Kojima: Japanese games industry is in a “losing” battle

Maybe they should cram them together, the experiance & style of Japan with the ‘motivation & passion’ from the West

“Kojima is currently acting as an executive producer on Metal Gear Solid: Rising for PS3 and 360″

and PC?? Canceled?

Was Rising even confirmed for PC?

It’s because they’re churning out the same tat each year and relying on old franchises to keep them going. Unless they start some real innovation and changing it up a bit they won’t last much longer.
FFXXXXVVII, Street Fighter 73, Metal Gear 17….they would all be good games but it’s getting stale.

@2, 3, yes it was. aND @4 yup, they need to move forward…new ideas, new stuff. People in animes for example create like 50 great plots every yeat, people inside videogame industry should too. And well, I hope Kojima’s last MGS is MGS: Rising because we had enough (my favorite game for 10 years) and characters and MGS’ universe needs to rest. If he’s doing the “MGS5″ for next gen consoles, it would be very appreciated but PLEASE let it be the last one. If it’s a new IP, how great it would be! Just imagine (and I rely in @4 at this) new characters, plot, images, voices, events, etc… As for other sagas like Tekken, they can be eternal if not rushed like happened with Tag, 4 and 6…if there was Tekken 1, 2, 3 and 5 would have been 4, everything would have worthed much, much more.

@4 Gears, Halo, Fable, PGR, Call of fucking Duty?

@5
Kojima dosnt really have anything to do with Rising. His name was just sort of stapled onto the project because he’s the ‘MGS guy’.

@6
I’m guessing you mean to say that western devs do the same. Its true, but alot of western devs are also making new stuff, the number of Japanese devs doing that seems to be quite low.

Though to be fair, look at Nintendo; They’re pretty much going to release a bunch SNES games and yet people are excited. Works for them.

That is what happens when all you contribute to gaming in the last decade is spikey-hair heroes with big swords and busty babes in school girl uniforms.

The main problem is that Japanese devs are all moving towards making portable only games rather then console. Sure they sell well in Japan but the rest of the world just arent clients, they cant live off the Japanese market alone.

I think Japanese devs have been scarred by those dodgey JRPG deals that happened early this gen. They went on the best selling platform in the west and as a result got poor sales in all regions, it pretty much marked the start of the Japanese industry downfall imo.

Not that Kojima can complain, MGS4 sold insanely well. Unlike those JRPG’s, they actually went to the right crowd. Ofcourse i’m sure he’ll feel the burn once the western Peace Walker sales figures come in.

@7+@9
My thoughts exactly.

Anyhow don’t be confused by Johny’s statement there of Kojima being executive producer of Rising.It really means nothing.He isn’t truly involved in this title at all.Let’s just say things as they really are.

Peace Walker is supposed to be MGS5 and Kojima recently mentioned that he may port it on the ps3,but it would be much more than just a port (more depth in the story e.t.c)

As for Japanese devs they do seem to run out of new ideas and milking the same franchises over and over again but i don’t blame them since they are many years in the industry… that will eventually happen with Western devs as the years go by (it’s already happening to a lower degree for now)

The thing is i don’t want to see Japanese devs entirely adopt ideas from the West which will make no difference from each other.
I would like them to have their own unique “signature” in their projects.
For example Final Fantasy should remain Final Fantasy(every entry in the series is already unique…different world,story,characters while some “elements” remain the same…this is not “milking”)and not become Mass Effect or Dragon Age-Fantasy.

I agree with Gek.

I blame handhelds, and JP tradition. I also blame JP artistic style and its culture.

The short version is that JP is not compatible with the west. And the west is going to be where this thing is going to be won(or lost).

Back in 8bit land gamers couldn’t tell too much visualy about their hero. A knight was a knight. You saw the sword, the shield, the armor … and that was about it. Fast forward to today and same JP hero has long flowing hair, femme features, stupidly impossibly oversized swords, lipstick, eye liners, they look like something out of a Glam Rock concert from the 70s/80s. Or worse. Add in badly done, overly dramatic story lines(cliche’d to hell and back), poor voice acting. And enimies that look as lame as the heros do. Many of the games out of JP today are very off putting to the west, visialy.

If you think I am wrong, go compare World Of Warcrafts art stylings to pretty much whatever JP made rpg you like.

And then we have gameplay. JP game devs love to show you a story. And that is what I mean SHOW you. Take you by the hand, lead you thro the game, bombarding you with cut scences. Controling what the player can do and what happens in game as a result of that. Compare that to the wests aproach.

Westerna games tend to allow you much more freedom to EXPERIENCE the game world. You have the opertunity to write your own story as you go. And your experience/story can feel unique to you. I might play the same game and do things differently, in different orders, and have different outcomes.

JP games are very limiting.

I stoped caring about them a while ago.

I mean really, rather play a Diablo game or one with the FF label? Turn based strategy game where you control kids tossing snow balls and using trash can lides for shields, or StarcraftII? FF Online or WoW?

Nope not in love with Blizz just giving them a nod for doing the right thing and droping RealID due to comunity out rage.

I think in the end JP will just cut themselves off from the rest of world. We don’t need them, and they don’t need us. really simple as that.

I think they already missed the boat.

@11 It all comes down to preferences OG
The art style of Japanese games and heroes is a bit awkward to some…while others prefer them from the Western art direction with the latest trend of oversized on steroids male bimbo super heroes and slutty heroines.
Some prefer an open world game where the gamer “writes down” the story himself while others prefer something more linear where the story is in the foreground and is being told to the gamer pretty much how the writer intented to be told.

Personally i’m getting bored easily of open world games where the story is far in the background and you have plenty of choice…they’re fun to play of course but when the game is 20-30+ hours in length i don’t find any motivation at all (or seem to lose it along the way)to finish it besides the fun factor and in the end i don’t have anything to remember from this experience.

Japan should try to innovate somehow but as i said before not by adopting entirely Western ideas and i don’t think they will anytime soon…after all they do have their own audience in their country and there is still an audience in the West that pretty much prefers their “signature” from the Western one.They can’t turn down their own people(Japanese don’t seem to care about the Western notion after all) and some other fans so easily.

As for needing them or not…we do need them.We just need them to evolve but at the same time keep their “signature”.
The thing is some of them have already being trying the wrong way taking ideas from the West mixing them with their own.
One cannot be much creative when his primal though includes sales and money.

It sounds as simple as that doesn’t it Zoop?

And maybe to a few it is. Esp a few of the “Core”, grew up on animie, still young crowd. But you guys aren’t mainstrem.

And that is where the trouble is at. For the JP, anyways. Their games still sell, but not like they used to. They don’t set the world on fire. And they aren’t going to.

In large part because of what you pointed out Zoop, preferance of style. In the west, more gamers prefer western styles. And, I feel, that esp in terms of console gaming, the west matters far more then JP at this point.

I think one hinderance of the PS3 this gen is lack of big name JP games. There are a couple, but not like there were in gens past. I think the JP games market is in decline. And I think that Kojima knows it.

You’ve got a point OG.

If i’m not mistaken though one major difference of console and pc games since console gaming came to exist were the Japanese games which most were absent from PC and availiable primarly on consoles,while many games from the West were primarly on PC.

Off course now things have moved on and changed and the West is in the front line on home consoles too…but we can’t erase or don’t care about Japan when it comes to the industry so easily…after all they were the ones that in a way “defined “console gaming in the first place and gave us many years of entertainment on home consoles and handhelds.

I think the JP are still big players in the over all sceme of things. No doubt. And if enough of JPs elite decide to make a few changes and adress the west rather then ignore it, then JPs importance could once again increase.

One thing that I have enjoying greatly recently is the rise of Steam on PC. As you pointed out many of the big name western hits cross over to and from PC. Makes it nice if you want to play on PC.

I am also struck with an irony at work in the games industry. And that is in this day and age of globalization it seems to me that the video games industry has taken a few steps towards localization. JP has always been somewhat isoloated and closed off society. But up to recently games have been an interchangable commodity. But increasingly JP games don’t sell well outside of JP, and western games have a very hard time selling in JP. I remember reading glowing Halo and CoD reviews from JP press, still those games won’t move there. And don’t even attepmt to sell western hardware there(I can’t believe MS has done as well as they have – good for them for not giving up).

What makes me a bit angry, and it shouldn’t but it does, is that I have shelves full of JP games. I have JP hardware, and rows of imported Turbo Duo, Neo GEO, Saturn, PS1, PS2 games. I buy their games. But they don’t don’t buy ours. They come across as arrogant and smug, full of rockstar swagger. Then I look at their current offerings and shake my head. In the end they aren’t as good as they think they are. And again they don’t buy, play, like our games. In many cases they won’t even try them. Imagine working all day to make a meal for your inlaws and they won’t even sit down and try it.

I try hard to stay objective, and not allow that last bit to cloud my posts. But under it all, that is just the way i feel.

Objectivly, I think that if magicly tomorrow JP stopped exporting their games, the western games market wouldn’t skip a beat. Millions of people would still log on and play WoW, CoD, Halo, Fat Princess, Red Dead Rev., God of War. Gears, EA Sports, StarcraftII, and so on.

I don’t think Japan ignores the West in any way.On the contrary in this gen they’re trying to approach the West,maybe they’re trying too hard thus they’re trying the wrong way.

Japan’s trend always have been mainly Anime and Rpg’s(it’s in their culture) so i don’t blame them that they don’t seem to care a lot about games from the west which mostly are “generic” shooters.Western hardware doesn’t sell that much there either because of that.

Halo was the main reason XBOX became so popular in the first place and 360 carried the trend over(mainly with games of the same genre which is West’s main attraction)

Another reason that maybe Japan is cut off (gaming wise) from the rest of the world is the difference in violence between their games and the western ones.
When the majority of Japanese gamers is under age it’s only natural that games from the West which most of them are much more violent have very poor sales.When it comes to violence things are very strict there.That’s why they prefer Pokemon,Final Fantasy,Dragon Quest,Zelda(games that sell millions there) and the list goes on…These are totally fictional games with a kind of “vanilla” approach in violence,war e.t.c

Anyhow i don’t think Japanese want to be alienated from the rest of the world they just have other preferences…as there are still a lot of people that do have the same preferences as them throughout the world even if they’re all in the minority

Japanese devs can’t just ignore that and at the same time ignore and disappoint their own people just for their games to be more appealing to the rest of the world…we’re not talking about a small continent here.

I really dont see how the JP is in decline, just look at how many of thier games sell big numbers.

Mgs 4 = 5m seller
FF 13 5m seller
Resi evil 5 etc

and then there is Nintendo imo

I don’t blame the JPnese for being JPnese. Thats just silly.

But I think what they are coming to understand is that ine grand sceme of thing JP itself is only a part(small) of the greater whole of the video games market. And where JP games have followed a long standing traditional line/format, they now need to change/evolve/adapt to expanding markets. As the bulk of their games no longer appeal with global gamers like they used to.

I love to look at the most obvious example I can think and talk about the graphics. When I first played Dragon Warrior, I was captivated. The gameplay blew me away, the freedom(for its day) was amazing. And the story was well done(again for its day). But if you fast forward to today and you were just sitting down to a Dragon Warrior/Quest or FF game, the first thing that would get in your way of enjoying the game would be the graphics. Where as in yesteryear the graphics were rudimentary and generic/standard stuff. Pixelated knights and fantasy monsters. Today we see that our heros are covered in JP style. Youthful, femme, brightly colored armor(Pink/blue – wth), and that turns off a lot of the western gamers. esp when the same gamers can pick from “cooler” western designs like what are found in Oblivion or wow.

That is about the best example of what I am talking about that I can think of. I love Book of Ys on Turbo Duo, yet I played the Y’s on PS2 and couldn’t bring myself to even finnish it.

I also take issue with the idea of JP having a lower avg age of gamer. I don’t know the numbers, but I do know some family that spent 6 years there(military). They said that EVERYONE plays games. And mostly Gameboy DS.

My guess as to why you might think that JPs gamers are younger then our own is the youghtful games that do often come out of JP. That is a reflection of their culture too. The adults are very youthful(for lack of a better way of saying it). Mrated games just aren’t mainstream over there.

No doubt we are in agreement that fundamentaly the reasons behind this trend is differences in styles. Between JP and the west. And that is ok. They are who they are and we are who we are.

But the byproduct of those differences is that JP games will not hold the same market share in the west that they used to. And that in order to sell in the west, games out of JP must evolve to fit the flavors that western gamers want. This is esp true now that the west has their own game devs that are giving their gamers what they want.

Just keep in mind that the JPnese are not victims here. And they have options. Like you said they can’t stop making games for their own audiance, and they shouldn’t. They should continue to do that. They should also learn from western devs. Learn what makes there games work. The west isn’t all about FPS. And the west isn’t all about bloody games. I think they(JPnese) should do a lot of codevelopment with some select western teams.

I think they have already taken the first step and that is to understand that if they keep doing what they have always done, they will continue to lose market share. the eventuality of that may result in removing themselves from the western markets completly. So, what they do from here is upto them.

Interestingly enough, the same set of problems may occur in furture devloping markets. What tastes will India/China have? How about S.America? Riht now those places are still somewhat low, gamingwise. But as time goes on and games become a bigger part of their cultures they may grow tired of the current left overs that they are playing and demand their own regional flavored games. Right now they are playing everything from 16bit to PS2 and much of it is black market(S.America – anyways). I imagine that will change someday, and when it does, the NA/Eruo game devs may face the same types of challanges that are facing JP right now.

OG i think you should look at how many Jp games are in the NPD every month before you say they dont hold the same market share. Up till recently the NPD was dominated by games made in JPN and still is. Mario, Wii Fit, Mario Kart, Mario Galaxy, FF 13 Mgs 4, Resi evil 5, SF 4 all sold millions in the west.

I think the reason Kojima has said this is because Konami are weak, they only have MGs that makes them money, the rest of JPN on the otherhand are far from decline at least when it comes to making money.

Most of the top teir(saleswise) JP games are Nintendo games.

RE, SF, FF, and MGS Sold well but those 4 and 5 million in sales your quoting are world wide figures.

Halo 3 sold 3.3M in 12 days. Over 12 Million todate(w/o any great impact from JP). CoD has sold … who knows how many squillions.

I am not taking away anything from JP games sales, not from Nintendo esp. I know that certian Wii games are at/near/over 20M each. Staggering.

Maybe it is worth noting that there is a seperation between casual/family games and the core market. What Kojima is talking about is most assuradly not the Nintendo market. His games aren’t exactly Mario Kart. And it prolly burns his baccon to think that more folks played Snake solid in Smash Bros fighting Yoshi then did in MGS.

Seems to me that the Casual JP games market is just fine, thriving even. Guess that leads us to the obvious Move/Kinect pushes.

Just that I, and I am sure others, don’t even consider those games into the equation of the video games formula. That is most deffently not fair.

Nintendo is a beast, for sure. Across almost all shores.

So, good point Mr. Hindle.

JP(and Nintendo) is alive and well.

It is more on the core market where they are losing ground. It is still my opinion that 3-5M copies across three merkets isn’t exceptionaly strong. It is good, worthy, and keeps the company going for sure. But here is the thing. This generation, and every day that passes, has the market expanding. In the 16bit days 1M sold was a milestone. In todays market it just isn’t. Some games require that many copies just to break even. Granteed not every game is going to be CoD MW2.

But if Nintendo can push 20M Smash Bros, shouldn’t FF have had similar numbers considering it was on two systems? And considering the game is … well FF?

I think so.

But from now on I am going to include Nintendo into the JP frame of mind saleswise. Just because I don’t game on the Wii, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t include it in the conversation.

“It is still my opinion that 3-5M copies across three merkets isn’t exceptionaly strong”

Based on this OG you could say the whole of Microsofts games, the whole of any publishers games could be considered not strong because its very rare any game will do what MW 2 or Smash bros does. Its like expecting every musican to have the impact that the Beatles or Elvis did on music a massive pop culture event basically.

Super mario bros appeals to a much wider audience then FF ever will. Also suprisingly if a game does 1m its considered to be a success although it depends on the franchise. The likes of Sony, Capcom, Square Enix all are mainly core market and they sell millions of software every year be it hardcore or casual.

Like i said earlier Kojima has only said this because hes part of a publisher that is looking very weak at the moment (Konami) the rest of Japan are far from in decline.