Japanese Game Show Girls
The gradual decline in the Japanese gaming industry has always been a news story nowadays. These news stories pop up out of nowhere weekly. Keiji Inafune, production head at Capcom said that video games produced in Japan are in deep water nowadays. This statement is pretty heavy to be delivered by one of the people of Japan’s most recognized game developer. Other prominent people in the industry like Ben Ruiz of Team Coloblind and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima stated that modern video games from Japan are trash and criticize Japanese games as whole.
This scenario in the Japanese video game industry has been a fascinating event for some games writers that they pour their pieces in games magazines about this industrial malady. Writers find it irresistible not to write about the slide of kings of the video game industry into ruin.
Is it really that bad that the Japanese should worry much regarding the current state of the games industry? Recent polls conducted have revealed that the Japanese games industry is in bad condition. All of the arguments forwarded by the industry gurus revealed that the creative spark of Japanese video games industry was lost, meaning that the Japanese industry appeals only to the small minority of the worldwide audience. There is a major backlash when it comes to gamers when they speak about this issue.
Just look at the top video game picks last year. How many of these Japanese games have been nominated for award? Are there any Japanese companies that fascinated the audiences with their produced video games compared to other game developers? Only a few have showed what they got. The role playing game (RPG) category was dominated by Skyrim which was the former territory of Square Enix. Many western companies have gathered much of the awards and have succeeded globally. Batman Arkham City was proclaimed as 2011’s game of the year.
In reality, the video games industry in Japan is falling farther compared to its accomplishments in the past years. The major culprit in this decline is their policy of catering Japanese audience only. There is nothing wrong about this policy, but if the industry is suffering it is better to cater the whole gaming world to ameliorate the situation. But most of their largest funded titles released have appealed to the crowd in Japan and not overseas.
Japanese companies should consider the worldwide audience and not just a particular region in order for their video games acquire worldwide acclaims. These companies should compete in the larger market especially the global audience and not just providing satisfaction for the smaller regional audiences.
The video games industry of Japan is not yet ready for the curtain to fall but the supposed turnabout of the industry will greatly depend on how these companies promote their video games and systems in the worldwide audience and to the future generation. The coming months and even years will provide us the answers on whether the Japanese gaming industry will bounce back of deteriorate further.
