Why do American games fail in Japan?

Ha, maybe Xbox360 and Call of Duty 2 failed because the Japanese don't want to be reminded of a war that ended in two nuclear explosions, flash burns, genetic mutation and various forms of cancer.

Just a thought...

American games are mostly crap, why bother?

Flame me..

Wow an age old topic. Of course this will never change unless there is a serious effort about how games are distributed overseas. Forget marketing and all that selling bs, it's about getting the games into potential foriegn gamers hands and since forever a lot of companies either haven't been successful or barely even try. Nothing has really changed. I didn't need Gaming Steve to tell me of this problem either. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to know of this problem and how it's existing since the dawn of computer and console gaming.

So how long until we see "iD-Tokyo"?

American games have ooky box art....

American and European publishers have grown to be the largest in the world while Japanese developers have been in a steady decline. I don't think the top western developers will change anytime soon. There are also many titles in Japan that are never released in the US. I think you will see more of a push from japanese developers to make more global minded games to increase revenues.

I really think it is an important point that Japan companies makes a strong effort to localize games while US companies do not put in as much effort. It makes you wonder if US companies are missing out on a large stream of revenue simply because they do not put in the effort.

American and European publishers have grown to be the largest in the world while Japanese developers have been in a steady decline. I don't think the top western developers will change anytime soon. There are also many titles in Japan that are never released in the US. I think you will see more of a push from japanese developers to make more global minded games to increase revenues.

In my personal opinion, it probably has something to do with American games being so crappy and unoriginal. Just a bunch of boring racing games, dull sports sims, and bland First person shooters (half of which are based on WW2). That was pretty much the Xbox 360’s entire opening line-up too…

American and European publishers have grown to be the largest in the world while Japanese developers have been in a steady decline. I don't think the top western developers will change anytime soon. There are also many titles in Japan that are never released in the US. I think you will see more of a push from japanese developers to make more global minded games to increase revenues.

games are a cultural phenomenon. it should be no surprise japanese games don't often hit here and vice versa. Same goes for TV programming, movies, food, etc etc etc....

Well one thing that would really help.

Translating the games into Japanese.

Most of the time, companies don't even bother to translate the game from English (or French in some cases) into Japanese.

Not very fun to play a game you can't understand at all.

Sells would go up for quite a few American and European made games if they were actualy in Japanese.

After all, if SquareEnix released Kingdom Hearts in the U.S. and Europe, but never bothered to translate it from Japanese to English, it would not have sold.

I'm always amazed when a title that would do quite well, such as FIFA titles, MLB, Nanostray, WWE, Spider-Man movie games, etc, but are never translated or horrible translated.

Strange how simple that sounds, and yet companies don't bother to do it.

Plenty of gamers in Japan would love to play American and European games, if only they could understand it.

I just plain prefer Japanese games. though Retro Studios did an outstanding job on Prime. which feels japanese in its core (maybe that was Shigsy/iwata/whoever it was who directed MP).

strangly kuroshi went and answered him self

American and European publishers Growing
Japanese developers declining

see there is no develpers in the USA / europe
only publishers who have something and do it time and time and time again ( like Madden )

EA is still buying any company that can produce games
they take its trademarks and burn all the talants

It's simple, really.

American games suck.

Most American games do not appeal to Japanese gamers for simple reasons: the games they make (the games most casual gamers enjoy and those that sell the best) completely differ from the interest of the typical Japanese gamer. As good as a game like Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or COD2 or Madden '0X or Grand Theft Auto 9 might be, these are not the games that Japanese people enjoy and probably will never enjoy. As far as I can remember, sports games, aside from soccer, and war games were made strictly by American developers, or released primarily in America by International developers.

If the 360 wants any shot at doing remotely well in Japan, they need to look at the types of games that are selling there, and it's certainly not what the 360 already has in DROVES (aside from racing games.)

i think it's because most Westerners don't understand mahjongg well enought to write Super Alpha Mahjongg Plus. Plus there's not much of a market for the same type of dating/sex sims in the western world :)

in all seriousness, does anyone find it strange that some japanese companies are starting to target games specifically for the western world and aren't so concerned with their own market anymore? say like Namco's Frame City Killer?

i don't think most Japanese publishers have a choice but to do decent localizations of various games, simply because they need to make money on them, because the market in Japan is relatively small. that's not to imply they aren't good, but rather that the cost to make some of these modern RPGs and such is incredibly expensive.

Two words for Microsoft in Japan:

Dating Simulators.

Instant success.

How to get Japanese gamers into COD2? "Change" the subject matter and just dub over all character's voices anime style! (Try to imagine that one for a second)

It just seems to me that as far as console gaming software goes, many developers in the US don't have the same visions that Japanese developers have. If more were like Jaffe (? and funds were appropriated), we may see more thought-out games. The US needs its own Team Ninja style group. They have the right attitude.

Everything Cyrus posted is exactly right.

Maybe it's because Americans are trying to treat video games like a business by sticking to what worked (FPS, Madden, racing, etc) and never trying anything edgy or new, where the Japanese have already embraced it as an art form and create original, crazy, fun stuff. Just a thought.

@ #1 (ronnie): I can disprove that. I am from Germany and I totally enjoyed that game, even though I was slaughtering Germans all the time in the game. I think that's because it is a game after all, and there is a difference between a game and real life.

"Why do American games fail in Japan?"

Definition of American's "cool" and Japanese's "cool" are different.

For American, you find the way to beat someone badly. For Japanese, you find the reason to.

"Everything Cyrus posted is exactly right."

Not true. He forgot about the Sci-Fi FPS, which is the other half of FPS. lol

No it's because it's an entirely different culture. Their sense of humor is different, their idea of entertainment is different, they have a specific word for a polite lie to save embarassment... they are DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

That is why they don't like the games we like. Stop trying to rationalize it.

Or maybe it's because Americans crave games which require little to no attention spans and a lot of eye candy.

While Japanese gamers prefer a rich experience and emphasise substance over style.

Japanese culture in general sees Americans and short minded.

With companies like EA laying off people left and right, it's pretty easy to see that American games have finally hit a wall. People are sick of boring unoriginal games. Japan just saw it much sooner. Japanese companies are growing like crazy, while American ones are shrinking.

All in all, while we probably wont see another console from Microsoft after the 360, the gaming market overall will be better off with a ton of better games in the stores other than Madden2010 and Project Gotham 10.

#1: Hmmm...maybe the Japanese forgot all the raping and pillaging to China and surrounding Asian countries pre-WW2 also? Or what they did to US POWs during the war? 150k people getting nuked was nothing comapred to what Japan unleashed in the Asian Pacific...

As someone who has worked on American games for the Japanese market at one of the biggest publishers in the world, I can attest that there is almost no effort put into localizing them. Translations are done by one semi-literate japanese-speaking american person and not double-checked by anyone else, japanese or otherwise. I have shown a few translations to Japanese friends and they laugh at how badly they are written. We here in America laugh at the occasional mistake in foreign games but our games to them are 100 times worse. American game companies are just not run as well. The games are not as well-made, and Japanese buyers have very high standards. This article comments that Japanese people want to play Mario Kart ds and not Quake 4. No shit. Mario Kart is flawlessly put together and rated one of the top games of all times. Quake 4 is a mediocre title full of bugs. Even our biased wishy-washy American game critics gave it a blah score. So this is really a pretty understandable phenomenon.

lol@ all the opinionated " USA SUXKROSSAX" comments..
i guess thats why games like madden and GTA and halo etc etc are the biggest sellers
in the U.S., cuz they suck..or maybe cuz US developers are " hitting a
wall" ...GTF outta here...it has nothing to do with wat YOU PERSONALLY LIKE..most casual US gamers dont POST ON JOYSTIQ SO YOU ARE NOT THE NORM..YOU ARE NOT THE MAJORTIY..the majority of US gamers loves
everything u all bashed...

anyways back on topic..its simple..we dont understand the japanese and it doesnt seem like we WANT to learn about the japanese...its like a whole other monster they have to battle as a company that im assuming they dont think is
worth the time...its just ignorance on our part as smericans..but thats why i think MS is just letting the Jap developers work thier magic and let the US and euros do thier thing...wny force US devs to
tackle somthin when u can get a japanses company to handle the project...so mor epower to jap gamers..i dont understand half the games that come out..but im sure its vice versa to them...

ALL YOUR BASE BELONG TO US!

There's not enough 12 year old girls wearing school girl outfits with eyes the size of cereal bowls in super short skirts giving gratuidous white cotton panty flashes in american games. Thats why.

There's more going on there than just "the Japanese think X is cool, while Americans think Y is cool" and there's certainly more than "the Japanese hate on those games just because they're not from Japan". The Xbox 360 is failing for a lot of reasons in Japan, but the Japanese not adopting foreign manufacturers isn't one of them. Just ask McDonalds and Apple.

Part of the issue is that design ethics and expectations differ dramatically from Japan to the US and Europe. JT's comment above hits this dead-on. Compare Ryu Ga Gotoku to GTA. Both have good stories, but look where the emphasis lies. Compare Shenmue to GTA, for that matter. Many games also come laden with cultural expectations; Metal Gear isn't about the missions, it's about the motivations.

The Japanese and US markets also like different things. The US market LOVES sports games. The Japanese market loves job simulators. Densa de Go, the bullet train conductor series (No Lie!) is up to it's third game. Where you "drive" a mass-transit bullet-train. A lot.

The Japanese don't like open-ended RPGs is another example. It's well-documented that when most Japanese gamers play a game like say, Morrowind...they have NO IDEA what to do.

And as is pointed out, the Japanese manufacturers work much harder at localizing games than we do....and the ones they do bring over are the higher rated games. Few games in the US get the kind of localization even the poorest japanese game gets in the US. I think the rare exception will be a game like City of Hero, which goes to great lengths to customize for the Asian market. We'll see how well they do.

thats because american games are designed by the marketing department, as opposed to one Hideo Kojima with a loyal development team.

#24 I suppose the sarcastic tone of my post was lost on you.

You are however, completely correct. I was a history major and college and am certainly aware of all the points you have made. Much like Germany, Japan can't do enough to distance themselves from what they did during World War II.

My comment is just to illustrate the absurdity of a title like Call of Duty even being released over there. Regardless of how many Chinese and Koreans they raped or killed or how many GI's they beheaded on Iwo Jima, they're not going to want to play a game that reminds them of a war they lost.

American look back on WWII these days with a certain reverence and pride, I would aurgue that we were on a higher moral ground than the Japanese were and it also made America a super power.

It made Japan a broken people afraid of their own shadow and I doubt they want to wallow in that when they could be playing some whacky Katamri type game, thats the difference.

games are a cultural phenomenon. it should be no surprise japanese games don't often hit here and vice versa

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HAHAHAHAHA Um.. MARIO BROTHERS? FINAL FANTASY? EVERY NINTENDO GAME EVER MADE?

Dumbfuck, the Japanese invented the industry.. I beleive Atari was full on AMerican and they did was.. Pong?

Bottom line.. the Japs run the industry, then theres.... EA Sports. So you're basically saying why don't Japs like EA sports.. well they do, but come on.. once you've played Madden you don't need to buy every new version

American games fail in Japan because American games don’t have enough screeching anime characters and/or flashing/flickering/pulsating multicolored lights in them. Americans don’t make enough games that involve running around very static, non-interactive environments engaging in battles that consist of choosing something from a list that includes “ATTK” “MGIC” “ITM” and “SUM.” Each of these options will all result in a sequence that lasts anywhere from 20 seconds to 30 minuets and consists of massive amounts of flashing/flickering multicolored lights and explosions obscuring the screen, in addition to your character (who is essentially a 12 year old boy who shops at some store that’s apparently a combination of Hot Topic and Gymboree) screeching like a wounded parakeet. The “deep” story line of these games involve some variation of the “you have to fight an angsty 16-year old who will grow wings and shoot a lot of flashing disco lights at you while yelling really loud at some point” theme. Because these games reference some obscure religion or some other social problem that’s extremely obvious, many American fans will eat it up without question and call it “meaningful.” If there were dozens of games like that on the Xbox 360, it would sell better in Japan. Also it would have to have lots of action games that involve repeatedly smacking one of the buttons on the controller, thus causing your on screen character to flail about whilst screeching and yelling at the top of his or her lungs (In the most horribly shrill voice imaginable) and making that noise that sounds something like a butter-knife being scraped along a piece of metal that seems to make up 60% of all the sound effects in the battles in anime or Japanese games. Oh, and it would also help to have a lot of games in which you perform some mundane activity over and over again while listening to J-Pop and viewing some nebulous story line that mostly involves various anime characters screeching and screaming at each other. If American developers made more games like that, they would be more popular in Japan. The Xbox 360 would also likely sell more if it was covered in lots of flashing lights.
Now I’m not saying American games are any better (im not even trying to say that all Japanese games are bad or fulfill the descriptions I just gave), all of our RPGs nowadays are MMOs, which means the expiriance of playing them is roughly the same as attending a DND chat room while reading a horribly written fantasy book and calculating stats on a graphing calculator. If they aren’t MMORPGs they are Diablo clones, which basically means that they are somehow even more repetitive. The rest of our games involve either World War 2 or “urban gangsta thugs” who are very very urban and therefore use the word “playa” approximately 1,0000000 times in each sentence. Japan is guilty of the same saturation (just their version of it), so enough the “American games suck” and “the Japanese are deeper storytellers” stuff. The Japanese don’t like American games for the same reason that the thousands of “hey the player roster is updated” and “OMG you can shoot people and listen to rap music,” EA games that are released every 15 seconds outsell all the other games in America. You people can have your cookie-cutter light-fest games that have some sort of arbitrary, trite reference to some lesser known religion or philosophy that you think is totally amazing. I’ll take boring and highly unoriginal American or European games like Stranger’s Wrath or Psychonauts over an innovative Japanese “you have to do the dishes by rubbing the DS screen while listening to J-Pop music as a little chibi anime character screeches at you and flashes like a strobe light from hell. And yes, I know what any one will say if anyone replies to this (aside from calling me a hypocrite or xenophobic or something): “Blah blah blah blah Resident Evil 4, blah blah Shadow of the Colossus blah blah blah Ico, blah blah Electroplankton, blah bloody BLAH.

Well obviously different types of games are popular in the two contrasting countries.

However, can you blame the Japanese? Most of the games that publishers in the US are putting out are sequels or based on hollywood or just utter crap. i tend to agree with Japanese tastes in games. Why people continue to put the crap I'm seeing on the store shelves is beyond me.

And like was hinted at in the article is publishers from the US are too egotistic or afraid or whatever to even have their games translated for the Japanese audience.

Meanwhile, Japanese developers see what crap we here in the US purchase and if I were them I wouldn't bother sending my games over here either. That's probably why we've missed out on some great titles and we'll never see them.

This is just another example of the decline of gaming. If it doesn't stop the video game industry will turn out just the like the movie industry. And I don't know if you've seen a movie lately, but they all suck.

For the record i dont think many AMERICANS knew wtf they were doing in morrowind eithier. As far as why American games dont do well, it seems to be a combination of poor localization and american companies dont understand how different the culture is. No japanese company would have "suck it down" as a tagline for an ad, but in the US we have that and worse. Its a much more macho, testorone driven market, while in japan a lot more causual and females play, just look at what the charactors in JRPG's look like, doesnt matter if its a male or female they look same except for 2 small bumps for the female. Imagine if Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell had long spikey hair and a high pitched voice. Instant turn-off, right? How can you snap necks with such a pansy? Yet in Japan thats de facto...have you seen what dante looks like?

I don't know. All I do know is that I prefer western games to Japanese games.

Seriously, Japanese developers need to drop the anime look and the way-overused cinemas. Not every western game uses the same style of art, so why does every Japanese game have to have the cookie-cutter art style?

I blame Karl Rove.

Note: Any comments that suggest the Japanese or any other nations are institutionally rascist will be deleted. It's tasteless and irrelevant to this topic.

Uh.

I think its something about Japanese people, but they love their anime-themed cartoony stuff. I mean, look at the games they play...

Also, I dont feel its right to say Americans prefer more sexual games. You know how people are getting wound up about the recent sexual american games? Just look at the huge selection of pure-sex games available in Japan. (http://www.somethingawful.com/hentai/) [nsfw]

Ive been to a japanese version of torrentspy, and have seen ads for japanese porn sites... heres a hint, they arent pictures of real people. So my working theory is that the japanese really love the cartoony manga-inspired art type... not just in games, but in everything.

In any case, you only get the best of Japanese games by the time they hit North America, so as a result, you claim that all japanese games are good. On the other hand, you are exposed to the crappy games made in america such as killzone or big mutha truckers.

OT: That girl's cute *impish*

I wanna go to Japan! *cries*

American games are testosterone based. Japanese games, for the most part, aren't.

It has something to do with the Japanese society, for some reason, they just don't like football and guns.

Football and guns are American things, japanese things are swordplay/medieval themes, anime and maybe soccer. This is illustrated in their fantasy fiction, and culture itself. While japan is pretty "tech-savvy", it doesn't have the lure for "blowing" shit up that the US has.

The Japanese invented the video game industry? In what alternate universe?

Obviously, the differences between Japanese and American culture doesn't begin and end with game preferences. Boiling down the fundmental differences between the two is way beyond the scope of a message board post. Let's not kid ourselves.

That said, I enjoy games from countries (like ALL of you do) and am quite thankful that the disparities between the two markets provides a wider range of options. The Japanese are great at bringing new, NOVEL, SOCIAL fun games to the table. Nobody outclasses American games in terms of action and destruction.

Again, be thankful that the two markets are different. Ultimately, we get to pick from the best of both.

Once again: video games were invented in the USA.

I think it's quite normal to have different tastes in different regions of the world. For example in Europe gamers can't relate to NASCAR as well as their North American friends. On the other hand nobody in NA cares that much for Rallye games (hugely popular in UK) or Formula One games.

Or take the "Survival Horror" games for example: Japanese games have more atmosphere and "angst", Western games have more guns and "shocking".

This is were blu-ray would be very useful for videogames: several languages.

To have the text, and especially the audio in several languages would require a lot of space, but that would make several american games appealing to the japanese if they were adequately translated.

Nice ronnie, I couldnt stop laughing when I read that. I think you might be on to something...