| theprof00 said: @noname radically different forms of gaming don't tend to sell well at all. You may argue that the wii is a radical change, but it really isn't. It's Nintendo, one of the oldest comanies in the biz. Japan likes their brands and sequels much more than here. |
Yeah, I went deeper into that point in my aborted post, but for the sake of clarity I'll go into a bit more detail here regarding what I meant.
For "radically different forms of gaming" I wasn't referring to the Wii so much as individual titles like Cooking Trainer, Wii Fit, Brain Training, etc. Actually, no, I wasn't even referring to those: I was referring to the idea that they represent, that a "game" can include so much more than the same genres we've mostly been using since 3D came about. An exercise game?! A glorified interactive puzzle? A cook book? A few years back, none of those were really contemplated; today, they're some of the best-selling titles ever made. (And no, previous "exercise games" et. al., like the one on the Xbox, are not the same, as those were basically exercise videos married to a spreadsheet.)
I'm not saying that the direction Nintendo is pionting is the only way to go, mind you: gaming can (and should!) expand to go in other directions as well. But one thing seems clear to me: at least in Japan, continuing the path that's been travelled before is bringing in diminishing returns. This nice thesis of mine encounters a few roadblocks, of course, as a few traditional titles DO light up the Japanese charts, but those not only appear to be rare, but they're usually on handhelds rather than on consoles...
About the school thing, the typical Japanese teenager goes to highschool for about 8-9-10 hrs a day and then goes to cram school right after for another 3-4 hours.
Japanese adults working for a business usually work for 8-9 hours and then it is kind of required to go out with associates for another few hours or more. Japanese are almost never home, except for teenage girls and housewives ^ ^
See, this is the type of thing I'd like to see more hard data on. Not that I don't believe you, but I want to know the figures, and compare them to how things were last generation, when this wasn't as much of a problem.
As to the women staying home, why is that? And if that's the case, why aren't console publishers aggresively targeting them?
