Why do you think games like Gears only do so-so in Japan?

[Jrecee]

I understand crash bandicoot did ok there.

[Menegrothx]

I heard an explanation once that had a lot of resonance and made some sense. Their culture has a different view on weapons, specifically the gun. It's not a universal thing, but could explain why the mainstream audience doesn't find it appealing. As Americans, we see the gun as a tool of liberation. It's in our constitution that we can have them. It's a source of power. In Japan, it's usually represented as an extension of the body.

How does that explain the popularity of those game in Europe then? I once read that "Japanese people don't play FPS games because they get motion sick", which sounds like total BS to me.

[Erik_Twice]

I have read that article Cronozilla and I don't see why it would be true, there's no actual research behind it, just speculation by the author. Given that they made Elevator Action, Hosue of the Dead and Contra, that's quite a step.

There's no appreciation for FPS in Japan because they aren't released there and they aren't released there because there's no appreciation. The motion sickness thing is an excuse, of course.

Historically it makes sense. Wolfestein and Doom didn't get big in Japan, probably because of the lack of x86 computers there and because of the shareware model. This mean Quake wasn't hyped nor was Duke Nukem. The same happened with strategy titles, if you didn't get Dune, Warcraft II or Command and Conquer, you would be missing the later Age of Empires. It's sad to think that they didn't really get anything by Sid Meier in their original state and that when they did, they got it very late.


I'm also sure that both Wesetrn audiences and publishers are much more likely to give a Japanese concept a try than viceversa. Western companies will push for Japanese games while they are a little bit too happy catering to the old otaku crowd to even notice things like Steam wrecking havoc.

[EvilRyu2099]

Just FYI games like CoD and BF sell very well in japan.. Very comparable to popular RPGs in fact..

[Erik_Twice]

Just FYI games like CoD and BF sell very well in japan.. Very comparable to popular RPGs in fact..

/thread

[AppliCotton]

I really don't understand why, maybe they need to put the title on the packaging in katakana, because if there's one thing I do know, it's that the Japanese are crazy about the word "gear", especially if the game in question has nothing to do with cars or machines. Progear, Guilty Gear, Xenogears, etc.

I even floated a thread to try to figure out why, but only got a couple of takers:
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 44&t=40164

I think in this case, it could be the "of". If it were just called "War Gears" or "GearX Trinity Zeta", they'd probably have to change the law so kids don't cut school to wait in line to buy it

[JC48573]

speaking of wars, Advance Wars is one of the best games released from Japan.

[Razzmatazz]

I heard an explanation once that had a lot of resonance and made some sense. Their culture has a different view on weapons, specifically the gun. It's not a universal thing, but could explain why the mainstream audience doesn't find it appealing. As Americans, we see the gun as a tool of liberation. It's in our constitution that we can have them. It's a source of power. In Japan, it's usually represented as an extension of the body.

How does that explain the popularity of those game in Europe then? I once read that "Japanese people don't play FPS games because they get motion sick", which sounds like total BS to me.

I don't know if it's because Europe has a larger influence from the USA, particularly with games and movies, and music too. Japan is still a bit cut off and their society is group based rather than individual so I can see why they are reluctant to support foreign franchises, as ignorant as it may seem. It would be interesting to see what the most successful franchises are in Japan/Asia and how many are more fantasy based.

I know in the UK the most popular are games like FIFA, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and Just Dance. Which I imagine to be different in Japan. The UK is different to Europe too with game franchises, as Pro Evolution Soccer is more popular in mainland Europe than it is in the UK.

[isiolia]

I don't know if it's because Europe has a larger influence from the USA, particularly with games and movies, and music too. Japan is still a bit cut off and their society is group based rather than individual so I can see why they are reluctant to support foreign franchises, as ignorant as it may seem. It would be interesting to see what the most successful franchises are in Japan/Asia and how many are more fantasy based.

I know in the UK the most popular are games like FIFA, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and Just Dance. Which I imagine to be different in Japan. The UK is different to Europe too with game franchises, as Pro Evolution Soccer is more popular in mainland Europe than it is in the UK.

I don't think it's so much realism versus not, but rather gameplay style. As I understand, Japanese youth still like English and American stuff, just like a number of people in the U.S. think Japanese stuff is cool.

My guess would be more that Japan tends to skew heavily towards portables, particularly outside the more hardcore crowd.

While it's not always the full story, compare the system makeup of VGChartz's Japanese sales from last week to those of the USA. It's like a complete opposite in the top 30. Nearly everything selling well in the U.S. is for a home console, in Japan it's portables. Even further down the line, Japan still peppers in a lot more portable games.

Certain genres, like FPS, are far better represented on home consoles than portables (and vice versa for stuff like JRPGs this generation).

There are likely just different tastes too, but I don't see the nation that brought us Contra and Metal Slug outright hating Gears of War. I'd be fairly surprised to see much like Arma II come from Japan, but whether High School of the Dead or Metal Gear Solid, there are clearly people there that love their guns there too.

Hard to say definitively, but I would suspect that the difference in preferred platforms between the regions might have something to do with genre preferences.

[pierrot]

I think it's a multifaceted issue, though I think it has a lot to do with a different sense of aesthetic. I remember talking with one of my older students about comics once, and he mentioned that he didn't care for western comics because they weren't "beautiful." I felt slightly offended, because I think that western comics are generally drawn very well, and I enjoy that they're in full color, but i essentially understood him to mean that there wasn't quite as much focus on nuanced details of drawing in western comics as in some of the more elaborate Japanese comics; say The Five Star Stories for instance.

I think this plays a bit into video games as well. While it's not to say that there aren't people in Japan who enjoy an FPS with a western style of gritty warfare, often the market might be looking for something with a little more subtlety. Or, y'know, characters with unnaturally colorful hair, and zippers on everything.

Also, while I don't think that this necessarily affects western games' sales in Japan directly, weapons and warfare don't have quite the same cultural significance in Japan as they do in the US these days. Japanese youth are generally against war, and I imagine that that's due in part to the fact that within their lifetime Japan has been constitutionally prohibited from declaring war. It's also illegal to carry weapons in Japan, and that goes beyond guns, to knives and other bladed/serrated weapons and such. So, I don't think the general public really has the same appetite for visceral, ground-war themed FPS. There are still weapons enthusiasts though, so that's not to say that there's no group of people in Japan that would buy these types of games.