Xbox 360 being phased out of Japan

[Icyedge]

BenVTrigger said:

makingmusic476 said:

To touch on the "Japanese people don't play Western games" subject, I remember reading an article awhile back about a Japanese developer who was given the chance to play a demo of Uncharted 2. Upon starting the demo, he sat there with the controller in his hand, unmoving, for several moments. When the developers asked why he wasn't doing anything (he was at the train crash scene, from what I recall), he said, "Well, when will the cutscene end?"

I also read an article featuring game designers from Square Enix who talked about how Japanese developers generally look down upon Western development culture, and how they personally, upon working with such developers from Eidos, began to realize the benefits of such methods of design. Though these articles may be one and the same.

There is certainly a lot of ignorance to be found in the Japanese gaming industry, both from gamers and developers alike, and this no doubt has some impact on the sales of Western developed games in the region.

Yeah I think this is the biggest reason why the Japanese don't get into Western games its because they simply haven't been educated too much on them and have very misconstrued ideas of what western gameing is like.  Western games get very little coverage in Japan as a whole so its easy for them to believe and buy into stereotypes about games not from Japan.  I too read an article about a Japanese developer who was asked to play Just Cause 2 and he said when the demo started he had no idea what to do and was very confused and lost, it being a true open world game which are very unpopular in Japan so far.

 

Basically I think over time the Japanese will embrace the West more and more in gameing as they realize alot of high quality titles and developers are outside of Japan.  They are so used to and familiar with companies like Square Enix, Sony, Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom that developrs like Bethesda, Epic, Id, Bioware, and the rest just seem foreign and strange to them.

Its not a matter of realising there are high quality titles outside Japan. They simply have different taste. Just look at Crash Bandicoot, it sold millions in Japan and thats back in 1999. It is very possible for a western developer to sell well in Japan if they do something that fit their taste. Though, by doing so, it may not sell as well in america, different taste...