With the PS4 generation a lot of Japanese developers and publishers like Koei Tecmo, Bandai Namco or even Sega have started to localize their games for the western market.  To learn more about the reason behind this change, I asked legendari Koei Tecmo producer Kenichi Ogasawara at Gamescom.  Ogasawara-san explained that localizing Japanese games in the west isn’t just a matter of translating in English, but involves complex planning, distribution and marketing. It takes a long time to get that right. He also mentioned that nowadays Japanese products are well accepted in the west.  Another important point is that sales of PS4 aren’t that good in Japan yet. Many Japanese gamers are still sticking to the PS3, while in the west many did the current generaton jump already.  Because of that, sales of PS4 games are worse in Japan, but publishers don’t really need to gain a high percentage of the much bigger current-gen market in the west to make similar sales. This is one relevant economic reason that led to the strategy of localizing Japanese games and bringing them to the west.

-Dualshockers

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Good news, i think.

Let's just hope that doesn't meas they'll stop localizing games when the PS4 gets a bigger userbase in Japan

Teeqoz said: Let's just hope that doesn't meas they'll stop localizing games when the PS4 gets a bigger userbase in Japan

Don't worry about this. ;)

The main reason people are still sticking to their PS3 is because every damn title that has the ability to sell PS4s to people is also on PS3.

1) Maybe so many people are still sticking with the PS3 because you are all making it possible for them by making every game crossgen? Just a thought.

2) Hopefully that orientation towards the western market also extents into game devlopment a little, there's a lot of good stuff the japanese could learn from the western market.

Localizing a game because lack of Japanese sales means trying to recoup/add profits to an already developed game, but what if this lack of sales in console trend continues?

Could some developers finally opt to:

1) Develop only for handhelds

2) Go the Konami road and focus on mobile

3) Try to westernize games

Let's see how things play out.

Always good to hear more Japanese games coming over, one of the best things about Playstation.

I laughed when it said "nowadays" Japanese products are accepted in the west. Between 1985-2004, Japanese titles dominated western titles on consoles.

Stop porting everything to ps3 then.. Lol ps4 needs some unique games and will start selling and for now only has blodborne