on those out (definitely DQ11, maybe FF7R part 1 by the end of the year).

Can anything out of Japan other than Pokemon, the Mario umbrella of titles (Super Mario, Kart, Smash), and maybe Animal Crossing break 10M?

Until Japan can clean up in sales, I don't think EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, etc will care much.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is the only one that I can think of. Maybe FF15 in the next 5 years or so.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Ehh, quality is far more important than sales (and I say Japanese games are still much better than their western "AAA" counterparts, at least where my taste is concerned) - hell, I expect even sales not to be much of an issue for Japanese devs since their budgets are much more reasonable and it doesn't take multi millions for a game to turn a nice profit for them. And it's not like every western game is an automatic multimillion seller, look at the corpses of THQ, Midway, and other dead western devs for proof.
 

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.
wrong thread
 

Chmpocalypse

Blizzard
Stop being a joke character for a moment. None of your links support the claim that Japanese games are suddenly "taking notes from various western games, specifically trying to increase western sales".
The second link doesn't even talk about other western games but something what the very first Resident Evil did.

What exactly is running wrong with you that you need to act like you know it better although everyone knows that you don't know a fuck.

Um, the other poster is right. The very post you quoted supports their point.
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
After April we are looking at Tekken 7, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and FF14's Stormblood expansion. In 2018 we are possibly looking at Resident Evil 2 Remake and Devil May Cry 5, along with maybe one of the three huge titles SE is working on if it can squeeze on those out (definitely DQ11, maybe FF7R part 1 by the end of the year).

You forgot Yakuza Kiwami coming out this summer and Yakuza 6 early 2018; Valkyria Revolution coming by summer; Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers releasing May 26; and a bunch of other stuff due by the end of the year like Culdcept Revolt, Danganronpa V3, Ys VIII, Metal Gear Survive (lol), Digimon World: Next Order, Trails in the Sky the 3rd, Project Sonic 2017 and Daytona 3 Championship USA. Not counting Nintendo releases, Atelier games or Neptunia games per the poster you replied to's request, of course.

so I mean, yeah, Japanese games don't stop in the West after April.
 
Anime seems to be more popular and mainstream than ever, though???

Um nooo?????

Most anime is niche. That's basically what Funimation is catering to and basically at the moment they are the biggest anime company in the country.

This isn't the late to early 2000's anymore. You have a few shows that do ok when there's no real competition (like the last series of pokemon) during the time slots but mostly everything else isn't lighting anything on fire.

Anime fans seems to be getting into the streaming thing with things like crunchy roll now to.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Um nooo?????

Most anime is niche. That's basically what Funimation is catering to and basically at the moment they are the biggest anime company in the country.

This isn't the late to early 2000's anymore. You have a few shows that do ok when there's no real competition (like the last series of pokemon) during the time slots but mostly everything else isn't lighting anything on fire.

Anime fans seems to be getting into the streaming thing with things like crunchy roll now to.

Based on what I've seen (I'm US based if you're European I don't know what it's like over there), it's definitely much more popular than it was in the early 2000's. Con attendance is at a new record, more people than ever are talking about new anime shows that they see thanks to Netflix or streaming media, hell even popstars use anime and Japanese pop iconography (see: Miku opening for Lady Gaga).
 
Based on what I've seen (I'm US based if you're European I don't know what it's like over there), it's definitely much more popular than it was in the early 2000's. Con attendance is at a new record, more people than ever are talking about new anime shows that they see thanks to Netflix or streaming media, hell even popstars use anime and Japanese pop iconography (see: Miku opening for Lady Gaga).

You are assuming because you see people
"talking' about crunchyroll and netflix animes popularity has "expanded" this is not the case.

Right now there are only few high rating (TV rating not score rating) anime shoes. You will here all about one punch man and Kiddy grade, and Jojo, but from a vocal miniority those shows aren't breaking any walls. When back in the late 90's early 2000's most shows were a hit, you were seeing it everywhere from Dragonball, to Yugioh, to Digimon, to Pokemon, even more niche titles like Tenchi had a decent base back then. You had sailor moon and Naruto at the later part of it. (thought the decline was startingn ot too long after that.)

Heck even in games it's a thing. one reason why something like FF7 selling as well as it did in the U.S. happening again is unlikely is it was riding the anime wagon. Half the time people are turned off by the anime artstyle (which is the modern manga artstyle.) or tropes.
 
Top Bottom