Topic: Nintendo and the Decline of the Japanese Gaming Industry

[Chozo Ghost]

In my worst case scenario Sony files for chapter 11 and leaves the home console market.

In my opinion if that were to happen it would be a best case scenario. Sony should go back to making TVs and Walkmans. They have no business making video game consoles.

[broodwars]

If Sony were wise, I think they should just follow Nintendo's approach and not go bleeding edge with their technology for the PS4.  They need to be moderate and fall within range of the WiiU.

Considering right now the best case scenario for the Wii U (given what little we know of its specs since Nintendo has not released any specifics) is that it's marginally more powerful than the PS3 and 360, I'd say that it's Nintendo who went moderate and fell within range of the PS3.

As for Sony's next console, I think they and Microsoft are constrained by the need to try to keep up with where PC specs are headed.  Certain key developers like Epic, LucasArts, Ubisoft, and Square-Enix are starting to openly show support for tech only high-end PCs right now could handle, and that's support that neither company can afford to lose.

And for all the digs people have made at Sony for the way they stumbled into this console generation (and various mistakes since), they've done just about everything folks here wish Nintendo did: they've established a strong home for 3rd parties, they've published an impressively-strong 1st party lineup (with a great deal of variety) with a fair percentage made up of IP new to this generation, and (although it took them a long time to get to that point) they have an online service that's competitive with Microsoft's and totally free to use.  They've even managed to implement motion control into many of their top-tier 1st and 2nd party games in a way that gives players options (rather than forcing motion control where it's not needed or wanted, as Nintendo has).  You may not like Sony, but just as a gamer it's hard to argue that what they've done with the PS3 has been bad for me or gaming as a whole.

I think if Sony were to step out of the games business, it would be a sad day for the industry and possibly a harbinger of darker days to come.  Like them or not, they offer experiences that the other two console manufacturers are lacking (you'd never see Nintendo put out a game like The Last of Us or Beyond: Two Souls, and you'd never see Microsoft put out a game like Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time or LittleBigPlanet, for example), and in so doing are part of a very delicate balance keeping the console market together.  They are the middle ground providing competition for 2 extremely different companies who aren't typically in direct competition.  Microsoft doesn't really make games that hit the same target audience that Nintendo's do, and vice-versa.  But Sony releases games that hit the target audience of both platform holders, and so there is competition to spark innovation.  Their existence forces the other 2 platform holders to be strive to be better where they might otherwise remain stagnant.

[Louieturkey]

I do believe the worst case scenario is 20% better than PS360.  We learned that back in November before newer dev kits were released which we have heard rumored to be even more powerful.  So I guess depending on your definition of "marginally," you could be right.  I say that is a lot more significant than marginally more powerful, especially the rumored increase in ram.

I do agree with you that Sony puts out the games that I want which Nintendo does not make.   Sony's 1st/2nd party stuff is amazing and innovative and pushes the boundaries that everyone else sits behind.  I also believe though that if they had not fallen so far from grace compared to the PS2 that some of the games they have made would never have been made.  It's the same way that the games on the N64 and GCN were so amazing what Nintendo made.  They had to make amazing games just to stay in the game.

Now that I'm way off topic, I will say that unless Sony goes way overboard on the specs for the Orbis, the Japanese developers will probably make games for both the PS4 and the Wii U and the 720.  I do think that how Nintendo goes will be how the industry reacts.  If the Wii U is successful, games will be geared around the Wii U first and adapted to the other two systems.  If the Wii U fails, then the PS4 will be the lead console and gamepad controls will be shoehorned in after the project is finished depending on the remaining budget. 

I do also think that something has to give soon.  Many of the so-called larger 3rd party devs are falling by the wayside due to the ballooning budgets for these HD games.  If they don't figure out a way to control these costs (whether through making less of the big games and supplementing them with smaller download games, or by finding a way to actually make the development of the games cheaper), we will see a lot more devs falls like 38 Studios and what will probably happen to THQ soon and possibly Sega.  It's going to happen in Japan as well.  My hope is this will lead to better quality games and less of them so that everyone buying games will have a chance to buy all the good games and not have to figure their way through all the crap.

[Mannypon]

As for Sony's next console, I think they and Microsoft are constrained by the need to try to keep up with where PC specs are headed.  Certain key developers like Epic, LucasArts, Ubisoft, and Square-Enix are starting to openly show support for tech only high-end PCs right now could handle, and that's support that neither company can afford to lose.

This is a belief that I think Sony and MS are falling for which I think is hurting the industry and is just exasperating the current bloated budget problems the industry is having.  Sony and MS shouldn't be bending over backwards to satisfy Epic, Lucas Arts, Ubisoft and all the other big publishers pushing high end graphics.  Sony, MS, and Nintendo make the market where these publishers can make their money.  They should be deciding how far to push the envelope when it comes to tech.  They have to realize that they are the ones in control.  Lets say Sony and MS follow up their next systems based on the WiiU approach and only provide a slight bump in specs.  What are Epic and friends going to do with all their high tech software?  Are they going to ignore the big 3 (practically the whole market) and go strictly  PC to satisfy the few who actually have high end pcs?  I assure you if that were the case, Epic and friends will be dead within a year.  The PC market doesn't have the legs to support these companies on its own, especially the segment of the PC gaming market specifically geared towards those with high end rigs.  Epic and all the other publishers will adjust their software to work with whatever the big 3 put out or else they'll get no business.  The notion that the big 3 should be aiming to satisfy these software companies is just ridiculous in my mind.  That's like if all car companies purchased their engines through a 3rd party and the leading manufacture is aiming to only develop super car engines and forcing the whole market to adopt their lines of cars to implement those specs.  Its unrealistic and will only hurt the industry. 

Nintendo saw this coming years ago and was part of the reason they took the approach they did with the Wii.  I remember hearing some of their speeches warning of the direction the industry was headed in.  They wanted to force the industry to slow down but in the end, they failed to accomplish that goal.  Instead of forcing the industry to slow down, all Nintendo managed to do is split it between the handheld market (low budget/Japanese) and the console market (big budget/mostly western and large companies).  Nintendo now with the WiiU is trying to catch up with the market while still keeping development costs at a reasonable level. 

At the rate things are going now, the video game industry will be a spittin' image of the movie industry here in the US.  Eventually, all we'll get are high budget AAA sequels and games that take very little risks.  Heck, that's almost all we see now.  Year in and year out, we're getting CoD, Battlefield, and all these other FPS with big action scenes and set pieces that only last maybe 2 days worth of gaming if your strictly a single player kind of gamer.  We're already starting to see the butchering of old franchises like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy.  Dead Space is looking to be heading down that road too.  I'm glad Nintendo is paving their own path again, someone has to do it.  The WiiU might not get all the great AAA games but it'll still receive a steady stream of support (mostly from Japan) from developers and publishers that can just no longer hang in the market that Sony/MS (Epic and friends hovering over them like the puppeteers they are pulling the strings) have created

[nickmitch]

Sony's fine. They'll be around for a while. They may pull the plug on handhelds in a few years, but it'll take a lot for them to pull out of the video game market altogether.

[shingi_70]

Sony's fine. They'll be around for a while. They may pull the plug on handhelds in a few years, but it'll take a lot for them to pull out of the video game market altogether.

People said that about rim 2-3 years ago. Sony's problem is they do so much and have so many different product lines and price themselves out of the market.

A few companies just need to surive unitil next gen. Sega could easily make a huge comeback be leveraging old brands unil new games and continue to focus on the download space. As well as getting in talks with microzoft or sony and try tp get a deal do e like the sega and microsft one last ge  or how ubisoft is with nintendo. That and s few games should habe been put off until next ge. Binary Domain would have sold a hell of alot more if this was the start of a new generation.

[shingi_70]

Also 38 studios werent killed  ecuase kf rising dev costs on the console slace. Thry were killed becuase of the mmo they were creating and upper mangment not knowing what they were doing. Even kf this was last gen the result of 38 would ha e bee  the same as the guys at top rucked up and mmos are resource draining. If they would have not started the mmo and went the bioware Obsidian route they would atill exist today and be on there third or foruth game.

THQ is another example of where rising dev clsts didnt kill thrm but people not knowing wbat they are doing. All of thws games for the most part are i  the mid teir ranve what hurt them was making the PS3/360 version of Udraw because it didnt sell like the wii version did. Along with that they had a few games did well like homedront and would have covered tbe costs but the marketing budget was the same as a call ofduty or a balo and it killed most of the profit the game made.

While rising de  costs are a serious issue in the industry alot of these comapnies are just making bad choices.

[ymeegod]

"Nintendo saw this coming years ago and was part of the reason they took the approach they did with the Wii. "

And what happened with all the support?  Gone.  And even though the Xbox360 costed more, it's still around today so if you talk about bang for you buck, then MS would have won (well if it didn't have the hardware failure rate anyhow).  $299 system that lasted 7/8 years vs $250 for an system that lasted barely 5?

Have to wait and see how aggressive Nintendo is with the WII U and who's it's targetting.  Smart move would to price it as current generation (roughly $250) because relaying on WII customer base won't help them this time around.  The WII was more or less an fad, kinda like the music games, it was hot but within a few years it dried itself out.



 

[Chozo Ghost]

I think if Sony were to step out of the games business, it would be a sad day for the industry and possibly a harbinger of darker days to come.  Like them or not, they offer experiences that the other two console manufacturers are lacking (you'd never see Nintendo put out a game like The Last of Us or Beyond: Two Souls, and you'd never see Microsoft put out a game like Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time or LittleBigPlanet, for example),

I just want to say that Sony could step out of the hardware business and continue making these games on Microsoft and Nintendo's consoles (as well as PC and whatever else is available). Sega continues to make software even though they quit making hardware about 10 years ago.

Alternatively, the studios and talent that make them up could be sold off or spun off into independent companies and continue doing what they do now. They just wouldn't be owned by Sony. Would it really matter if Sony wasn't owning them just as long as they continued to do what they're doing now? Like Naught Dog for example. If Sony quit the video gaming business, do you think they would just cease to exist? No, they would either go independent or someone would buy them up.

i  the mid teir ranve

 

[shingi_70]

Stipid tablet.

Meant to say Most of thq budgests are in the mid teir range.

Also people say that Japanese studios should be more Japanese, but what does that mean excatly?

Eith the  onsole market in japan becoming less and less relevant and hanheld sales dwindling everywhere else it makes sense that japanese console efforts would be made with america/europe behind.

Another problem I think is alot of Japanese devs dont work on multi-platform games.

Namco wonders why the Tales series underpreforms and why Ni No Kuni will probably bomb as well. Developing for only the PS3 probably flies in japa  but that **** is a no go everywhere else. Samething with colors not on HD systems and Generatoons not being on Wii.

[S-U-P-E-R]

JAPANESE GAMES INDUSTRY DEATH WATCH 2012

Final Fantasy I, II, III and IV. Chrono Cross. Xenogears. The games to Hiromichi Tanaka's credit from his time at Square (and later Square Enix) read like a murderer's row of legendary RPGs. But Mr. Tanaka's time with the the company has come to an end. Citing a "major illness" as well as a desire to branch out on his own, Mr. Tanaka has left Square Enix, per an interview with Famitsu.

I wonder if that "major illness" was stress, stress-induced, or just code for general frustration.

[Ian Sane]

The idea of Japanese devs "westernizing" their games is counter-intuitive.  If I want to play a Western game the Western will do it better than the Japanese devs.  What I liked about Japanese devs is that their games are Japanese.  There is a certain style to the best Japanese games that Western games don't have.  I prefer the Japanese style and it's a big reason why I got into consoles more than PCs for games.  Japanese companies need to continue to make Japanese games, only if they need to sell them in the West they have to filter out the Japan-only game concepts like Mahjong games.  A lot of Japanese style games are popular in the West without any major changes needing to be made for that market.

One thing I don't care for is the lack of ambition.  Ty is upset about the boring conservative nature of things and I guess that relates.  This gen where are the best Japanese games?  Nintendo is probably the most consistent and they basically re-released the Gamecube with a gimmick.  Japanese devs are also putting a lot of interest into handhelds, which have vastly outdated hardware compared to consoles.  It's like for a lot of Japanese devs the PS2/Cube level of hardware was the peak where they were comfortable.  They seem baffled about how to make games on anything further.  Of course if you just stick to something antiquated and comfortable you're not being ambitious.  You're not really going to do much that hasn't been done before.

Of course Western devs aren't doing that much either, sticking to a lot of generic first person shooters.  But at least we get good Western games on the HD consoles.  Companies like Capcom, Square and Konami went from being consistently good devs to their good HD games being rare exceptions.  The best PS360 games are predominantly Western.

Like Nintendo, Japan kind of reached it's peak with the "128 bit" gen and is kind of wandering around aimlessly with half-baked ideas.

The golden age is over.

[nickmitch]

Sony's fine. They'll be around for a while. They may pull the plug on handhelds in a few years, but it'll take a lot for them to pull out of the video game market altogether.

People said that about rim 2-3 years ago. Sony's problem is they do so much and have so many different product lines and price themselves out of the market.

RIM's problems 3 years ago were declining sales and market share. They were definitely in trouble. Then, they followed it up by blowing R&D budgets unremarkable hardware with a dated OS. They've been dying since at least 2 years ago. Sony still has hope.

[Louieturkey]

THQ was always run by people who didn't know what they were doing.  The rising dev costs finally forced them to address this.  If they don't get people who know what they are doing, those rising dev costs will bankrupt them.

38 Studios got a $50 million grant/loan from the State of Rhode Island which was expected to be paid back mostly by the sales of Reckoning.  Reckoning sold no where near what was expected (I think they thought they'd sell at least 5 million copies in the first month and it only sold 1.5 million).  Dev costs meant they needed that much money to pay for the game.  Kurt states they were on the verge of securing an additional $35 million loan to pay for dev costs on a sequel to Reckoning.  They needed $35 million dollars to make a game with an engine already built and most likely many of the assets from the first game being reused.

If Reckoning had cost even just $10 million to make, they would have made a profit or broke even on it.  As it is, they lost money on it because it cost so much to make.  That's dev costs.  Whether or not they were spending the money properly is irrelevant.  They spent the money on dev costs and those were too high to make a profit on the game.

It's all about dev costs.

[Kytim89]

With all of these western developers going under Nintendo would be smart to soak up all the talent from those studios and the create atleast two second party western developers to help supplement Retro. With the more competent leadership of Nintendo those people could make very good second party games to help attract an audience to the Wii U. Nintendo should buy out the good portions of THQ.
 
What I would like to see is Nintendo end of buying SEGA for a relatively cheap price. Then use the SEGA logo as a front for mature game developed by Nintendo owned developers. For example, Eternal Darkness 2 would be developed by SK, but financed by Nintendo with the SEGA logo on the front.

[Louieturkey]

The problem is THQ has no good portions.

[broodwars]

The problem is THQ has no good portions. :

To be fair, Volition Inc. and Vigil Games do good work for them.

As for SEGA, they've so spectacularly bungled every good thing they've touched this generation that I wouldn't shed a tear if they went under.

[Ian Sane]

THQ going under is like Acclaim going under.  Aside from general sympathy to the lower-level employees being out of a job, what reason is there to care?  Acclaim made mostly **** games and so did THQ.  A company with **** product is SUPPOSED to go under.  That's a good thing.  It means that world is working the way it should be.

What upsets me is when a good company with a good product goes out of business.  Or when a crappy company with a crappy product succeeds.

[Kytim89]

The problem is THQ has no good portions. : :

To be fair, Volition Inc. and Vigil Games do good work for them.

As for SEGA, they've so spectacularly bungled every good thing they've touched this generation that I wouldn't shed a tear if they went under.

Those are the two companies within THQ that I was refering to when I made my post.

[Ceric]

I'm going to chime in real quick and say that unless I've been reading a different Internet neither Sony or MS have come out and said to expect a large leap.  In fact from the leaked stuff I've seen on MS side it looks like they are actually looking to make a Wii style leap.  I don't expect them to be much more powerful then the Wii U.  In fact I expect them to be on par with the Wii U in raw horsepower but with special tech to drive Kinect 2.0 and the Glasses.

[Louieturkey]

THQ going under is like Acclaim going under.  Aside from general sympathy to the lower-level employees being out of a job, what reason is there to care?  Acclaim made mostly **** games and so did THQ.  A company with **** product is SUPPOSED to go under.  That's a good thing.  It means that world is working the way it should be.

What upsets me is when a good company with a good product goes out of business.  Or when a crappy company with a crappy product succeeds.

38 Studios had excellent talent and made a pretty good game in Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning.  Their expectations for its sales were way too high unfortunately and it ultimately led to the demise of the studio.  Luckily, Epic has snatched up a good portion of that talent and made a new studio in that area.  So the talent will still work.  We just won't get a new Reckoning game from them.

[TJ Spyke]

THQ going under is like Acclaim going under.  Aside from general sympathy to the lower-level employees being out of a job, what reason is there to care?  Acclaim made mostly **** games and so did THQ.  A company with **** product is SUPPOSED to go under.  That's a good thing.  It means that world is working the way it should be.

What upsets me is when a good company with a good product goes out of business.  Or when a crappy company with a crappy product succeeds.

THQ has made some pretty good games the last couple of years, I would not consider them a shitty company in any way.

[Chozo Ghost]

THQ has made some pretty good games the last couple of years,

You mean like WWE '12?

[Shaymin]

You should play Saints Row 3rd.

[house3136]

 In terms of Microsoft, I didn’t read their supposed leaked document; but from what I’ve heard, their intention isn’t to make a huge leap this next generation with Xbox to keep costs lower. But the big part was they planned to switch to cloud gaming around 2015. I’m not familiar with the tech, but does that mean that they could stream games that could perform beyond the hardware specs? Then the Xbox would be used for Kinect v.2 and serving as an entertainment hub and utilizing devices like SmartGlass. That would also mean more profits, control of used games (although I still don’t think they could go 100% cloud, but some mixture with retail), and less piracy. I don’t know if that’s actually factual, and going to happen, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable; I’m sure some here know much better than I do. If that does happen then what does Sony do? Go overboard on specs and potentially run the risk of selling well below component cost, or make a reasonably powerful system that that they could get away charging $400 for and not bankrupt SCE? Also, with cloud gaming, is that something consoles can switch over to eventually, or does it require substantial server integration? That doesn’t seem like something Japanese companies would be willing to do overseas, whereas Microsoft may have more of a sure bet.