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| DarkZero 738th Post
 
Red Carpet Regular Member+
   
    
    
|  "Re(3):Difference between US and Japanese game"
, posted Thu 29 Apr 18:18
Oh, yay. Another mainstream gaming article that completely misses the point. I await the three months of endless flame wars with great anticipation!
There's a really simple point that this article misses:
quote:
Despite the success of American music and movies in Japan, Western-made video games have never done well in the Japanese market. American-made consoles such as 3DO (released in Japan in 1994) and most recently the Microsoft Xbox (released in two years ago) never seem to attract consumers in large numbers. Games such as "Enter the Matrix" from Atari, and "The Lord of the Rings" by Electronic Arts, both released last year, often vanish from the Japanese market without leaving a trace.
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"Mortal Kombat" outsold and overshadowed "Street Fighter II" in the United States, but when Midway introduced "Mortal Kombat" into Japanese arcades in 1993, the game did poorly.
These games suck ass! And so do these consoles! (The Xbox is getting better, but it still sucked ass at launch and for the subsequent year to year and a half afterward.)
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More recently, the World War II-based FPS, "Medal of Honor: Rising Sun," has sold more than 200,000 copies in Japan since its launch in December.
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In 2003, however, the only Japanese company on the U.S. top 10 was Nintendo, nabbing four of the top 10 slots with "Pokemon Ruby," "Pokemon Sapphire," "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" and "Mario Kart: Double Dash."
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In fact, approximately 400,000 copies of "Grand Theft Auto III" have been sold in Japan since its release there last summer, catching the entire industry by surprise.
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Capcom’s "Street Fighter II" was a mega-successful arcade game from Japan and it raised a few eyebrows when it was released into U.S. arcades in 1991.
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There are exceptions, however. Capcom's "Biohazard" (sold in the United States as "Resident Evil") has sold well in Japan since the survival horror series was introduced in 1996. With its flesh-eating zombies and murderous parasites, "Biohazard" is both hugely successful and exceptionally gory.
And these games do not.
So really, the only actual fact in this article is that Japanese gamers aren't big FPS fans, which makes American imports difficult because FPS games are really big in the United States. Other than that, it's just a matter of crappy games selling poorly and great games selling well. The statement about the 3DO not "attracting (Japanese) consumers in large numbers" reveals the sort of ignorant perspective that this article was written from. The 3DO didn't attract any consumers in large numbers.
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| Ishmael 1346th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
   
| "Re(5):Difference between US and Japanese game" , posted Thu 29 Apr 19:00
Mind you, I'm speaking as a nutball posting on a message board that leans toward non-mainstream fare but this article comes across as far too simplistic. There may be differences in what's popular between one country and another but with so many different types of games on the market today that's not surprising. There are also more games being translated from one country to another more or less intact than at any other time I can think of but I'm not surprised a mainstream article didn't go with that angle.
Quoting from the article:
“Japanese players do not like being thrown into an arena in which they are given very little instruction,” said Hideo Kojima, creator of the popular "Metal Gear Solid" games. “You can head in any direction, 360 degrees. They say, ‘What am I supposed to do? Give me hints. Provide me service instead of just throwing me into this arena.’"
Haven't the MGS -where, between the cut scenes and the codec messages, the game pratically holds your hand the entire way through- games done better outside of Japan than in Kojima's home country? How would the people who created Animal Crossing respond to this statement?
Maybe it's because the idea that not all games have the potential to become world wide hits [how many mahjong games have made it to US consoles?] is hardly a new idea that this article doesn't do much for me. Or maybe it's because I see gaming as being more universal, or at least more complex, than this articles has room to go into that did it. Either way, thanks for the link, it gave me something to kick around for a little while.
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| cafeh2
28th Post
Rare Customer
| "Re(9):Difference between US and Japanese game" , posted Thu 29 Apr 22:23
Is it so shocking that two nations have different tastes in gaming? It's not like every hit in Japan has good sales in the US either. I don't think you will ever see Dragon Quest, Konami soccer, or Dynasty Warriors topping the charts here.
Heck, the most successful foreign-made games in the both Japan and US are usually the generic cartoony platformer games like Mario, Sonic, Crash or Jak and Daxter. Games that are "fun" for the whole family, for people of all nations (I dislike all of them but Sonic, personally).
And what was probably the most successful JP-developed game in the US (barring the overhyped Final Fantasy series), is Metal Gear Solid which is highly influenced by *gasp* American Hollywood flicks.
There are cultural taste differences and that's it.
That, and most nonJP developers can't make a game with good graphics even when they're working with some of the best character models in the industry (--MGS TS--)
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"Re(4):Difference between US and Japanese game" 
