Posts have been pretty sporadic as of late, I’ve been working on a portfolio, including rirekisho, as well as moving flat, which has sapped a lot of my time and energy, and left this blog a little neglected. Not too worry though, I should be blogging weekly from here on in!
For many years Japan held the gaming crown, their industry producing all the hardware, all the best software and their market share being one of the healthiest. More recently however it seems like their market just isn’t keeping up, having experienced decline annually for the last few years. All the while, the Western markets, and particularly the UK’s market are growing.
With that in mind, it would seem is the time for the Japanese market to start looking abroad, to start thinking about their portfolios a little more critically, and considering how they can make games that are both accessible domestically to themselves, and internationally to a broader audience.
Certainly it would seem that this game isn’t the answer to this problem.
As a bit of a self-confessed otaku, I’m probably not the best person to answer what makes game work in both Japan and overseas, though I will observe that the ratio of Japanese-made games to western-made games I’ve played in recent years has proportionally shrunk to when I was a teenager. However, it does seem to be a problem that the higher ups within the Japanese games industry have been pondering themselves as of late. While it would seem from both of them articles that neither Nintendo nor Capcom have really cracked the cultural difference code yet, it is positive and forward thinking for these figures to get up in front of a public forum and admit that they are pretty clueless as to what the western gamer wants as well, as well as to share company strategy on how to deal with these issues.
JC Barnett over at Japanmanship also covers a similar topic from the development perspective in his latest post.
One thing I often wonder is, surely during this climate of both a shrinking domestic market, combined with a relatively strong Yen and weak pound, will this lead to an increase in oppurtunity between the two countries? The news would seem to suggest so, it’s only a few weeks ago that Square announced that they were putting a generous offer forward for ailing UK publisher Eidos (all the while announcing record lows in its share prices), while Capcom recently announced a development agreement with Manchester based Monumental Games. I’d expect to see more of this kind of deal in the future.
So, to conclude, with us Brit’s are actually starting to become cheap for a change, and the Japanese domestic market is shrinking while ours is swelling, it would seem that UK/Japanese collaboration is a sensible direction to take. I would seem that it is true, oppurtunity is present during hard times, and we’d do worse than to look East for said oppurtunities and vice-versa.
great piece liam!
Very Interesting to see the market changes here. Hope it works in your favour!