Is there a single Japanese console publisher in good shape?
Sony really is the outlier in console gaming of a Japanese company doing well...
Anyway kind of sad I guess, when I was a kid I kind of felt like Capcom and Konami where "the big two" Between them they seemingly had so many hit franchises in the 8 bit-16 bit glory days. Contra, Castlevania, Streetfighter, Ghouls and Ghosts, Final Fight, Metal Gear...
Indeed both of them were legendary. I dont know the shape of Capcom but at least they keep making big titles of which many are successful.
Square Enix is pumping out some big titles too which are very sought out.
The Japanese industry indeed isnt what it used to be. In the old days Japan had the best console game makers whereas PC had the western companies. I am trying to understand how it all shifted towards the west. I think it has to do with the fact that the West is more up to date with technology.
Kojima in an interview said that the Fox Engine was part of the effort to make the production of gaming more western like in order to become competitive and meet global expectations. Another article I read around a decade ago said that Japanese colleges were teaching methods of game programming and graphics that were relevant many years before but not anymore.
The real time graphics industry was taken over by two major western companies, AMD and NVIDIA and from there gaming development adjusted to the techniques allowed on these cards. They pretty much established their own standards. I expect that since this came from the west, education in the west was more up to date to the industry standards set by those companies.
The XBOX1 was the first console that was part of that shift and if we look closer, we see that it had huge western support and less Japanese support and hence it was infested with the same kind of genres that became the standard the generation after. Racing games, military third person shooters, first person shooters.
The west also owns all licenses that are more likely to bring sales. Sports licences, Novel licences, Movie licenses, Superhero licenses, Cartoon licenses etc. The japanese are left mostly with some Japanese anime which is more niche.
In addition the big Japanese companies are caught in their past successful franchises, many of which are decades old. It makes sense considering their carried popularity from one gen to the next and their continuous success. But there is always a time when these names will reach a dead end. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Castlevania, Street Fighter, Sonic, King of Fighters, Ninja Gaiden, Metal Gear, Mega Man, Ridge Racer, Resident Evil and many others were selling well for a long time and old fans were buying the sequels. Changing the old formula too much means making a game that could lose your old fan base. Keeping it too similar might dissappoint old fans who got tired of the same. It can also miss demands of gamers that are accustomed to the new types of game design. Old fans arent always available either. Many grew up and either dont play games much or dont play the same games anymore.
We saw attempts with old japanese franchises on both directions but few brought fully desirable results. For example the newest Castlevania games were almost unrelated to the old ones. Old timers were disappointed, some liked it, some didnt. Attempts to keep it similar to the old was very liked by old fans, they didnt sell like crazy to new ones and not all old fans bought it. The old Resident Evil formula that made it a huge success is outdated by today's standards, but trying to update it to today's standards makes it hard to maintain its identity. It gradually lost its personality and it is has become a shadow of its old self. Similar observations can be made for many other franchises.
The west also had similar conundrums with games like Tomb Raider. Originally a massive success, after the PS1, people were less tolerant to its difficulty and puzzle solving that made it a success. Its sales have been OK'ish to outright disappointing from the PS2 era and afterwards. The company abandoned its old attempts and made spin offs until they went with a complete reboot to see if they could gain from the Tomb Raider name.
Japan hasnt come up with many new franchises that were massively successful either. But the west has been making new franchises for a while which became the new big names.
