| RolStoppable said: I think I listed a good reason why it can be "good enough" for Japan but not in the rest of the world. All the popular Japanese genres can be made in sufficient form on a handheld, while for example FPS games which are important over here, can't be done. Besides, how many games sold well in Japan because they were technological masterpieces? I am not talking about games that happened to have great graphics, but games that sold primarly on being graphical heavyweights. |
I don't completely buy that argument, though. I was referring primarily to graphical power, which is no more (or less) required in, say, JRPGs than it is in FPS. More to the point, we know that most of the big genres in the West are just as easily done on handhelds as they are on consoles. Western RPGs like Baldur's Gate, racing games, sports games, fighting games, all of thses can be accomplished just as well on handhelds as they are on consoles. Even the FPS can be done fairly well on handhelds, as Moon shows. Considering that, as you pointed out, the PSP is essentially a console, and that those genres did well there, I don't see any real obstacle beyond the fact that consoles can do it bigger and flashier.
Having said that, your point about the Japanese usually being less "wowed" by technology powerhouses than Westerners is well taken. That leads me to wonder "why," of course, especially in light of how much more obsessed with other aspects of technology Japan allegedly is, but that particular question is tangential to this discussion. Until and unless the theory that the Japanese don't care as much about graphics as the West is debunked (and off the top of my head, I'll admit to having trouble doing so) I suppose we should roll with it (no pun intended).
