Square-Enix CEO Calls Out Japanese Gamers on Western Bias!!!!

[johnsobas]

loves2splooge said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

makingmusic476 said:

Even 410k for GTA is poor, given it's reception elsewhere.  And it doesn't compare to the 2+ million Final Fantasy pulls off in North America.

Final Fantasy is a 20 year established IP and the unquestioned 'most popular JRPG in America'.  And usually has a marketing budget to compare to Halo or GTAIV.

No western game released in Japan compares to a western released Final Fantasy game.  Especially now that SquareEnix relies on the western sales for the bulk of its sales for every Final Fantasy game.

The whole Final Fantasy thing is interesting because if you really think about it, from the mindset of someone living in say the early 90s, you would have never guessed that these games would become popular in the west one day. My early impression of these games as a kid in the early 90s (I didn't even know they were called rpgs until FF7 came along) was negative (I thought turn-based combat and random battles were stupid and pointless. Funny how the Final Fantasy hype machine later on and all my peers talking about how awesome FF7 was changed my perspective. lol). From that perspective, I would have never guessed that a game like this would be popular one day. But somehow, Sony (publisher of game in the west) did it. They were able to sell a game with the same archaic combat that I thought was boring in the early 90s (turn-based, random battles) by selling the cinematic experience of the game, making a huge marketing push with MTV and what not. And we ate it up. It's really hard to believe that it happened.

So considering the FF case, maybe if western games were given a similar push, you might the Japanese warming up to western games, maybe even a FPS game (a genre that is thought to be unmarketable in Japan just like jrpgs were supposedly unmarketable in the west)

Final Fantasy wasn't even very popular until they gave it a 100 million dollar marketing campaign for FF7, then all kinds of RPGs were selling in the west after that.  I kinda wonder if anyone has ever tried something like that in Japan.