famousringo said:
Japanese devs (except Nintendo) all seem to have decided that going West is the only way to get growth. Unsurprisingly, an Eastern company has a hard time being more Western than a Western company, so the main result seems to be that they're alienating their Japanese base and trading Western fans of their Eastern style for Western fans of their Western style.
That came out pretty confusing.
What I'm trying to say is that Japanese developers have to compete with Western developers by being something different--something Japanese. By actively trying to court Western gamers, Japanese developers are just spinning their wheels in the West, getting nowhere and spraying dirt on their Eastern base. The result is that Japanese publishers have ceded the Japanese market to Nintendo.
Just look at the annual publisher totals in Japan:
2009 - Nintendo bigger than the next three publishers combined.
2008 - Nintendo bigger than the next four publishers combined.
2007 - Nintendo bigger than the next seven publishers combined.
Nintendo is the biggest publisher in any region, but only in Japan do they enjoy such a ridiculously lopsided software marketshare. At least the situation seems to be getting better.
And where has this Western focus gotten these publishers in America? Nowhere. Sega is the only third party Japanese publisher to make the top ten list in the Americas in recent years, and they did it by riding Nintendo's coattails.
Japanese publishers need to understand that there's more value in exporting Japanese culture abroad than there is in awkwardly rehashing Western culture.
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This here is exactly the problem I am noticing with Japanese devs this gen they no longer want to be Japanese and seem to have a profound hatred of themselves.
