Inafune: Japanese games are dead
Keiji Inafune, who is currently working on Dead Rising 2 reckons the Japanese market is starting to stagnate.
"When I looked around all the different games at the TGS event floor, I said, 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished," Inafune said, according to Destructoid.
"But, just so you all don't think that the game industry is finished, Capcom is doing our best. I wanted to [have] this party and show you there are still some kickass games out there coming from Japan."
Inafune is best known as a major collaborator in the Mega Man series, as well as a producer on the Dead Rising games, among others. He's also long-held that the Japanese market is falling behind the times and needs to adopt a more global strategy to survive in the modern games industry.
"Five years ago Capcom was at the very bottom of the videogame industry and it was left up to me to think about how we were going to get ourselves out of this pit," Inafune said at a Capcom press event last year, captured by Eurogamer.
"At the time I realised one of the key words we had to focus on was 'globalisation' and being able to sell our games on a global scale - not just Japan - was going to be one of the things to help us out of this pit."
Is the Japanese games market falling behind? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyCredit to Capcom for supporting the PC market now and in the future with their games like DMC4, RE5 and Street Fighter IV. They are a company I have a lot of respect for, in particular Keiji Inafune.
I personally hate the japanese logic they put on mangas and games... 300 characters to a spit depth plot just to make it look complicate. I am sorry manga lovers, but they are all full of "manga-like" cliches. The last manga that was really cool was AKIRA. Back in the early 90's
Generalized IMO examples
-WoW- Started out complex, now it's simple
-FO series- Started out complex, now it's simple
-FPSs- Auto heal vs med packs. (Semi)Realistic damage vs "Arcade" damage. Cookie cutter designs (Lets all use the U3 engine and change nothing).
-Metal Gear series- Slowly went from hard to easy over time.
-Resident Evil 5- Puzzles removed, weak story, action shooter not survival horror.
List goes on
Is the Japanese industry dead? Japan (No), USA (Yes [RPGs, complex/thinkers]), UK (You tell me) :)
And yeah anime and manga is pretty much mostly cliche, but so are American cartoons.
Pocoyo ftw!!
It is, but that could be the problem...lol
+1.... million!!!!
Would be nice if it was on the PC also. Never owned any sort of Greystation so I missed out on some of the later X games. I wonder if they could pull off a Megaman RPG/FPS? Probably not given the failure of some of the other attempts at broadening the series.
Also, have you tried Megaman ZX on the DS? It's more RPG and a bit kiddy in places, but does bring back some of the great things from the series with side-scrolling goodness.
There are still a select few games coming out of Japan such as the last guardian which I think look excellent but they're so rare I think he's fundamentally right. I wonder if globalisation is really the answer though.
Yes, I think much the same.
Also, what do you characterise as a japanese game? a game that was made by a japanese company? because if so i have to disagree with you, there are a lot of fantastic games by japanese companies.
Deathnote turns into a convoluted mess much like most JRPG storylines by trying much too hard to be clever. Something similar I enjoyed a lot more was Code Geass. It's more action orientated, but I find a convoluted show goes down a lot easier if it isn't taking itself seriously.
On topic, name some games made by Japanese companies which you consider to be fantastic. The condition is it cant be first party Nintendo and it can't be JRPG unless it actually innovates on that decades old formula.
I admit the condition is slightly unfair, I would argue that all gaming is stagnating. If you take away Valve, Relic and Blizzard (my idea of PC's first party), everything is just a spiritual successor to a popular game. And I would rather play the latest Final Fantasy than (Bio)Shock game, as they at least don't regress in their depth.