Japanese video-game developers should ignore their critics

The future of Japanese video games looks much brighter than Keiji Inafune and others would lead you to believe.

[VanillaBear]

Most of them already do

cough coguh Capcom/Square Enix

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

@Vanilla agreed

"It’s no secret that Japan no longer dominates the global video-game market, but according to luminaries like Hideo Kojima and Keiji Inafune, the Japanese development community is mostly oblivious of western tastes and doomed to fail in its current state."

It's not doomed to fail, but they are oblivious to western tastes. End of. They think they know what the west wants, but they don't. Yes there are good japnese games like the ones mentioned in the article, but there are also bad ones which are mainly due to them trying to cater to western audiences.

This is what they need to realize. The casual fools that buy CoD every year will not buy a japanese game period. There is no point in them trying to cater to an audience that only buys one game every year. Japanese devs just need to stay true to themselves. Games like Catherine and Dark Souls show that you can still be successful and stay true to yourselves.

I don't know what SE is currently thinking with Final Fantasy with regards to consoles. I really question why they choose to put a highly anticipated game on hold (Versus 13) and put priority on 13-2. FF13's sales were fools gold. Many people bought it because it was the first FF game on this gen and nothing more. Many people (including myself) ignored people's warning that FF13 sucked. As fans we had to see for ourselves. Now 13-2 comes along and the only people that bought it were those that liked 13 and/or really thought SE fixed their mistakes. Not to mention there hasn't been any Kingdom Hearts games on consoles this gen.

I just don't understand why a lot of things are so horribly wrong this gen.

[Saladfax]

There's just a lot of bad practices happening in the Japanese games market. Three of the biggest publishers (Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami) are making these ungodly idiotic mistakes with their products in recent years.

Konami:

-Launching the MGS collection with limited in-store availability with very little marketing on the same day as Modern Warfare 3? (Yeah, their markets might not overlap much, but still)

-Three Silent Hill titles released in a single month? No staggered release, another example of few copies available in store?

-The HD collection for Silent Hill riddled with bugs, mistakes, and awful changes (cut out fog in sections, leaving the camera to see unfinished textures), not to mention a day one patch on content ten years old?

Capcom:

- Massive Quality control mistakes. The IGN watermark was left on the Wii case for Okami, because apparently the artists used stock images without noticing. Various other box art mistakes.

- The mess with Street Fighter IV and Marvel v. Capcom 3

- Poor decisions regarding reboots and new titles in the franchise (Devil May Cry, Resident Evil)

- General mediocrity on most of their efforts.

Square-Enix:

- Final Fantasy XIII, more general mediocrity.

[Tolkoto]

I think it's important to always acknowledge criticism. You don't have to follow all of it, but you should always look at it.

[THR1LLHOUSE]

Absolutely.

And I don't think it's that they're necessarily on the right path just because of a few positive examples. As the author points out, FF13 wasn't as big as Square probably hoped, while stuff like Dark Souls and Catherine were able to make a bit of a splash. Both of those are new(er) ideas. I think Japanese devs need to listen to their critics so they'll know to evolve, otherwise they might just keep oblivously making (arguably) crummy Final Fantasy games.

[Stealth20k]

the west has criticism so does the east

the point is to ignore falsehoods and generalizations

fyi kojima has been completely pro japan. Even calling the west a bunch of gun shooting morons (poetic license)

you dont have the rpg or fighting genre without japan...............lets be real on a global level the amount of japanese rpgs critically received has TROUNCED the west

The same can be said with almost every genre ( not shooter or sandbox)

[Saladfax]

Actually, the western and JRPG genres evolved separately in each region, and for many years the JRPG was to Japan what the shooter was to the west, so it's a little disingenuous to say JRPGs pound for pound trounce the west.

The reason to provide criticism to the Japanese development community is because they're making a lot of mistakes. If the devs understand that they aren't making satisfactory products, they can hopefully work to improve themselves.