Japanese Game Devs Talk AAA Games, PS4, and the Future of the Japanese Games Industry

[Kresnik]

I really liked reading Harada's comments.  Particularly these:

GribbleGrunger said:

• Over the last 10 years, Japanese devs seem to have lost the spirit to compete worldwide when it comes to new titles.
• It’s hard to get those who like to play games on smartphones to want to play traditional console games. We need to get them to think that they’d rather play with a controller.
• It’s getting hard to notice an improvement in graphics, current-gen consoles currently reflect the power high-end PCs had 5 or 6 years ago.

I think we're making progress on the first one.  The funny thing is, you can get tiny companies like Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory who aim worldwide - they deliberately set up overseas subsidiaries because they want to expand their market outside of Japan.  Yet bigger companies like SEGA and Bandai Namco have to be coerced to release anything overseas.

He's also addressing smartphones as a legitimate area of gamers they need to convert (rightfully so - I'm betting the people who play on smartphones these days would've gamed on consoles in previous generations) and that graphics are plateauing now.  Good on you, Harada.

 

I'm quite interested to see where Koei Tecmo's PS4-only strategy takes them.  For certain games it makes sense (Dead or Alive; Ninja Gaiden) but I can't see them sustaining a business in that market alone.  They're not a Square Enix who are big enough to move consoles on their own, nor are they an Idea Factory who only target one console because they have such a small niche.  They're somewhere in between, and I'd have thought it would've been in their interests to target multiple consoles like they are doing now (PS3/4/Vita), not just one.  Hope it doesn't backfire for them.