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TGS: Japanese Execs Analyze Reaching Western Market
by Simon Carless [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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September 25, 2009
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At the same Tokyo Game Show event that discussed the post-recession game biz, execs from Capcom, Konami, Namco, Square and Sony addressed Japanese companies' attempts to expand into the Western market.
The issue is particularly notable at this year's TGS because the Japanese market appears to be increasingly favoring handheld DS, PSP and cellphone games in the recession. As a result, high-budget titles for consoles such as PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 often need to target a worldwide market to recoup their investment.
Namco Bandai president Shin Unozawa says the declining Japanese population means that worldwide studios are necessary. The company has internal U.S. development and is trying to globalize, but has postponed two of the first titles resulting from its endeavors to next year.
Unozawa particularly noted that it's important to take the classic Japanese-originating characters -- like Pac-Man -- and make them work with the Western market, suggesting: "It's useless to make a Hollywood film in Japan."
Sony's Shu Yoshida has been working at Sony in the West for the last 8 years, and now runs all of Worldwide Studios, including Japan. He says some good-selling games in the West "only sell about 20,000 units in Japan", and things are changing even more.
He believes that the strength of the Japanese creators is in "ideas that are fun to play with", and just because things are selling well in the West, the Japanese market shouldn't immediately try to copy that.
Square Enix president Yoichi Wada suggests that "the point here is that there is no one single global market." Rather, it's a collection of different countries' markets, so both the creator and the seller must be able to accommodate very specific demands.
Konami's CEO Kazumi Kitaue said that "in technical capabilities", the Western publishers tend to be more efficient right now. But 'toy'- based gaming is somewhere "where Japan is in a position to lead the world" - in titles where creativity and a more playful aspect are encouraged.
He does believe that genres such as action and sports are universally understandable, even across language barriers. If Japanese creators can add a 'playful' aspect to these genres and make them universal, then it may be better than simply copying successful Western games.
Capcom's president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said that the Japanese game industry has potential in taking its expertise in original console and even arcade games and applying those to the global markets.
Namco's Unozawa also compared the arcade game scene to some of the new digital download markets, noting that arcade games are often low-cost for short play times, much like iPhone and other games.
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... if it weren't for the fact that most western indie developers have already been doing that better than the Japanese for years. :/
More like a Bethesda style game, rather than a standard JPRG look.
I do not think the migration towards having greater Western influence is bad. COnsider this--moral choices in games (especially RPGs), the development of the FPS genre, and the community development philosophy are great contributions done by Western developers.
I do not think that games like Grand Theft Auto, Little Big Planet, and Uncharted would have been developed by Japanese game makers. However, they have become indisputable references in the contemporary gaming scene.
Is there a game development platform such as XNA or Unreal supported by a Japanese company?
As long as both hemispheres contribute new ideas; thus, resulting in new games, everybody wins, but depicting Western influence as "evil" and "boring" is not accurate.
All the comments about the inferiority of THIS console, or THIS developer, or THIS game,
or THIS country just seem completely illogical. Almost everything is subjective, when it comes down to
it. Only that which can be mathematically proven is absolute.
@Jorge:
I totally agree that there should be as great a variety as possible to ensure that this nascent
industry is able to survive, and that different ideologies/philosophies are important for that end.
However, don't state that for a fact games like GTA would not have been created in Japan. Don't stereotype based on ethnicity or ideology.
There was more of a popularity for the D&D-type games within the 80s in America and the UK, which I believe to be the reason that MOST open-ended games like Elite, Escape Velocity, and Syndicate were developed in the West. But the Japanese still created many games with as much sandbox gameplay as the Western ones mentioned. The SNES and PSX era 'JRPGs' had the most open gameplay you could get on a console, with their expansive worlds, hidden items, and sidequests. Then you have games like OOT and Wind Waker, which both featured an amazing amount of freedom of choice (without procedurally-generated quests).
And as to whether there is a 'game development platform' such as XNA or UE, none that I know of. But the Japanese do not seem to have developed as many hobbyist developers as there are in the West, which would make there less of an incentive for a developer to spend time making an engine/toolkit outside of internal corporate use. Particularly when there are fine open-source ones out there.
This wasn't really directed at you btw, just venting.
Edit:
Oh, and check this link for some open-world games developed:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1902/game_design_essentials_20_open_.php?p
age=2
Its like they just can't understand or think like we do in certain ways, for example with shooters they can't walk and look around at the same time, its like impossible to play for them. Then again we can't seem to understand 4903 enemy's on the screen needing to be shot in different ways in 10 seconds before the next wave comes (not to mention the arcade hall's in Tokyo o.O')
Its more or less the culture and the way people think in different parts of the world and also the latest developments in graphics/story telling that kind of smashed a gap between the two markets over the years.
But that's just my simplified look on the whole thing from Tokyo.
I think you can make an argument that the breakthrough GTA3 was preceded by Shenmue back in the day. Shenmue's legacy is carried on with the Yakuza series. There's also the irony that Hirokazu Yasuhara (one of the original designers of Sonic the Hedgehog) was a designer on Uncharted when he worked at Naughty Dog.
Japanese developers have been slow to adopt third party middleware, but some major devs have announced support or have actually shipped product based on the tech - Square Enix has adopted Unreal, along with Feelplus for Lost Odyssey and Namco Bandai for their failed Frame City Killer.
I think game design/development is a evolving process of inspiration, imitation, and iteration. And technology is only a means to an end. It certainly helps, but middleware does not make a game, people do.
As for the Japanese games industry, I hope the execs quoted in this story invest more in nurturing new global IP's that can be developed in Japan. There are plenty of creative people left in Japan who can make fun games.