Khuutra said:
Bodhesatva said:
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?
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Worldwide mindshare.
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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).
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Right...but isn't that exactly why it's reasonable to assume he's talking about mindshare, and importance in the industry as a whole? He can't be talking about fiscal problems unless he discounts Nintendo, and even then it's a stretch.
I don't see how my explanation of his angle is unreasonable.
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I don't think you understand: I'm agreeing with your interpretation. I'm just saying "mindshare" -- an entirely nebulous and unmeasurable term -- is nearly irrelevant compared to profits. As I said, if Japanese developers continue to get the profits while Western ones continue to get the "mindshare," Japanese developers will eventually overpower them. It's the reverse of last generation, when it was Western developers reaping enormous profits. That's how Electronic Arts got so huge: not by making amazing, influential games, but by making more money than anyone else and buying the other people up.
Kojima's looking at this from a developer's perspective, not from an economic one. Of course, we all know that business is more improtant than creative influence. That is my point.
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