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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Japanese games are showing Western devs HOW IT'S DONE!

outlawauron on 22 May 2017
Kyuu said:
Japanese games are showing western devs HOW QUALITY DOESN'T SELL GAMES!

EA, Ubisoft and Activision can drop a steaming pile of shit and it'll still sell more in a week than the likes of NieR Automata, Xenoblade, and Shadow of the Colossus lifetime.

All this talk about "quality" is stuff for the nerdy hardcore gamer to feel good about.

Well, Nier Automata has sold far more than every expectation for it. I don't think it's entirely to throw it in a comparison with Xenoblade or Shadow of the Colossus. Nier will end up selling over 2m and that's fantastic for an action RPG. Especially one that has such a small dev and ad budget compared to the big hitters from EA, Ubi, and Activision.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

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forest-spirit on 22 May 2017
outlawauron said:
forest-spirit said:
Japan has spit out some good games recently for sure but damn do these guys try way too hard.

They criticise western games for getting post-launch patches (and rightfully so in many cases) but the very first game they show in the video, Final Fantasy XV, had patches with story elements added later. I guess some are fine with that but that's the main reason for why I haven't bought the game yet, because I sure as hell won't start playing the game until the story is "finished" and all cut-scenes are added.

They took a shot at Horizon for using towers to unveil the map but that mechanic is in Breath of the Wild as well. And they say it's not that original and bring up collectibles and side-quests and them cluttering the world map or whatever to prove their points? Get the fudge out.

They talk about how Activision won't have a game in development for ten years as if having a messed up development cycle is a good thing. How is a game taking ten years to finish a positive!? Sure, completing games before releasing them is a very nice thing to do but ten bloody years? And in Final Fantasy XV's case (don't know about The Last Guardian) you still got patches!

What story elements were patched in?

Didn't Squeenix add cut-scenes and branching paths and stuff like that after release? Perhaps I remember it wrong.



outlawauron on 22 May 2017
forest-spirit said:
outlawauron said:

What story elements were patched in?

Didn't Squeenix add cut-scenes and branching paths and stuff like that after release? Perhaps I remember it wrong.

The Day 1 patch included some of the CG scenes from the Kingsglaive movie. 

The only other "story element" changed was a rebalancing of the Chapter 13 dungeon. Not really changing the story.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

forest-spirit on 22 May 2017
outlawauron said:
forest-spirit said:

Didn't Squeenix add cut-scenes and branching paths and stuff like that after release? Perhaps I remember it wrong.

The Day 1 patch included some of the CG scenes from the Kingsglaive movie. 

The only other "story element" changed was a rebalancing of the Chapter 13 dungeon. Not really changing the story.

Ah, ok. Was it DLC that added stuff then?



Acevil on 22 May 2017
outlawauron said:
Acevil said:

I dismissed the whole video when they have Final Fantasy XV in the thumbnail. It is evident if you are going to make a point on development, you don't use something so incomplete, took forever, and plagued with development issues to illiustrate said point. 

I'm not even going to watch the video, and I going to assume it takes fricken noise dive from things like you said right away. 

What does that have to do with anything? The game was good and sold well. 

 

As for JP vs West arguments, I'd argue that the internet has better enabled the cream to rise to the top and these games are getting recognized early enough to the deserved attention.

Well if it showing how developers should get it done, I think the use of resources for Final Fantasy XV was not as well used and honestly it has a lot of wasted potiential (this franchise use to be 90s plus critically and now it is low 80s). In terms of Final Fantasy XV, I actually liked it but the game also feels extremely gutted namely after Chapter 7 or 8. 

If this was simply a video about Japanese resurgence I would be alright with it, but that is a bold statement. 



 

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Seventizz on 22 May 2017

Since leaving Sony and Nintendo - I don't recall the last time I've played a Japanese game. My X1 keeps me too busy with good games.



outlawauron on 22 May 2017
Acevil said:
outlawauron said:

What does that have to do with anything? The game was good and sold well. 

 

As for JP vs West arguments, I'd argue that the internet has better enabled the cream to rise to the top and these games are getting recognized early enough to the deserved attention.

Well if it showing how developers should get it done, I think the use of resources for Final Fantasy XV was not as well used and honestly it has a lot of wasted potiential (this franchise use to be 90s plus critically and now it is low 80s). In terms of Final Fantasy XV, I actually liked it but the game also feels extremely gutted namely after Chapter 7 or 8. 

If this was simply a video about Japanese resurgence I would be alright with it, but that is a bold statement. 

Well, from a business management sense, no. Japanese developers are good at keeping costs down, but not at finishing games quickly. From a end product standpoint, I do think that the West has to pick it up a bit. There's a space that has been lost with the slight downturn of yearly giants in Assasin's Creed, COD, etc. JP devs are filling and what should be niche titles are selling at good 1-2m clips.

forest-spirit said:
outlawauron said:

The Day 1 patch included some of the CG scenes from the Kingsglaive movie. 

The only other "story element" changed was a rebalancing of the Chapter 13 dungeon. Not really changing the story.

Ah, ok. Was it DLC that added stuff then?

Well, they had free content updates that added things like hunts and the Moogle Festival. If you had the season pass, you got some cosmetic gear. The meaningful DLC content is the character episodes (only Episode Gladio is out) where features a specific party member with gameplay changed to fit that character individually.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

outlawauron on 22 May 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
outlawauron said:

Well, from a business management sense, no. Japanese developers are good at keeping costs down, but not at finishing games quickly. From a end product standpoint, I do think that the West has to pick it up a bit. There's a space that has been lost with the slight downturn of yearly giants in Assasin's Creed, COD, etc. JP devs are filling and what should be niche titles are selling at good 1-2m clips.

hmm, the smaller ones are, although that's probably the same for western devs.

The biggers ones though (Square Enix, Konami, Sega, Capcom etc) aren't so good at that however.

I disagree. If Final Fantasy XV was able to break even with its day 1 shipment, they managed to keep costs low for dev cycle that long. Even if the current state of XV was only worked on for 4 years, they still had the pay the artists and writers for the 6 years before it.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

Cubedramirez on 22 May 2017

FFXV is garbage. If that's showing us how it's done then throw in the towel it's over.



outlawauron on 23 May 2017
Kyuu said:
outlawauron said:

Well, Nier Automata has sold far more than every expectation for it. I don't think it's entirely to throw it in a comparison with Xenoblade or Shadow of the Colossus. Nier will end up selling over 2m and that's fantastic for an action RPG. Especially one that has such a small dev and ad budget compared to the big hitters from EA, Ubi, and Activision.

I'd love to agree but 2 million sounds too optimistic unless there is massive undertracking. How many third party Japanese games can break 2m besides MGS (which is, as we all know, on the verge of death with Kojima gone, and Konami being crap), RE, and FF? 2m+ would be amazing considering the costs, and the sorry state of "Non-tendo" Japanese games in the west. Maybe it can pull a Soulsborne and surprise us but I don't see it yet.

If it had a bigger development budget, it would have been one hell of a game. But they can't do that because it's too risky to be financially viable. Even with similar advertisement levels, they'd still get destroyed by established IP's and cultural barriers. I'd be more than happy with 2m+ lifetime though.

I mean, it's more than halfway there. I imagine that whenever the game hits $10-15, the Steam crowd will jump in on it too.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.