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Forums - Sales Discussion - Japan Sales Week 40 Media Create/Famitsu/Dengeki - October 1-7, 2018

Megiddo on 21 October 2018
Mnementh said:
Megiddo said:
If anything has been proven thus far, it's that Playstation will maintain the high budget 3rd party Japanese titles since those rely on a western audience. The low budget visual novels or smaller games don't really have much to hold onto the Playstation brand anymore. Those will head to the Switch or Steam/PC or both. How much value do low budget titles have for Sony? None of them were ever that big of a factor to any of their success. After all the Vita was the king of low budget otaku stuff and visual novels and it was a complete disaster in Japan and outside of it. So unless a big IP like Persona or Neptunia decides to skip Playstation (which ain't gonna happen since those are western title successes as well) it really doesn't mean much. Is Sony going to mourn the loss of Wand of Fortune R2 FD: Kimi ni Sasageru Epilogue which sold 2.5k units this week? I doubt it.

That right there is Nintendo level arrogance. We don't need your game! I hope Sony doesn't share your view, it can backfire as it did backfire for Nintendo.

I mean, if you want to explain on how it can backfire, go right ahead. Of course, Sony isn't going to reject any of the lower budget visual novels/smaller games to be on their home console or anything. They're just not going to facilitate that market as they've done in the past with a handheld device.

Basically, the argument that was being put in place in this thread directly before my post was that poor PS4/Sony performance in Japan would lead to loss of Japanese third parties for their devices. Of course, most of the big third party publishers in Japan are already targeting a global market. So there's no logic in thinking that the PS4's performance in Japan would have any impact whatsoever on the big third party publishers as long as the Sony home console is still at or near the top outside of Japan. The only games being made strictly for Japan are mostly visual novels which target the otome/otaku market, such as the above Wand of Fortune R2 FD: Kimi ni Sasageru Epilogue. Granted, not all visuals novels are the same. Some of have performed very well in the west, particularly mystery/suspense VNs like Steins;Gate, Danganronpa, or the Zero Escape series. I'm mostly talking about the kind of VN where there is no big plot, you're just a random guy/girl MC in the midst of a bevy of hot girls/guys and the main pull is romance. Those kinds of games rarely if ever get released in the west, and if Sony is going to lose third party games due solely to the PS4's performance in Japan, then those will be the kinds of games it will lose.