Kojima: Japanese game industry is in trouble

[Bodhesatva]

Khuutra said:

Bodhesatva said:

What angle is he looking at this from? I've been looking at financials quite a bit, and here is what seems to be the case as of the last few quarters:

Activision and Ubisoft are making money, but Midway, SCi/Eidos, InfoGrames, Microsoft Game Studios, and Electronic Arts are losing money. Electronic Arts in particular is bleeding money out their ears.

Konami, Capcom, SquareEnix, NamcoBandai and Nintendo are making money, while SegaSammy and Sony are losing. Nintendo in particular is making enormous amounts of money.

It appears to me that the major Japanese publishers are significantly more profitable than the Western ones. What metric is he using here?

 

Worldwide mindshare.

 

Uh, okay. Tell you what: let's let Konami/Capcom/Square/Nintendo make the profits, and let's let Electronic Arts/Microsoft/Midway have the "mindshare," and we'll see who wins in the end.

I think Mr. Kojima and I just have different metrics. He's a game designer, I'm a (casual) analyst of the industry from an economic perspective. There is no way one can substantively gauge "mindshare," but I can tell you -- with actual empirical data -- that Japanese developers are making laughing stocks of Western developers from a fiscal perspective. It was last generation when major western publishers like Electronic Arts, Midway and Take 2 were making big money, and they're now all deep in the red (although T2 did have a single very profitable quarter recently, when GTA4 was launched).