The Success of Japanese Publishers

In September of 2024, I got to cross an item off my bucket list that's been there for a decade or so: I went to Japan. Now don't misunderstand, I didn't go because of my hecking love of animu and mangos or to find the cute otaku girlfriend of my dreams (tfw) but because of its culture, nature and architecture, which has fascinated me for a long time (I made Salaryman Shi for a reason). To make a long story short, the country was beautiful, the people were kind and the food was delicious, but I didn't write this entire blog post just so I could brag about my amazing vacation. That was only part of it. What I really wanted to write about is the clear division between the state of the Western and eastern industry, which has been on my mind since I came back from my trip and is still very much relevant today.

Ever since the iPhone ruined both the internet and the game industry in one fell swoop back in 2007, I've read a lot of online discussions regarding the state of traditional gaming in Japan. For those who don't remember, this was the era of Western domination, at least according to the media. The PlayStation 3 was too busy shooting itself in the foot with an awful launch price and disappointing launch library and the Wii was too gimmicky and casual friendly, which is why the Xbox 360 was the only real option left for any SERIOUS and HARDCORE gamer at the time. And indeed, it really felt that the next generation was here with games that looked more realistic than ever, played better than ever and had more mature themes and stories than ever before, or at least that's how it was phrased at the time. With almost two decades of hindsight, it's easy to point out that the obsession with photorealistic graphics over good art direction, overly streamlined mechanics, nickle and diming players and dumb and shlocky writing started back then and has only gotten worse since, but few who remember the era will deny having fond memories of it - myself included. But while the situation for Western games at least seemed good at the time, Japanese developers were openly struggling to adapt to higher definitions. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV were busy setting sales records, dominating Metacritic with high scores and wowing players, while entire genres like the JRPG were written off as antiquated and the term "Japanese" became a rather condescending and somewhat racist adjective for any game that was too "eccentric" or "campy".

Insulting your fans in public? That has never gone wrong in the history of video games!

At the same time, Western indie devs were making a name for themselves with titles like Braid, Fez and The Path getting hyped up by journalists as the New Hot Thing for the industry. Made by struggling yet passionate artists, these games were sold as thought-provoking masterpieces that proved that the medium of games wasn't just capable of genuine artistry, but rewarding passion and vision as well. This is, of course, ignoring that these artists were hardly struggling, that the majority of them were friends with the people covering their games and that these unique masterpieces were hardly that unique; these one-hit wonder developers were still suddenly considered to be experts in their field and thrown into the spotlight with a dozen microphones abruptly shoved into their faces, and the majority of them said the same thing: Japanese games suck now. At the same time, industry analysts were claiming handhelds were quickly becoming redundant in this new era of free*, disposable phone games (*only free by the technical definition of the word) as titles like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Candy Crush were making waves. While the sales of the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable weren't disappointing by any stretch of the word, launch sales of the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita were. Nintendo ended up having to cut the price of the 3DS hard just to get it to sell - something they've almost never done - while Sony simply dropped the Vita like a redheaded stepchild after its disappointing launch, leaving third parties to try and keep Sony's killed handheld alive with some underrated gems, some of which saw new life on other platforms like Gravity Rush or Persona 4 Golden, but others were less lucky and are still stuck on Sony's deader than Dodo doodad like TxK or Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz.

All of this context should make it no surprise that Japanese publishers ended up trying to replicate the Western way of development, with mixed results. Capcom, for example, went all in on their decision to "Westernize" their IPs due to the influence of disgraced industry legend Keiji "I Want To Prove That Something Can Sell Because It Was Made By" Inafune, only to fall hilarously short with underwhelming and underperforming titles like DmC: Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 6 and Dead Rising 3 (irony of ironies, DmC ended up selling less than Devil May Cry 4, when the entire reason it exists was that Capcom thought 4 didn't sell enough). Compare and contrast this to Square-Enix, which actually lucked into some success with games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Tomb Raider that reviewed and sold quite well, or PlayStation Studios, which started doubling down on the cinematic third-person formula popularized by Uncharted to create titles like Marvel's Spider-Man and God of War (the reboot) to much success and critical acclaim.

So where are these success stories now? Well, Square-Enix fucked Deus Ex and Tomb Raider into the ground, EA style, with poor decisions like blatantly cutting content from the game to sell as separate DLC and timed Xbox exclusivity respectively, then sold off all of their Western studios to try and chase the whole NFT fad, and I don't even need to tell you how well that went. Meanwhile, Sony shut down Japan Studio for seemingly no reason (RIP) while leaked Insomniac documents have confirmed that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 had triple the budget of the first game yet sold only about half the amount of copies. Further plans, like a Spider-Verse crossover DLC and a Venom spin-off, seem to have been quietly dropped, and even a very late PC port didn't seem to have moved much compared to the original's. That might be because of how long it took to come to the platform, the loss of novelty combined with only marginally improved gameplay, the poor state of the port itself or the divisive quality of the writing. It could be any or all of the above, really, but when you compare it to other Sony sequels like God of War: Ragnarok and The Last of Us Part II, there's a very clear pattern: they failed to make a splash that even comes close to the ones their predecessors made outside of the obligatory cultural controversies, despite having higher budgets than before. That's not even getting into the billions of dollars Sony has wasted on Firewalk Studios and Concord. The purchase of Bungie also seems to have not been a wise decision if Sony's devaluation of the studio and underwhelming release of Marathon is anything to go by. Do I even have to go into Microsoft buying up half of the Western industry here?

Comparing this to more traditional Japanese publishers and the difference couldn't be more obvious, even if it can't be denied some Western influence remains. There was a time when Konami was considered a curse word by gamers across the world when they decided to abandon their claim to fame (video games) so they could turn beloved franchises like Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill into survival slop or pachinko machines, but it can't be denied they've been making a comeback recently with Metal Gear Solid Delta or the recent Silent Hill titles. Delta wisely decided to only update the graphics and leave everything else intact, and never in my life would I have thought I'd hear diehard Silent Hill fans say a remake of one of the most famous and beloved horror games of all time could be good, but I've heard praise that the original game was mostly faithfully adapted, and even improved on in some ways, a far cry from the infamous HD Collection's reputation. Meanwhile, Capcom remembered how to have fun again and not only brought back Mega Man through some decent collections as well as the mainline franchise - twice now - but remembered how to make a proper Devil May Cry or Resident Evil game, and while the latter's many remakes aren't always as good as the originals (in particular 3 was done dirty), they're making buckets of money, so clearly they're doing something right. That's not even going into the shared orgasm Ace Attorney fans like myself had when they brought both The Great Ace Attorney and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit overseas after years of dooming and lost hope. The shift in mentality at Capcom is obvious - not every game needs a AAA budget like Resident Evil, as long as it makes a decent profit, and it's clearly working wonders.

There's too much text in this damn article. Where's the pictures?

That's not even getting into the enormous comeback Nintendo made with the Switch - the console/handheld hybrid proved to be such a success that Sony suddenly found a bunch of sold PlayStation 2s lying around that they just happened to forget telling anyone about just so they could keep the record of best-selling video game system. Whether that's true or not, the Switch and its beloved library broke enough records to inspire a similar trend of computer handhelds like the Steam Deck, while Sony ended up making its own decently successful take on the hybrid model with the PlayStation Portal. Similarly, rumors are that the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Whatever will also be hybrid systems of some kind, which makes sense considering the Xbox Series X' and especially the PS5 Pro's current prices. But what the success of the Nintendo Switch's library and Japanese publishers re-embracing their heritage has proven most of all, in an era where hardware is becoming exponentially more expensive and fewer people can afford the price of a PS5 Pro or decent gaming PC, is that there will always be a future for both lower budget and AAA games as well as lower-end hardware where both can thrive (just look at what kind of hardware Steam users have these days) when there's less pressure to have 4K textures and gigantic polygon counts at every turn. As long as that remains the case, I remain optimistic about the future of the industry.

The stupidest thing about this whole situation is that both Iwata and Yamauchi saw this coming back in 2001, but why would you ever listen to those dinosaurs from Nintendo and their outdated ways? Hindsight, 20/20, etcetera.