VanceIX said:
Ucell said:
VanceIX said:
I visit every other year for 2-3 months at a time.
From what I've seen, no one that I know is a console gamer. A lot of my family is fortunate enough to be mid-high social class, and none of them have consoles. Consoles are expensive, games are expensive, and on top of it all there is no guarantee that your friends will have a console too. Not to mention, outside of bigger cities like Delhi or Mumbai, you will be hard-pressed to find videogame stores. I lived in Jodphur and Jaipur and not once did I come across a place selling videogames. Most cities don't have big malls to offer consoles and games.
Also, many other games have seen large degrees of success in the west. What about Gravity Rush, Fire Emblem, Rogue Galaxy, ICO, Shadow of the Collosus, Gran Turismo, Atelier, Legend of Dragoon, Pokemon, White Knight Chronicles, Zelda, etc.? Tons of Japanese games are successful worldwide, it's the question of localizing and marketing them right. Most Japanese games these days are smaller, niche titles which are hard to localize, since the big devs have all been concentrating on the west, with no help from Sony or Nintendo.
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Yeah I'd imagine gaming may be niche in smaller cities, but in large cities gaming has become quite popular. That's definitely the case in Delhi.
Now let me give you an insight into gaming in Delhi-NCR region:
Most gamers in India are PC gamers followed by PS gamers, then Xbox gamers with Nintendo barely having their presence felt here. I think though, as you said, its all down to prices. PS4 games here cost 4000 bucks, PS3 games cost 3500 bucks while newly released PC games usually cost 1500 bucks with only EA games costing 3000 bucks on PC. Also most people here have powerful CPU's and buy low-end graphics cards, which cost them much less than a brand new console and are capable enough to run new games on low settings which is good enough for most. Add PS Plus and XBL costs and you know why their are more PC gamers here than console gamers.
So yeah MS and Sony can do a lot to appeal to the general gaming public here. And India's population has enough rich people to support gaming massively. Games aren't advertised AT ALL here, so that should also change.
Anyways, I know its getting long now, butr most of those Japanese games you listed have NOT sold well in the west. Western games sell tons more in the west, and now are gaining appeal even in Japan, as you can see from sales of BF 4, GTA V and COD Ghosts last year.
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I agree with you about gaming in the major cities, but those alone will never match up to the collective gaming in Japan.
And yeah, those games have, actually. You can look up the sales numbers if you want. Fire Emblem and Pokemon are huge titles here, and Rogue Galax, ICO, Shadow of the Collosus, and Gran Turismo all did very well when released in the west. The others had very solid sales as well.
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What? You call Fire Emblem huge? The best-selling game in the series has sold like 0.77 million in the west. That is NOT huge. That is actually very poor sales for a game which released during 3DS peak, and is the BEST-SELLING game in the series.
And GT is much bigger in the west than you seem to give it credit for here. It regularly sells over 9 million in the west.
Also Gravity Rush being popular in the west is laughable. It has sold less than half of Fire Emblem: Awakening in the west, which itself sold poorly. Perhaps you're confusing poularity of these games in the VGC community to there actual sales.
I am not saying they are bad games, Fire Emblem, Gravity Rush and many others you listed, but they are far from mainstream.
The only mainstream Japanese games I can think of are Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Kingdom Hearts, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Souls and MGS. Many others like Tekken and Soul Calibur used to be popular, I agree, but clearly they are not right now. In fact thats happening with most Japanese games now.
