But that can be applied to Western developers as well.Stavros Dimou said:
Take a look at the majority of big Western releases and they all look hyper realistic with gritty brown haired white guy with kinda dumb characters and the token hot chick.
The Decline of the Japanese Gaming Industry
- Thread starter Barciad
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Take a look at the majority of big Western releases and they all look hyper realistic with gritty brown haired white guy with kinda dumb characters and the token hot chick.
That is the thing; people have been trying to propagate this idea that Japanese games lack variety but it just doesn't hold up in practice. And that's before I get into the uncomfortably xenophobic angle of it.Dragonbums said:
yeah I'll be honest, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of what the Western side of gaming has been throwing out over the years, way too many bland characters and the need for super gritty realism.Dragonbums said:
Games like Pokemon have always grasped my interest, while not always long term they still grab me more than COD game rehash 237 or super gritty shooter 5 million.
I'm also fed up with america either being the victim, super power or hero of video games the past 20 or so years, I'd love to see more games where they are the bad guys or don't even exist at all or were wiped out due to their own devices.
Even so I still see the Japanese gaming industry still going fine, if anything it stil looks more positive than the gritty realism of the Western side ramping up costs, shutting down studios and laying off hundreds if not a few thousand people a year to turn a profit.
Well, JRPG's used to be the pinnacle of gaming story telling. They were innovative, and all of the Japanese studios, from Square Enix, to Sony, to Nintendo, were really pushing the envelope.
Now... there's no real innovation. Most JRPG's are stagnating, filled with the same old tired cliches we've seen a thousand times. A lot of them, like Bravely Default, label themselves as "traditional." As a result, a lot of Japanese games are nostalgia based, instead of innovative. Mass Effect and TLoU blow away JRPG's from a storytelling perspective, and there's increased competition. It doesn't help that most of the great Japanese developers have retired.
Now... there's no real innovation. Most JRPG's are stagnating, filled with the same old tired cliches we've seen a thousand times. A lot of them, like Bravely Default, label themselves as "traditional." As a result, a lot of Japanese games are nostalgia based, instead of innovative. Mass Effect and TLoU blow away JRPG's from a storytelling perspective, and there's increased competition. It doesn't help that most of the great Japanese developers have retired.
That is the thing; people keep propagating this idea that Japan has been on its way out. For nearly ten years. And it's not happening. I would dare say that what's happened is that Japanese gaming hasn't really shrunk, it just hasn't expanded as explosively as its Western counterpart has. Furthermore, the constant reports of Western devs shutting down or laying people off runs counter to the myth of them being stable.Shadow-Phoenix said:
JRPGs were very good and feature-rich 10-15 years ago. None of the best JRPGs (in my opinion) were released after 2007 or 2008. The gaming industry (not just in Japan, but in the USA too) has been hit by "good graphics - awesome game" disease.
Now that you say it... Yeah there are quite many western games doing the "bulky white guy with short brown hair on steroids" thing.Dragonbums said:
Thankfully every now and then we have characters as Geralt,and... BJ Blazkowich ?
Hm.. Thing is trying to blend realistic with unrealistic ends up in a quite 'uncanny valley' feeling for some people.
Don't know.
Thing is JRPGS during the SNES,PS1,and perhaps even until the PS2/XBOX era,where more dominant than western.GamerGeneration7 said:
They were mostly on consoles,while western rpgs were mostly on PCs at the time.
And another thing is western rpgs were so complex few people would have the patience to spend enough time learning how to play them and get used to them. I still remember trying to play The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall,and God it must have had the worst and most unnecessary complicated combat controls I've ever saw in a game.JRPGs were more available and approachable at that time.
But since them things have changed.
Western RPGs invaded consoles,but JRPGs didn't invaded PCs.
Also western rpgs became more user-friendly and less complicated,and thus easy for more people to play them than before.
I think a thing JRPGs missed was sandbox.Allowing the player to approach things with more ways,and when he chooses.
But there is one JRPG I loved,that was truly innovative and better than wrpgs of the time,and of the best games ever IMO, that unfortunately it is very overlooked.
Shenmue.
Shenmue was awesome. It's graphics were awesome,the freedom it gave to the player was awesome,the atmosphere and feel were awesome,the real-time combat it had instead of turn-based was something I really loved,it was very cinematic,had a very interesting story,and was the most expensive game SEGA ever made,and the best SEGA game I've ever played.
Why can't there be more Japanese games like this:
And less like this:
Well, it seems to be a combination of the fall of JRPGs, the rise of the Western developer and the Xbox 360, and just differing cultures.
I say the fall of the JRPG as there really were less great JRPGs this last generation. I'd say the Golden Age was the PS1, and it just seemed to get weaker as a genre as time went on. My PS1 library was primarily JRPGs, but my PS3 library hardly has any. And there are fewer great titles or hidden gems that spring to mind.
The rise of the Western Developer and the Xbox 360 a western made console seems to have also hurt the Japanese Developer. Once more, most of my PS1 games were Japanese in origin, but most of my PS3 titles are Western in origin. And the Xbox 360 was a factor in this I think. It seems a lot of developers sort of designed games for it and ported them to the PS3 which was a result of the PS3 being a bit harder to work with and probably also a bit of preferring a system made by a similar culture. Notice that the PS4 was designed by a Westerner, too.
Want to play so bad.
I think I just added something to my "if I ever win the lottery" list.
I say the fall of the JRPG as there really were less great JRPGs this last generation. I'd say the Golden Age was the PS1, and it just seemed to get weaker as a genre as time went on. My PS1 library was primarily JRPGs, but my PS3 library hardly has any. And there are fewer great titles or hidden gems that spring to mind.
The rise of the Western Developer and the Xbox 360 a western made console seems to have also hurt the Japanese Developer. Once more, most of my PS1 games were Japanese in origin, but most of my PS3 titles are Western in origin. And the Xbox 360 was a factor in this I think. It seems a lot of developers sort of designed games for it and ported them to the PS3 which was a result of the PS3 being a bit harder to work with and probably also a bit of preferring a system made by a similar culture. Notice that the PS4 was designed by a Westerner, too.
Oh my God. It even has the series music in it!Racecarlock said:
Want to play so bad.
I think I just added something to my "if I ever win the lottery" list.
Yeah that's kind of how I see it. If you want to find anyone to 'blame' here it's Microsoft. Western developers apart frmo a handful like EA used to develop largely for the PC/Windows while Japanese developers made console games. Then Microsoft stepped into the console race with the Xbox, brought the Western PC game developers on board, and opened it up to a new generation of gamers who adopted gaming at a much higher rate. So I don't know if it's the correct term, but the Japanese developers more or less got cannibalized by the industry? I mean take Capcom, Japanese company, but games like Dead Rising are made for Western taste by Western developers (Vancouver branch).Dreiko said:
Also I always find it weird how common and popular JRPG's seem to be when you get on the internet. My experience growing up was that they were always very niche titles that not a lot of kids played, at least until FFVII. The lack of localization emphasises this, as just using Final Fantasy II, II, and V were never released here. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the larger shooter heavy gaming public are apathetic towards them.
I'm saying the Japanese haven't progressed with technology and that is why there games on consoles haven't reached mass appeal like their handheld counterparts.The expectation of a console game is a lot greater, voice acting, HD, 3D environments that aren't empty. The Perfect example of this would be Sky Word Sword v.s Skyrim, two games that came out the same year. Granted Skyword Sword wasn't extremely buggy like the PS3 version of Skyrim. Nintendo does tend to make games that aren't broken at launch something western developers could learn.cloroxbb said:
The 3DS was still the highest selling system last year. Those games on the American side are mutli platform and have a higher install base. Pokemon X and Y were the highest selling system exclusive last year, compared to last of us. I'm not trying to pick on them but that is the only good system exclusive I can think of that would've sold well. America's gaming market isn't just based shooters, sports and big-budget open world games. That's why Indie games are thriving in America. That's why is number 8 unless there was supose to be a comma in between "big budget openworld"LaoJim said:
I think a lot of it is that the Japanese have still held back releasing a lot of their best stuff, and what people want to play to the global audience. It was a huge effort to get "Xenoblade" in the US for example, and we never did get the last "Fatal Frame" game. It took them forever to realize there was a market for things like the "Shin Megami Tensei" outside of Japan, and we have yet to see any kind of official release of the majority of "Super Robot Wars"/"Super Robot Taisen" titles in the US despite various emulator groups making the attempt under the table. While this goes back well over a decade to when I was reading Japanese periodicals, I blame racism, and a lot of businesses down there holding back the best stuff from us "Gaijin" intentionally at the ironic expense of their business dominance now that they have been less successful in globally pushing shovelware to a starved audience given other game producers competing with them on the same level.
Of course at the same time, I think some of it is the wrong kind of innovation, whether people knock them or not, there is a HUGE demand for JRPGs out there globally, especially high quality ones. The problem though is that Japan's big RPG producers have turned more into making FMV movies than decent games, and gradually moving away from the kind of game the core fans want, to turn them into either more active/action based affairs or something you largely just watch... when your in any kind of game play at all. I look at the latest "Final Fantasy" games as an example of this.
At the same time however censorship is also an issue, with Japan not being willing to fight with US censors and the media properly to get their products released in the US uncut, which of course lowers the potential market, as nobody wants to buy a censored product. What's more it seems like Japanese developers have given up more than a few times when cuts were demanded and refused to release a game, rather than continue fighting to release the uncut version, or find some back channel way of selling the product anyway (such as making sure it has a full English option and conveniently winds up on a lot of import sites to be purchased by customers that way).
The point is that I think that article has some good points, but I don't entirely agree with it. Japan could become a titan in the gaming industry again, but really it would involve changing a lot of things it does right now, on a level that I do not think it's ready for.
Of course at the same time, I think some of it is the wrong kind of innovation, whether people knock them or not, there is a HUGE demand for JRPGs out there globally, especially high quality ones. The problem though is that Japan's big RPG producers have turned more into making FMV movies than decent games, and gradually moving away from the kind of game the core fans want, to turn them into either more active/action based affairs or something you largely just watch... when your in any kind of game play at all. I look at the latest "Final Fantasy" games as an example of this.
At the same time however censorship is also an issue, with Japan not being willing to fight with US censors and the media properly to get their products released in the US uncut, which of course lowers the potential market, as nobody wants to buy a censored product. What's more it seems like Japanese developers have given up more than a few times when cuts were demanded and refused to release a game, rather than continue fighting to release the uncut version, or find some back channel way of selling the product anyway (such as making sure it has a full English option and conveniently winds up on a lot of import sites to be purchased by customers that way).
The point is that I think that article has some good points, but I don't entirely agree with it. Japan could become a titan in the gaming industry again, but really it would involve changing a lot of things it does right now, on a level that I do not think it's ready for.
Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't there games with 3D environments before Mario 64? DOOM came out in 93, albiet that's more '2.5D' but its still a 3D environment the player can move around in. It's not really Nintendo's fault; it seems like a natural progression. Sure, better graphics require more money and time put in the game, but that doesn't seem to be the issue. Idunno much about the Japanese gaming market though, and my first console was the N64, so my expertise in this field is limited.Dragonbums said:
Maybe, though, JRPGs are just more suited to more...simplistic consoles? It takes less of a budget to just make sprites and lots of texts instead of fully animated, glistening cut scenes and voice acting. Higher budget means it needs to be 'safer', so they make what a focus team says is popular, which is neon-haired bishies wangsting till the talking kawaii cow companions come home. Also, your traditional JRPG has to have menu-driven turn-based combat, which feels a bit...weird on a big budget console. So maybe JRPGs need to borrow from other genres the way that WRPGs borrowed from action. The Yakuza series is a decent example, since it has a sort of JRPG feel with an amazing brawler combat system.
Personally, I think the Japanese gaming industry was just 10-15 years ahead of the US industry. I always got the impression that the Japanese put presentation/art direction ahead of actual gameplay innovation and after a while it all got old and samey.
On the flip side, the western market is making the same mistakes right now, it's all scripting, FMV sequences and setpeices now and it's only a matter of time before the westerners go into decline as well.
I think the Japanese really need to play to their strengths and go into mobile development, the kind of stuff they do would best fit on smartphones, and I have more time for the GBA emulator on my phone than I have for my DS right now.
On the flip side, the western market is making the same mistakes right now, it's all scripting, FMV sequences and setpeices now and it's only a matter of time before the westerners go into decline as well.
I think the Japanese really need to play to their strengths and go into mobile development, the kind of stuff they do would best fit on smartphones, and I have more time for the GBA emulator on my phone than I have for my DS right now.
The Super Robot Series not being ported has nothing to do with lack of interest and everything to do with lack of licensing. You've got robots from dozens of different shows owned by multiple studios. Add to that the fact that those properties already have license rights divvied up in the US, and it's just a Herculean task to get those stateside. It's telling that the one that did get ported featured all original/in-house robots. Maybe some day when Funimation absorbs 4kids, Bandai, etc. we'll get them, but don't count on it before then.Therumancer said:
Do you know where I can find any sailors?Stavros Dimou said:
But seriously, I didn't get to play it the first go around, and was hoping Sega would have ported it somewhere now that they don't do consoles. I'd also like to see a Seaman port now that headsets are standard with consoles. Actually, there's a lot of Dreamcast stuff I'm sad died with the console, because I never got to experience any of it.
I look forward to the completion of Dragon Quest ports via the 3ds. As soon as 7 and 8 come out, I'll officially own the whole series on handheld consoles. Though I wish numbers 1-3 would get put on something that fits in the 3ds slot, keeping a Game Boy around is kinda ehh...
OT: It's the recession. Game companies got really conservative with their well-being on the line, and Japan was already quite conservative comparatively. The world's recovering and so's the games industry. Now if we could just get a new F-Zero instead of yet another Mario game...
Yeah things change it always happens there will always be a market for Japanese games I still in general prefer JRPGS over WRPGS and the fighters made in Japan are still the best I would go as far as to say that the only good western made traditional fighting game is Skullgirls.
That article didnt seem to have all its facts straight Street Fighter was not a big thing on the PS1 or 2 it was around the SNES era it had its day and to a lesser extent on the PS3,360. SF3 was released on the Dreamcast but that wasnt big in general (even in arcades) in fact its probably bigger now. Prob the biggest games featuring SF characters from these eras were MVC2 and CVS2. It makes me question how much research was put into this article although I agree that Japanese game presence has declined.
That article didnt seem to have all its facts straight Street Fighter was not a big thing on the PS1 or 2 it was around the SNES era it had its day and to a lesser extent on the PS3,360. SF3 was released on the Dreamcast but that wasnt big in general (even in arcades) in fact its probably bigger now. Prob the biggest games featuring SF characters from these eras were MVC2 and CVS2. It makes me question how much research was put into this article although I agree that Japanese game presence has declined.