Mega Man Creator Shakes Fist At Japanese Game Industry

[The Wooster]

Mega Man Creator Shakes Fist At Japanese Game Industry

"The western audience is turning its back on us," says Keiji Inafune.

The common consensus seems to be that while Japanese developers are still dominating the handheld market, they've fallen behind when it comes to AAA titles. Inafune, former Capcom R&D commander, co-creator of stumpy gaming-icon, Mega Man, and an outspoken critic of the Japanese game industry, reckons it's because developers are ignoring criticism.

"You should tell the truth about Japanese games not being what they used to be," he told Wired.

"Unless they get that criticism, Japanese game creators are just sitting on the glories of the past. They won't get the message that the Western audience is turning its back on us."

"Right now, Japan believes that other Asian games, and American games, aren't as good as theirs," he continued. "But across the world, American games are the best-selling and considered the most fun. But Japan's gamers and game creators still won't accept this. This is why Japan can't win."

Very few Japanese developers have the money to compete with western developers when it comes to AAA titles. Rising development costs have caused many smaller developers to shift over to developing titles for handhelds or the Wii, which generally cost less to make.

Inafune believes that Japanese developers need to swallow their pride and admit there's a problem.

"When they're embarrassed and they feel obliged to change, it would make a difference," he said, before suggesting more Japanese developers collaborate with Western developers.

"It's impossible for Japan to win with just Japanese power. Everybody in Japan should work with foreign developers," he said.

"Not just paying them money and letting them make whatever they think is good, but really working together, coming up with new ideas together and discussing how to make something brand new. That would result in a chemical reaction in a good way. There's no way that Japan can be on their own anymore."

Capcom's most-recent attempts at working with western developers have been a decidedly mixed bag. Bionic Commando, developed by Grin, was a critical and commercial flop, as was Airtight Games' Dark Void. On the other hand, despite sucking like a black hole in a brothel, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City by Slant Six managed impressive sales, and Dead Rising 2, developed in conjunction with Capcom Vancouver (then Blue Castle Games), was both critically and commercially successful.

Inafune has made similarly harsh remarks about the Japanese game industry in the past; back in 2009 he claimed the Japanese game industry was "finished."

Source: Wired [http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/04/keiji-inafune-qa/]


Permalink

 

[Baresark]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

The main problem is most of the games that are decently made are on the hand-held and no one wants to support them here. Everyone has an android or ios device so why buy a psp or ds?? I have switched to hand-held gaming now for nearly all Japanese games expect for visual novels on the p.c. and mainly play western games on my consoles now. The only expectation would be on the ps3 since nisa is still willing to bring over obscure games along with x-seed on the psp like corpse party.

 

[80Maxwell08]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

Honestly as much as I like some Japanese games like Half Minute Hero, The Ys series, the Tales series and a good amount of what NIS America publishes I agree as well. I especially don't like how many of them have just stopped caring about the rest of the world.

 

[Roxas1359]

I agree completely with what Mr. Inafune says. While in the past many Japanese games were wacky and really creative it just feels nowadays that they are trying to rehash the same thing over and over. While I do believe that the phrase "don't fix what isn't broke" works in real life after a while that magic formula for creating games will lose its ability. To me nowadays it just seems like the same IPs come out year after year in Japan; meanwhile in other countries they are presenting new and interesting games. Like Baresark said, I remember being young and seeing the amazing things the Japanese gaming industry has produced, but now I see it as trying to have the lightning strike multiple places at once. As we know the world is made like the Thunder Plains in FFX so that won't happen.
[sub]As a little side note I wish that Capcom would let Mr. Inafune finish Megaman Legends 3. [/sub]

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

Honestly as much as I like some Japanese games like Half Minute Hero, The Ys series, the Tales series and a good amount of what NIS America publishes I agree as well. I especially don't like how many of them have just stopped caring about the rest of the world.

Simply put they don't need us to survive in the rest of world with their types of games and are hugely conservative on releasing titles outside of japan. I would kill for there to be flood-gate of games from bandai namco on the psp, ps3 and 360 like toradora portable or oreimo portable but those are just so niche they fear it won't sell. I know there is market here for those type of games here the problem is getting them over I mean look at large amount effort it took to bring over the three wii rpgs to the western world.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

[sub]As a little side note I wish that Capcom would left Mr. Inafune finish Megaman Legends 3. [/sub]

Yeah, but that would require Capcom to admit it made a(n obviously) bad choice. And just like they want to believe Bionic Commando was the next sliced bread, they also aren't gonna admit they made a stupid decision with that either.

Hell, the most we are getting as an admission of stupidity is Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry title. At least NT grabbed a more fitting voice actor, gave him some more "Dante-ish" lines, bulked him up a bit more so he isn't some twiggy crackhead, and even appeared to have altered his hair style by a bit.
Capcom would of just plugged their ears and start shouting "Changes? What changes?! There's no changes to Dante!"

I would pay the guy that has the resident evil 2 prototype to dump that iso online but cap-com pretends that doesn't exist either

 

[Roxas1359]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

Honestly as much as I like some Japanese games like Half Minute Hero, The Ys series, the Tales series and a good amount of what NIS America publishes I agree as well. I especially don't like how many of them have just stopped caring about the rest of the world.

Simply put they don't need us to survive in the rest of world with their types of games and are hugely conservative on releasing titles outside of japan. I would kill for there to be flood-gate of games from bandai namco on the psp, ps3 and 360 like toradora portable or oreimo portable but those are just so niche they fear it won't sell. I know there is market here for those type of games here the problem is getting them over I mean look at large amount effort it took to bring over the three wii rpgs to the western world.

That is true and what I've noticed too, and Nintendo seems to be the worse offender at this. Sony doesn't really care about porting them either, however their console has no region lock and can be imported. Nintendo on the other hand doesn't like not having region locks with how the 3DS is region locked and the DS wasn't. I'm sure though that their is a point or two that I'm missing in the region lock argument, so if I am please correct me. But if they were to release certain games outside of their country than they would surely garner more sales. Which brings me to my next point that is a huge problem with the Japanese gaming industry: They don't like taking any risks. With a business sometimes risks are needed to be taken, but if they continue to go down the safe and not risky path then I think they'll just end up in a worse situation.

 

[hazabaza1]

So long as we can keep Atlus and FromSoft, I'm good.
Oooh, and Platinum.

 

[Roxas1359]

[sub]As a little side note I wish that Capcom would left Mr. Inafune finish Megaman Legends 3. [/sub]

Yeah, but that would require Capcom to admit it made a(n obviously) bad choice. And just like they want to believe Bionic Commando was the next sliced bread, they also aren't gonna admit they made a stupid decision with that either.

Hell, the most we are getting as an admission of stupidity is Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry title. At least NT grabbed a more fitting voice actor, gave him some more "Dante-ish" lines, bulked him up a bit more so he isn't some twiggy crackhead, and even appeared to have altered his hair style by a bit.
Capcom would of just plugged their ears and start shouting "Changes? What changes?! There's no changes to Dante!"

That is true. The day that Capcom admits that they were wrong about a decision is the day that Valve releases Half Life 2: Episode 3.

 

[Weaver]

Keiji Inafune: the last sane man in the Japanese game industry.

I gotta hand it to him, he's got balls of steel for risking such huge ire from his Japanese fans; but if we take a hard look at ourselves everything he's saying seems pretty true.

And really, I'd love a west and east game collaboration. I feel both mindsets can learn a lot from each other.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Keiji Inafune: the last sane man in the Japanese game industry.

I gotta hand it to him, he's got balls of steel for risking such huge ire from his Japanese fans; but if we take a hard look at ourselves everything he's saying seems pretty true.

And really, I'd love a west and east game collaboration. I feel both mindsets can learn a lot from each other.

He's not the only one. I heard Hideo Kojima also say many of the same things. I had a game informer which had a few major Japanese devs say this but I got rid of all of my game informers a while ago.

 

[Weaver]

Keiji Inafune: the last sane man in the Japanese game industry.

I gotta hand it to him, he's got balls of steel for risking such huge ire from his Japanese fans; but if we take a hard look at ourselves everything he's saying seems pretty true.

And really, I'd love a west and east game collaboration. I feel both mindsets can learn a lot from each other.

He's not the only one. I heard Hideo Kojima also say many of the same things. I had a game informer which had a few major Japanese devs say this but I got rid of all of my game informers a while ago.

I wouldn't exactly call Kojima sane

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

He's right. In my youngest days I used to admire the luck of Japanese gamers. They seemingly got the best and most interesting games and if we got some over here it was a lucky treat. Now though, What is to envy. The Japanese game industry hasn't changed one single bit from when I admired it. American companies have made fun, interesting, and unique games while they Japanese industry is lagging behind in any sort of creativity.

Honestly as much as I like some Japanese games like Half Minute Hero, The Ys series, the Tales series and a good amount of what NIS America publishes I agree as well. I especially don't like how many of them have just stopped caring about the rest of the world.

Simply put they don't need us to survive in the rest of world with their types of games and are hugely conservative on releasing titles outside of japan. I would kill for there to be flood-gate of games from bandai namco on the psp, ps3 and 360 like toradora portable or oreimo portable but those are just so niche they fear it won't sell. I know there is market here for those type of games here the problem is getting them over I mean look at large amount effort it took to bring over the three wii rpgs to the western world.

That is true and what I've noticed too, and Nintendo seems to be the worse offender at this. Sony doesn't really care about porting them either, however their console has no region lock and can be imported. Nintendo on the other hand doesn't like not having region locks with how the 3DS is region locked and the DS wasn't. I'm sure though that their is a point or two that I'm missing in the region lock argument, so if I am please correct me. But if they were to release certain games outside of their country than they would surely garner more sales. Which brings me to my next point that is a huge problem with the Japanese gaming industry: They don't like taking any risks. With a business sometimes risks are needed to be taken, but if they continue to go down the safe and not risky path then I think they'll just end up in a worse situation.

Which is why i will not buy a 3ds until that's removed why would region lock a hand-held?? There isn't a point in doing that besides ninendo being worried games like love plus or other risque games being imported that would cause some kind of uproar. Hell sega of America is on final loss as well cutting back on workers but hell maybe i am fool to think if they released the any of the hatsune miku, shining hero or valkyria chronicles games here they would make some profit off of the niche crowd if they did special editions. Everyone is just worried about what we will think of their games that do have actual buyers here they don't want to take the risk and end up worse like you stated.

 

[hermes]

I believe Inafune is right, but the Japanese developers are only half conscious about the problem.

On one side, several developers over there are claiming that (Kojima, Inafune, Suda 51, Itagaki, etc). The decline in popularity of Japanese games is a well known fact and events like TGS are full of conferences about this situation and how can they reverse it.

However, there is also the issue that most Japanese people don't like western games based on the origin only. They are not interested on them, and they see them with the disdain gamers here see portable games. That makes developers trying to appeal to the global market as awkward, consumers as little interested and companies reluctant to them (other than from a monetary standpoint). They see Call of Duty and God of War are successful in the west but they can't figure out why, then they try to emulate them and if feels off. The dissonance is also noticeable when western developers try to emulate japanese games, but results there are often better, since western developers have higher esteem of the japanese products than the other way around.

Of course, there are examples like Skyrim being very popular there, but those are few and far between.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Keiji Inafune: the last sane man in the Japanese game industry.

I gotta hand it to him, he's got balls of steel for risking such huge ire from his Japanese fans; but if we take a hard look at ourselves everything he's saying seems pretty true.

And really, I'd love a west and east game collaboration. I feel both mindsets can learn a lot from each other.

He's not the only one. I heard Hideo Kojima also say many of the same things. I had a game informer which had a few major Japanese devs say this but I got rid of all of my game informers a while ago.

I wouldn't exactly call Kojima sane

Well I was refering to the part about you saying he had balls just pointing out there is more than one person who realizes the problem. Also I think the Dead Rising games were some form of collaboration between east and west. I'm unsure though it might have been something else.