Japanese devs/publishers. What's up with them?

[Goatseye]

Adinnieken said:
I don't think PC development had anything to do with what happened in Japan. PC developers and console developers co-existed for years.

I think the decline of Japanese development last generation was because of the difficulty of programming with the PS3 and the failure of the Xbox 360 to sell well in Japan.

The difficulty in developing on the PS3 ballooned the development costs, increased the development time, and extended project windows. This wouldn't have been an issue for Japanese developers if the Xbox 360 had sold better. Because it didn't, the need to develop PS3 games meant there was no inexpensive development solution that would generate revenue. Something Western developers had the benefit of.

The other problem, is that with many Japanese developers releasing the games they did produce on the Xbox 360, in some cases long before the PS3, it pissed PlayStation fans in the US and Europe off. The result of which is those gamers (like myself) who have no affiliation with Japanese developed games, didn't rush to buy Japanese franchise games. In part because of the lack of familiarity, but also because of the game play. Turn-based gaming for most western gamers was a thing of the 90's at the latest.

Had Sony come out with something similar to the Xbox 360, and not a Cell-based PS3, I think Japanese developers would have been more successful and more prominent in Gen7. Japanese developers could have more easily relied upon the home market because the costs wouldn't have been so prohibitively high. And in the western markets you would have been able to reach your core market better. After all, the Xbox 360 probably wouldn't have been as strong of a seller had the PS3 not included the Cell processor. But it did, the Xbox 360 was the stronger console in the Western market, especially early on. As Japanese developers tried to court Xbox 360 gamers, and failed, the began to fall by the wayside.

The gaming market is really weird but I still think that Japanese gaming world is disconnected from the rest of us. EA and other giants should invest in Japanese devs to bring their games to the West. Ubisoft have a JRPG game in development probably being made in Vancouver.