| scottie said: OP - there is a point at which the aligned launches argument fails, and we have long passed it. A month after the PS3's release, an aligned launch comparison was fair. But by this point? If the PS3 hasn't caught up by now, it never will and newbie3 - the Japanese people do not refuse to buy American products, they (like everyone else) buy the consoles with games they like to play, which is Mario, Wii Fit, GT5, FF, DQ, Layton, Brain training etc |
Yoichi Wada (you know, the CEO of Square-Enix) actually just had an interesting interview about this. We seems to want to westernize the Japanese gaming market, and the biggest issue in the past has been marketing. SE is publishing MW2, and should that see a hit in Japan, there's a chance that the Japanese community will open up more to outside sources.
"The Japanese community tends to be closed," he told Ars. "In the past, Japanese retailers have said that Japanese gamers have their own idiosyncrasies and tastes, and that that is the reason why the audience is not accepting of overseas titles. But I believe that is not the case, it was just a matter of poorly executed marketing."
So he does 'kind of' say how Japanese people are reluctant to buy non-japanese products (unless some weird fad hits, but that has little to do with the gaming community).
Also, most (or all? I'm not sure on GT or Brain Training) of those games you mentioned, aren't they Japanese-developed games?
