Tag Archives: Japanese game market

Square president Yoichi Wada has called upon the Japanese gaming industry to create adult oriented games in order to compete in the global market.

“There are not many publishers that create games for adults,” he said. “In the West, they tend to believe it’s cool to play games, even adults.”

In order to do this, change is necessary for the ratings industry which Wada feels is outdated, forcing publishers to either censor games or avoid a Japanese release.

While Wada believes ratings are important in order to “protect children”, the system needs to be revised and should that happen, he feels Japan could “possibly lead the global market”.

Wada was speaking during a panel titled “Strategies and Visions of Top Makers in the Global Era” featuring the heads of Japanese gaming companies at TGS, which included Capcom’s Haruhiro Tsujimoto, Konami’s Kazumi Kitaue, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida, and Namco’s Shin Unozawa.

Thanks, Joystiq.

Sony Japan Studios’ senior VP, Yasuhide Kobayashi, told attendees at DICE Asia that some Japanese companies struggle with sales outside the home market, and Koei seems to struggle the most with only 8 percent coming from outside of Japan.

This means that 91.8 percent of its sales come straight from the home market.

Following Koei is Tecmo with Japanese market sales at 89.6 percent, Square Enix at 86.6 percent.

“The Japanese market is really shrinking,” said Kobayashi, who feels that companies need to “develop [a] global title” in order to survive.

TGS is next week, so we could hear more on this from other sources.

Via Joystiq, Edge.

According to a Famitsu report uncovered by Kotaku’s newshounds, Japan’s videogame market took another tumble last year — and the hill’s looking mighty steep.

2008 saw the market pull in a total of ¥582.61 billion, while 2007 ponied up ¥687.95 billion. Especially noticeable, hardware sales dropped from ¥327.41 billion to ¥250.5 billion. Software sales, on the other hand, escaped with minor injuries.

Click through the link for a better view of the rising sun’s rapid descent. You might have to stand up to see over all the numbers, though.

By Nathan Grayson