IcaroRibeiro said:
I guess the right answer is, they didn't. Most of their best selling games were third parties. Why those third parties lost relevance? I dunno Japanese didn't bother to buy even the little Master piece of a remake that is Resident Evil 2, maybe they just lost interest of the games that used to be popular on the 90s I would really like a demographic breakdown of who buy games in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if gen z kids, who never played any PS1/PS2 before, were indifferent towards Playstation IPs |
IMO a massive decline in quality.
Final Fantasy helped PS1/2 massively in Japan. It used to be my favourite franchise, by far, too. IMO the series is now just crap. It also has much fewer releases than it used to and has partially lost exclusivity. It still sells relatively well here, but it's still seen a massive decline since the PS1/2 days.
Resident Evil is a series I feel a very similar way about. It was great on PS1, hasn't really impressed me since. Even the RE2 remake you mentioned I don't think that was as good as RE used to be. It was good, sure, but that's all. Not ground breaking or anything. Plus there are some changes in it that really put me off.
Dynasty Warriors is another series that has done the same. Was huge on PS2, but some pretty poor entries have really killed sales for the franchise. Surely doesn't help that DW6, the first entry on PS3, was one of the worst of the franchise. Although the most recent DW9 may well have taken that title now. So that's yet another franchise that screwed up the transition from PS2 to PS3. Probably doesn't help that its sister franchise Samurai Warriors was a timed exclusive for Wii too.
Gran Turismo was massive on PS1/2 but has declined as well. Personally I've never been a fan of the franchise, but review scores have shown a pretty steady decline with GT Sport being its nadir, at least backing up the suggestion that a decline in quality is behind the decline in sales.
Crash Bandicoot was pretty big here on PS1, it's decline post-PS1 is pretty well documented. Sony never really created a new mascot platformer to replace it either. Knack actually did fairly well here, proving there was demand for one if it was good, granted Knack did benefit from heavy bundling too.
Metal Gear Solid was fantastic on both PS1/2 but IMO has steadily declined since and now with Kojima out of Konami is effectively dead.
Winning Eleven was big here back on PS2, it was big in Europe then too. It was then subsequently slaughtered by FIFA in terms of quality, and perhaps most importantly licencing agreements. It's now tiny compared to FIFA, and unlike in Europe FIFA didn't take its sales in Japan, they just disappeared, possibly as a result of Konami maintaining exclusive rights to the J League licence. So a huge decline in the franchise with no viable competitor for people to go to.
What else? Dragon Quest is of course massive, DQ11 would suggest it's at least maintained its quality, but it did go Nintendo exclusive for awhile and even with DQ11 was multi-platform, so doesn't really benefit PS over Nintendo like it used to for PS1/2.
In short, a lot of Japanese franchises that the PS1/2 depended on have changed direction since then. Sales would suggest those changes were made to appeal to the western audience at the expense of the Japanese one (which you could argue is the case for Sony's position on PS as a whole too).
