Open question on any actual evidence concerning Japanese developers in the PS3/360 era.

[CaptainToad]

A common narrative concerning the relative decline of Japanese game developers in gen 7/PS3/360 era was that they shifted to focusing on international audiences and/or chased western game design trends and that this subsequently caused their games to be liked less and the companies struggled.

But is there actually any evidence of this? I've never seen any. It seems like, if anything, the reverse is true and they switched to making slightly more international-flavoured games to cope with the increased development costs HD gaming caused. It seems really unlikely every single big Japanese video game company decided to totally change their game design ethos for reasons that aren't explained by this explanation rather than some material effect driving them to change (i.e. they all experience the same market forces, but they all don't have the exact same management or game developers).

Capcom always had a lot of western-ish influences permeating their works: Philipino comic book artists in American style worked for them frequently, lots of simple, action-based games that appeal to North Americans (Dead Rising, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, etc.) Square-Enix was going for "international appeal" as early as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (read it in a shmuplations interview article). Castlevania's always been more popular outside Japan than inside it for Konami. A lot of them opened up offices in Europe and North America too.

I'm looking up the releases and published games of these companies during the PS3/360 era and they seem to be similar games to the PS2 era, though far fewer of them. Physical video game sales peaked in 2008, so that didn't help. Konami is the only one that really changed a lot with Silent Hill and Castlevania games, although they basically stopped making games that weren't PES, Jikkyo Powerful Pro, or Yu-Gi-Oh in like 2008 (a lot of IP-licensed games, HD collections).

Wikipedia lists the PS2 as having 4218 games and PS3 as having 2410. According to VGL library 354 of those PS3 games are JP-exclusive (15% total), VGL doesn't have a video showing how many PS2 games are JP-exclusive but I manually counted up 354 before I even got halfway through the list, so substantially more but that number is already down from PS1 which VGL says had 2459 games (58% total). So if they weren't making Japanese games the trend was already happening since PS2 at least.

And I looked up Metacritic tallies and individual industry reviews for Japanese games at the time such (I'll put the IGN review score for each) as MGS4 (10/10), Final Fantasy XIII (8.9/10), El Shaddai (5/10), Resonance Of Fate (7/10), Demon's Souls (9.4/10), Catherine (9/10), Ni No Kuni (9.4/10), Blue Dragon (7.9/10), Armored Core 4 (5.9/10) Folklore (9/10), Nier (7/10), Dead Rising (8.3/10) etc. It's not as if these games weren't better or worse received than in the PS2 era. Not that I like IGN but back then they were probably closer to the average gamer type in taste, not that that's good or bad. But I don't remember people disagreeing with IGN as an alien opinion (could be wrong on that).

If you look up the best selling games on PS3/360 it is 80% western studios though. And also lots of sequels by these studios like God Of War, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Elder Scrolls (2 games on 360), Grand Theft Auto (2 games on 360 plus DLC), Killzone, etc. etc. Really seems like western developers coped with the new hardware better and made more games while Japanese developers retreated to fewer, bigger games and/or the Wii/PSP/DS. The Wii, with its non-HD graphics and similar hardware to the GameCube probably helped all those experimental and horror and JRPG games stick around on it.

These points are kinda' scattershot though, so I'm not totally confident in my interpretation but that story I hear online never seemed convincing either.

Post automatically merged: Today at 5:02 PM

Article I found supporting my interpretation: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/report-japanese-publishers-switching-over-to-wii/1100-6173230/

Report: Japanese publishers switching over to Wii​

June 28, 2007

Namco Bandai, Capcom, and Sega are redirecting resources from Sony and Microsoft projects to Nintendo projects, reports Variety Asia

According to a report from Variety Asia, Japan's top three third-party publishers are ramping up development for Nintendo's Wii and DS systems, at the expense of rivals Sony and Microsoft. Namco Bandai will reportedly increase Nintendo hardware development by 109 percent to 115 titles, Sega will up its titles by 96 percent to 49, and Capcom titles will rise by 5 percent to 20.

Not only will Nintendo platforms be getting a greater assortment of games, but they will see a greater availability of them as well. Variety Asia says that more than 26.8 million units of Wii, DS, and Game Boy Advance software will ship during Nintendo's 2007 fiscal year. By comparison, 23.3 million units of software for the Sony platform will ship during the same period. Further, Sony machines will see a 30 to 40 percent decrease in shipped units from the three Japanese publishers, while Capcom alone will increase shipments for Nintendo systems by 81 percent to 4.7 million units.

As for the why, Variety Asia states that in addition to the fact the Wii and DS are trouncing the competition in the North American and Japanese markets, development costs are lower for Nintendo's hardware.

The report also states that another Japanese software giant, Square Enix, does not plan to develop any new titles for the PlayStation 3 until the console's installed base rises enough to make increased next-gen development costs worthwhile. However, Variety Asia made no mention that the company has several PS3 projects currently in development, including Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Square Enix's president and CEO, Yoichi Wada, recently called the Xbox 360 and PS3 "over-engineered" and "mismatched" to gamers needs in a Financial Times report.

 

[GundamJehutyKai]

One big thing was that lots of Japanese Devs outsourced many of their popular franchises to western dev teams in the hope of catching that "western market appeal" and they almost all bombed horrifically.

Capcom went in particularly hard on this. Think Lost Planet 3, DMC reboot & bionic Commando to name a few. This wasn't what was happening before where it was more like japanese interpretations of what would be cool to the western market but actually asking western devs to make something that would appeal to their "home" market. and almost all of them failing and doing significant brand damage.
Some japanese companies did try to mimic games that made it big and were developed in the west, Gear of War is a prime example for the cover shooter mechanics (Binary Domain, anyone?). but the end result was that all the games started to blend together and the ones that stood out the most just ended up being the western developed ones. Until the later end of the PS360 lifecycle, it was difficult to find games that were "uniquely" japanese.

The head of Team Ninja said it well in a later interview where he said that "they wanted to broaden their appeal to a larger market so they went from making the equivalent to sushi to making burgers. But there were others who knew how to make burgers for longer and were much better at it so it hurt them in the end. So they decided to go back and do what they knew they did best, making sushi!"

Prior to this, back in the PS2 days and earlier, devs would just make games to appeal to their home market and then if they caught on in other territories, great!! There were signs of change near the later PS2 lifecycle. Kingdom Hearts is a big example of a genuine, from the ground up game that was made to appeal to an international audience with the disney brand & MGS had built a reputation with the international markets (same with Final Fantasy) but for the most part, games were created in a bubble, so to speak, and if they did well outside of that, then it was a bonus.
On the plus side, you got some really wacky games which would not have existed otherwise. Mad Maestro and Guitaroo man would not have been made in a different environment.

 

[RanmyakuIchi]

I had always heard that the Japanese simply struggled to adapt to HD game development compared to the West and tripped a bit out of the gate in response. Capcom in particular was because of Inafune's misguided desire to copy the West.

 

[GundamJehutyKai]

There is also that, but there was also the simple fact of increased costs. Many western studios got out of the previous gen early to prepare for HD while japan just kept on trucking along. That led to a head start for the western devs when the HD era arrived and japan was playing catchup with increased budgets and less knowledge as they were just starting. and there was no co-operation back then either. Studios were secretive and did not share their tech or code to help others like they do now.

 

[RanmyakuIchi]

There is also that, but there was also the simple fact of increased costs. Many western studios got out of the previous gen early to prepare for HD while japan just kept on trucking along. That led to a head start for the western devs when the HD era arrived and japan was playing catchup with increased budgets and less knowledge as they were just starting. and there was no co-operation back then either. Studios were secretive and did not share their tech or code to help others like they do now.

Makes sense, I also wondered if the West having more experience in PC development compared to Japan played a role too. PS3/360 were closer to PC's than any other console generation before them. I seem to recall a "Wha Happun?" video that described that arcade and early console dev philosophy left Japan less equip to handle HD development.

 

[moonbits]

I had always heard that the Japanese simply struggled to adapt to HD game development compared to the West and tripped a bit out of the gate in response. Capcom in particular was because of Inafune's misguided desire to copy the West.

Everyone struggled, an increase in resolution and fidelity in a single gen was a brutal endeavor. An economic recession and the PS3's butt fucking arquitecture didn't help anyone.

The prospect of mobile games being cheaper to make and making 5x more than a console game, alongside the Wii stirred most Japanese developers away. Only the big companies dived into outsourcing their franchises to western developers with mild success (Castlevania, for example)

 

[regnor]

Yeah they definitely did try to pander to the west, especially with all the outsourcing to western developers. It's just that a lot of the time it didn't work out too well.

 

[MasterEn]

i would say it's more of an ironic mirror of us western players. a lot of western players are bored of our games and the japanese ones look more exciting in comparison. American developers for games, comics, movies and tv shows tend to either go for realism or simplified cartoon stuff. japan devs mix it up by blending the two together [realistic and cartoony] and adjust sliders until they get something that they think is cool. and they aren't afraid to to try out weird or unusual story ideas. we mostly recycle the same stuff with different hats.
our stuff probably looked interesting to them just as their stuff looked to us.