Is the Japanese Gaming Industry on a decline?

[The Nightmonkey]

My friend and I were discussing this recently. We have both noticed that Japanese Game Developers aren't the juggernauts that they use to be and they seem to be less of them as well. It's also noticeable in the games that they have been releasing recently.

For example, Capcom doesn't seem to innovate anymore and seem pretty content on milking every single penny they can get from Street Fighter by releasing a new version of the game every few months with only minimal additions. Konami doesn't make anything but MGS games and the one they released, Rising was...forgettable in my opinion. Square Enix really lost me with the Final Fantasy XIII. I don't know if they were aiming that game towards the teenager demographic but I couldn't relate to any of the characters at all being a 27 year old.

I think the main reasons for the decline of the Japanese Gaming industry is due to two reasons: lack of innovation and market size. Japan is just too small of a market and if you want to make money, you have to make your games that appeal to a North American audience.

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this though.

 

[Esperahol]

I think you are stuck in a rather narrow narrative of a perspective - see you think that the North American audience is what they should be investing in, but there is Europe which is huge, there is the South Pacific, for goodness sake there's South Korea which is like a Mecca of gaming... So yeah. I mean you point to Capcom, Konami and Square Enix as having only one series they focus on - but I can think of at least four games from each of them in the last couple of years right now. I think you're just looking at the most "popular" games versus "looking through the catalog" as it were.

That said the biggest thing you're forgetting is that very recently Japan went through a major disaster - a serious earthquake compounded by a huge tsunami and then the nuclear plant disaster. I mean that's not something you just get over and it has had major effects on all the companies based in Japan so yeah.

 

[BlackSolaris]

It has diminished, yes, but i think a lot of great things came out of them recently (Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is my personal GOTY, not even Grand Theft Auto V can take that away from it), so i guess the industry is getting too saturated with western games, and that makes the eastern market getting slower because they can't compete at their rhythm like they used to.

 

[corporatenoun]

They aren't used to this level of competition. The Wii was able to shift gears dramatically and almost single-handedly gobbled up a whole demographic, but now, it looks like global rivals are following suit. Also, I do believe the Fukushima disaster has hindered output from every major industry, gaming not excluded. 2014 will be a great year for the WiiU I believe.

 

[wowtgp]

Of course it is on decline right now. There are several reasons of it. The main factor behind the decline is that they can't match up to he quality and budget of western games.

 

[The Nightmonkey]

Thanks for the input. You are correct in that the tsunami and fukushima disaster greatly set them back.
However, as other posters have mentioned, the competition has stepped up too. Maybe they'll be playing catchup for the next few years?

 

[DrRipley]

Great theories in this thread, I found them all very interesting, and I think I'd agree with having to compete with a Western budget most of all, it's just not practical for Japan to have to compete with that. I'd also like to suggest the possibility that they may just have shifted to making games for their own audience instead, kind of like how anime is mainly for Japanese people primarily. I think it's mostly how they have done things ever since, and we've just been lucky enough that some translated well internationally.

 

[RammsteinGamer]

I think it is probably due to the fact top Japanese companies keep making some bad decisions. Here is a few I noticed.
-Capcom (disc locked DLC and killing Megaman. Gives IPs to western devs)
-Square Enix (Making bad Final Fantasy games like MMOs which don't sell well in Japan. And giving games to western devs)
-Nintendo (Not working well with third party companies and having a poor eShop.)
-Sega (ignoring any IP that isn't Sonic)
-Atlus (Bankrupt and sold to Sega (See Sega's issue above.)

Those are only a few companies. Konami seems to be doing okay but for most major companies thats it.