| 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. |
Not at all. The PC developers came into the console realm and boosted the western development process when Microsoft brought them through with the first Xbox. By the time the PS3 and Xbox 360 came the top PC devs had already jumped ship year after year. By the middle of the generation they were all multiplat and were making far more profit than they did exclusive to PC, so they developed on all consoles. The last PC devs to go full multiplat instead of full Xbox/PC was Valve if you recollect and Portal 2 was one of the top games of the generation. Ever wondered why WRPGS rose to prominance? Bioware came full time to console gaming after downporting their PC games from the Xbox to fill Microsofts ranks, and then MS funded their 360 version of Mass Effect to the 360 while also including in the contract that they stay away from Sony. Remember KOTOR 1&2 and Jade Empire? I sure as hell do.
Some of the best western made WRPG's made during the sixth generation. CD Projekt Red ports over Witcher 2 to the Xbox. You're telling me WRPG's aren't dominating? Come on. The Japanese couldn't even compete with the level of gaming. It threw the japanese off so badly they had no leg to stand on. In 2008 Hideo Kojima had to feel pretty bad that the console realm had instantly risen to prominence over the Japanese market. No one know why? Its easy..MS opened the floodgates for the PC devs to make a mass exodus to consoles with largely published titles. Bungie? PC company. Infinity Ward and COD? Originally PC games and MS got exclusivity when the Xbox 360 came for COD2.
Can you explain to me how the FPS genre took over the console realm? PC was left out in the cold until Steam rose to prominence. When Nintendo ran the gaming realm PC gamers looked down upon console gaming and laughed. When Sony and Microsoft joined, there was no longer anything to laugh about. Sony threatened the market and Microsoft signed off on creating the Xbox to stop them from threatening their dominance in the multimedia and PC market.
http://www.ps3trophies.org/news/news-8989-Ex-Microsoft--Enforcer--Says-Xbox-Was-Created-to--Stop-Sony-.html
Microsoft came and who did they bring with them in the early 2000's? PC gaming.
I wont even get into the influx of the indies.
