History of the Game Industry of Japan [Part 3]

At the end of the second part, I came close to the XXI century, telling about the first PlayStation and Nintendo 64. According to the logic of things, it was necessary to step over this unfortunate line called the 20th century and step into the marvelous new world, which, in addition to the struggle of Sony and Nintendo, surprisingly resembles the 1970s, only in a wrap of new technologies. I mean the growth of the mobile game sector and the release of Nintendo WII. But Sega, once again (this time the last one), made her Dreamcast ahead of time. Having entered the market back in 1998, she a little violated the harmony of the narrative.

But something to do, you need to first tell about it, all the more tell me something. 128-bit Sega Dreamcast, published in 1998, was the heiress of Sega Saturn. But the approach to its promotion (after the failure of the 1990s) on Japanese land was chosen completely different, and if more specifically, a clear repetition of the 1996 Sony sample strategy. The heart of the console was a powerful Sega Naomi Arcade System. At the time of his release, only DreamCast could be in full 3D.

Having more than a year of the handicap, the Sega took a risky step – I set the price of only $ 199, which was much lower than the cost, which means that the corporation traded at a loss. The only hope was the games. Given the complete absence of competitors, the launch was extremely successful, and so much so that the plants did not manage to produce new parties of the consoles.

The truth “success” this was only relative to other Sega consoles. 225 was sold in the first day.132 devices, and by February 1999 they sold about a million. (But not a small part of even this circulation, disappointed users returned to stores or exchanged for something from Sony). Some kind of, but success, the console owes the starting line of games, which struggled to provide the same spectrum of entertainment as Sony, and earlier Nintendo. The new Sonic was a bona fide halter under Mario, Soul Calibur – an analogue of Tekken, there were ports from the most popular arcade machines (Crazy Taxi and House of the Dead), well, everything is like that.

In short, SEGA first rejected her ambitions on the reconstruction of the Japanese market and walked in the same system with Nintendo and Sony. But there was one rebellious gesture, and the gesture became cult and revolutionary, and it was called Shenmue.

Yu Suzuki conceived the game as a trilogy, but did not justify his high confidence. He managed to release only 2 parts in 1999 and 2001. With, unheard of in the game industry, then a budget of $ 100 million, the game has fought off only by emotions. Around the world did not get and 1.5 million copies sold, and only 380 sold in Japan itself.000 copies. The sequel earned two times less. Shenmue, undoubtedly, was a breakthrough game in many aspects. On her account, the invention of QTE, a full open world with a dynamic change in the time of day, a new word in the presentation of the plot and, which is made according to all the laws of the Japanese narrative, which is built on a 4-acting model, against our 3-Actova. Everything is almost the same, only after 1 part called Ki (beginning), 2 – ShO (everyday life, naturalness, daily routine), and then the usual 3 – ten (confrontation, plot turn) and 4 – Ketsu (denouement). Everyone who played Shenmue, Yakuza and even MGS know what attention is paid to the element under number 2.

Such “successes” DreamCAST in general and Shenmue in particular are determined by two factors. Firstly, Sony had, trite, more good games, and the laws of the market were inexorable. In Japan, there was simply no sufficient audience for the financial success of the company. The second reason is much more comprehensive. It is worth starting with the fact that SEGA tried to squeeze into the market for the second time in a row, and the second time at the wrong time. Between the Nintendo audience and the Sony audience two big differences. The first began to form back in the mid-1970s, and with NES, it finally took shape, Sony entered the market almost 20 years later, when the new generation grew up to perceive new information, they took it into circulation. The Sega was the first time in the early 1990s, when the Nintendo average fan was 20-25 years old and the annual Mario and Zelds were quite satisfied with.

By the beginning of the 2000s, Sony has already proposed a new vector of development of the gaming industry, combining with a new approach all the achievements of past years, which allowed to bite a 35% of the console market in Japan. The world share of Sony in 1999 was 66%. Sega hastened for 5 years, and then the state’s new course to introduce individualistic consciousness gave the first fruits and the social structure has seriously changed the feudal rudiment with the ideology of subordination to the eldest and the clan structure of society (in the broadest sense of the word), making the Japanese more open to new ideas and beliefs.

In short, happiness did not last long, but after the release of Game Cube and, moreover, the PlayStation 2 Sales completely stood up. On January 31, 2001, the Sega announced that DreamCast production will be discontinued in March, while 50 out of 60 games in development will still be released. On May 23, 2000, SEGA Corporate President Syitiro Irimimandziri left his position, this led to almost catastrophic events: the company’s shares collapsed down by 41 %. And on the 26th of the same month, the company’s financial report was published over the past year – $ 398 million. loss.

And so the story of the company challenged Nintendo ended, but having made a number of mistakes critical when trying to master the native market of Japan. Since then, SEGA has only been developing games. Unless in 2006, new copies of the console entered the sale through Sega Direct of Japan. In fact, the prefixes were restored from the residues after the completion of production. Also, a 2D-player of Radilgy was supplied along with the prefix. And on March 8, 2007 the game Karous was released at DreamCast. This game is the last official game on DreamCast, it was released only in Japan.

Now let’s go back in 2000. Exactly On March 4 of this year, the most popular console after WII – PlayStation 2 was released, And in October she went to the USA and Canada. Although Defkin’s Defkins appeared back in 1998. And in July 2000 in Japan, the PlayStation 1-PS ONE has been published in Japan. By the same summer, sales of the original console reached 75 million, and the total circulation of games exceeded 630 million copies.

Only in the first day 980 were sold.000 devices, and by summer more than 3.5 million. Despite the success of the console in Japan (which owes the foundation laid for the first PlayStation). Possessing full compatibility with her games, most of the most popular franchises were continued, including Ace Combat, Armored Core, Final Fantasy, Hot Shots Golf, Metal Gear Solid, Parappa, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Suikoden, Tekken, Tekken, TekkenTwisted Metal and many others. The main market has already obviously became the United States, whose starting line was, three times larger and more diverse than the Japanese. The most important help for the growth of popularity PS2 was the opportunity to perform the duties of a conventional DVD player. It worked for all 300%. To Game Cube in 2001, Sony made a “gift” to a competitor by increasing its share in the market to 45%.

An interesting fact: If in 2001 the domestic market of Japan was the largest, then by 2005 the US market was at least 2 times more. This decline is associated with a decrease in the birth rate, because the main buyers were children and adolescents.

Starting from the sixth generation, Jrpg console began to give in to their position of the most popular genre. It is, but not so. After all, not Silent Hill and Resident Evil began to be sold by millions of circulations. This was primarily engaged in the series from Capcom – Monster Hunter (God Eater, Toukaiden and Soul Sacrifice from the same category). Despite the fact that everything that JRPG loves in Japan has been preserved and even multiplied in it. At first glance, the situation is paradoxical. The plot-oriented Final Fantasy and others have little in common, practically, the plot of the Monster Hunter, which, in fact, is the ideological forerunner of Dark Soul. The fact is that in JRPG the world and its background were almost always prescribed in detail. Many, these worlds and the atmosphere are awarded with epithets “Lampovo”, “Soul” and everything in this spirit. The emphasis in them is made on naturalness and, in a sense, unity with nature. However, for Japan, this is the basis of all their pseudo-religion-Shinto (“pseudo” because, it is rather a cult of beauty generated by a deification of nature). A variety of philosophy and ideology mixed in Shinto.

“Shinto endowed the Japanese with sensitivity to natural beauty, cleanliness and echoes of legends about their divine origin. Buddhism has painted Japanese art with his philosophy, strengthened the people’s innate stability to the vicissitudes of fate. Finally, Confucianism brought with it the idea that the basis of morality is fidelity understood as a duty of gratitude to senior and higher. “.

– Sakura and Oak, Ovchinnikov in. IN.
The so -called “Hunting Game”, cutting off the plot, paid great attention to nature in all its manifestations. At the same time, JRPG began to go to the science fiction worlds. At one time, so appeared the Novell Games, to which only the plot was left. Monster Hunter did not have pumping in the usual sense. The player was supposed to hunt monsters and from them to create a more powerful weapon and armor. But, at the same time, enemies were often stronger than a single player and for successful passage could be called a partner. This aspect played well on the Japanese sense of collectivism. On the other hand, the murder of huge monsters referred to the most ancient Japanese mythology, in which there was no moral aspect, but there were only stories about the creation of the world and its existence in old times. One of its inhabitants is the so -called “kaiju”, which literally translates as a monster (Godzilla is only one of them).

Closure on Japanese culture and created problems with the entry of many projects to the world market. This has not gone anywhere even now. For example, Monster Hunter Tri, having been released in the USA in 2010, sold 580 circulation.000 copies, while in Japan more than 1.000.000., And the version for Nintendo 3DS only in Japan has added another 2 to this number.000.000 copies. Despite the fact that the population of the United States is more than 2.5 times. 85% of all sales Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for 3DS came to Japan.

One of the most successful in the series is Final Fantasy X for PlayStation 2, whose sales were almost equal to both sides of the Pacific Ocean is proven by the fact that even at the beginning of the 21st century, Western developers could not offer stories of a comparable level. This was especially true for RPG. The fact that this was, first of all, a request for a high -quality plot confirms, although small, but a fall in JRPG sales in the West, as soon as local developers were able to compete.

A year later, in September 2001, the main competitor Sony – GameCube was released. Official scored “GCN” (“GameCube by Nintendo”). Very quickly Nintendo noticed the success of the PS2 as a DVD player and soon presented her “answer to Chamberlain”, releasing The Panasonic Q Gamecube with the DVD function of the player, which did not go beyond the borders of Japanese.

The epic of Nintendo with Game Cube failed on all fronts. From a purely economic point of view, the console simply did not have enough landmarks and support from small studios that could satisfy a variety of tastes. GTA: San Andreas, with a common circulation in almost 21.000.000 copies. True, the problem was only for the owners of the console in the USA and Europe. Only 400 sold in Japan.000 gta: sa, that is, 2%. This, by the way, is a normal situation when this or that game is not too popular outside of its native cultural space (for the Japanese, the discourage of the blacks from the ghetto is also uninteresting as we disassembled Yakuz with abundant singing in karaoke).

On the other hand, fans simply did not understand Nintendo. Of course, a pack of Mario and Zeld was present, but the presence of Resident Evil: Zero and the absence of other parts except the fourth and Veronica code simply introduced into a stupor. There was not only a plot connection but also gameplay. This indirectly worked in favor of the PlayStation, which were transplanted by those who liked and wanted to get acquainted with the franchise closer. Simply put, they repeated the Sega mistake, which tried to squeeze the market, luring the audience alien to them. The justification can be said that in this case, the obstacles on the way to to success were more economic than cultural, and were already created in the course of the development of the console. As of October 1, 2008, 21,454,325 copies of PS2 were sold in Japan, with a total circulation of 151.100.000 devices, while GameCube sold 21 around the world.74 million.

The most popular games on GameCube were Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX and Animal Crossing, and The LEGENDA of ZELDA: Twilight was the last large releasePrincess. Although she gained her fame only after porting to WII.

When they talk about the “console war”, then to Japan this phenomenon is applicable to the smallest degree. The point here is the very specific concept of “competition” in Japan. Most of the companies are like twin brothers and differ rather in status, and not in produced products. With the change of trends in society, the leader of the leader was transmitted to the one who felt better these changes and managed to saddle them. That is, Sony and Nintendo were aimed at different categories of the population and their interests crossed only twice. First time in the second half of the 90s, after launch PS1. But the then monopolist did not take a new competitor seriously and paid for it. The second was GameCube, then Nintendo tried to play back and return the whole generation of potential users, but it was too late.

More information about the features of Japanese business and the Japanese mentality can and should be read in the previous part.

Already Nintendo WII and all subsequent consoles were aimed at the audience different from Sony.

When launching WII, Nintendo went the other way. The console was released on December 2, 2006 (for the first time the Japanese release took place after the American). The popularization strategy returns us to the blessed 1980s, when Nintendo was on horseback. Then Nes, and later SNES, rose due to the unrestrained porting of hits from arcade machines, which were infinitely popular. So now the bet was on the audience of arcade machines. Only this time it was not only ports, but, in fact, the transfer of most slot machines to the living room. So the “code” name ‘Nintendo Revolution’ was clearly designed for a new audience, or rather for all segments of the population at once.

In the field of controllers, it was a real breakthrough. Despite the weak iron from the past generation, the opportunity without leaving home to feel the same emotions that are used to experiencing when going to “game centers” a child 20 years ago or now with a family. The potential audience was half the country’s population.

This was the last time Nintendo influenced the Japanese industry. Since WII was positioned as entertainment for the whole family and replacing the usual arcade machines, the interest in which began to weaken. And after its launch in 2006, their number continued to fall, but without much hope of revival.

Now in Japan over 19.000 arcade machines, which is approximately 3.94 devices per 100.000 people. Already 30% of players on machine guns over 60 years old. Among the largest game manufacturers are Namco Bandai, Capcom, Sega, Taito, Konami. Of course, they could not miss their chance to make money and expand the audience a little more.

WII anticipated or rather prompted Microsoft to create Xbox https://evolve888casino.co.uk/ One as a family console, Only the Americans developed all possible third -party services, unlike Nintendo, which nevertheless concentrated the main forces in games. Although some social aspect has already been implemented, albeit in its infancy. So -called Wii Channels. They were mainly focused on Nintendo products and its services, but there was also a news channel, Internet browser, and so on.

In the middle of the console’s life, Nintendo carefully tried to lure the hardcore audience, releasing Madworld in 2009, but the loud return failed. The total circulation barely crawled to 760.000 copies, despite the fact that the consoles themselves were sold more than 100.000.000.

Interesting fact: The name WII has several values. Firstly, it is consonant with the English “we”, that is, “we”. Which positions it as a family console. Two “I” can mean both two people nearby and console controllers – WII Remote and Nunchuk.

Sony from its PlayStation 3, published on November 11, 2006, naturally repeated the Nintendo path with its Nes and SNES. PS2 relied on the success of PS1, and PS3 on the success of PS2. The start of sales in Japan and around the world turned out to be problematic. This time the Japanese market got 80.000 consoles, and American – 400.000. Although at least 400 were also allocated for Japan.000 devices. This is nothing compared to the launch of PS2. And there was no special excitement. They still understood that it would be almost not realistic to buy at the start. Despite a number of problems. Firstly, there were few games at first (Ridge Racer 7, Genji: Days of the Blade, Mobile Suit Gundam: Target in Sight and Resistance: Fall of Man), and there is also a gamepad without vibration. And the first consoles overheated very quickly. But on the other hand, The console also lost the advanced disk format-Blu-ray. It is worth noting that the players are expensive,-HD-DVD costs about $ 1,500, and Blu-ray-from $ 1,500-3000. So PS3 was also the cheapest player of the new generation discs. 88 was implemented in the first 2 days.443 prefixes.

In 2007, the income of the Japanese gaming industry (including games and consoles) amounted to 2.9 trillion yen. The growth was provided at the expense of exports, primarily in the USA and Europe, and this is almost 80%. The first place here was taken by WII.

Microsoft decided to repeat the feat of Sega and entered the market with its Xbox 360 a year before its competitors. This gave a serious advantage in the United States, which were the main market. In addition, the position in their homeland was so strong enough. Japan was rather just probing the market. T -shirts here “amazed” with their creative abilities. Without hesitation, they just bought several eminent developers, including the creator of Final Fantasy – Hironobu Sakaguti, and they punished to develop anything good. The exclusives of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey turned out to be this good. They are united by modest financial success both in the United States and Japan.

In addition to the “confrontation” Sony and Nintendo, which essentially lasted only a couple of years, and there was another sector of the gaming industry – a mobile precisely. During the 90s, mobile phones began to actively spread. In 1993 there were 2 million of them, in 1995 – 10 million, in 2000 – about 50 million. Then the youth was characterized by a situation in which a high school student with a gourboa returning from school. Moreover, those that went in the last rows were talking with the first on mobile phones.

“Without my mobile phone, I can’t live a day now. I get to the gymnasium for more than an hour and I can chat with my friends while I’m going. And most importantly, acquaintances can call in the evenings right in my room. They do not have to ask my parents to call me to the tube, explain who and what he wants to talk about with me … “

– The eighth grader of Naomi
To a large extent explained by the characteristics of the Japanese nature. On the one hand, the lifestyle of the Japanese, their traditional morality makes a person be shy, how to wear a mask. And on the other hand, a feeling of loneliness, a thirst for communication, the desire to feel involvement in a certain circle of people. In 2000, there were 15 million Internet users in Japan. By 2005, more than 70 million Japanese have mobile phones with direct Internet access.

Already in the early 2000s, they began to become not only a means of communication, but also with game platforms. The path to the heart and user’s wallet was chosen the most reliable – porting classics from arcade machines. Among the manufacturers of telephones in the Japanese market were all the main world players: from Sony to Siemens and Nokia with its legendary N-Gage (it was far from the only phone oriented for games). Very quickly the market began to fill in dozens of various models. All that was happening was very reminiscent of the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, when 125 consoles of surprisingly similar to each other from a heap of various manufacturers came out in a short period.

But, the situation of the early 2000s was qualitatively different. Firstly, the crisis of the 1990s strongly worsened small manufacturers who love to tonsure coupons with minimal investments (in 2008, about the same thing happened when many medium-sized studios closed). Secondly, the market was well studied and competition was held at an adequate level, without dashing attempts to drown a competitor. By 2005, when mobile Internet became a everyday phenomenon Companies manufacturers of software and games took up the same thing as manufacturers of phones a couple of years ago – namely, the release of hundreds and hundreds of games for all ages and tastes. Among the most popular companies of the publishers-developers Mixi, Gree, Dena, Yahoo Japan, Mobage, Tencent, Docomo. With these and many other companies, such giants of the console market as Konami, Capcom, Namco Bandai, etc. collaborate.D.

The mobile boom in Japan was in 2003, in the USA and Europe it was late for a year and a half.

In this context, the appearance of PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS in 2004 does not look like such a know-how. But the course in the current environment was more than successful, but in the USA and Europe it was really perceived as a single shaft of new technologies. If there hardcore gamers took it with enthusiasm, but restrained, then it looked like a real revolution with us. In Japan, all the 200 thousandth circulation PSP was sold in two days available at the time of launch. For the first month, Nintendo DS dispersed of circulation 1.45 million.

A few years later, after the spread of the Internet and smartphones based on Android and iOS, there was a stable environment in the person of the AppStore and Google Play. They also acted as a platform for many independent developers.

According to the Appannie report, in October 2014, the volume of the Japanese IPhone and smartphones market for Android, being the largest in the world, exceeded the US market by 1.33 times. If in 2011 it was estimated at approximately 300 billion. Ian (according to other sources, he already in 2010 amounted to 318 billion. yen), then in 2014 the volume of this market exceeded 700 billion. Ian.

According to Kadokawa Enterbrain – part -time publisher Famitsu magazine, in 2014, the number of smartphones games increased to 28.610.000 people, exceeding the number of users of games for home devices – 27.830.000. Games for smartphones have become the central component of the Japanese game market.

Such a leap is many familiar with the Angry Birds phenomenon. When one single game becomes viral and creates the face of the market. And the face is attractive to the majority. In the case of Japan, such a game in 2012 was Puzzle & Dragons, from Gungho Online Entertainment, Inc. The task of the game is to solve puzzles, to move farther down the maze of caves and defeat hostile monsters. By January 2015, the number of downloads exceeded 33 million.

From the very entering the market, it is invariably on leading positions in the rating of game sales of the AppStore. In the consolidated report of Gungho for the financial year, which ended in December 2014, the sales volume was recorded at 173 billion. yen, and the operating profit amounted to 94 billion. 200 million. Yen, for the third year in a row, updating the absolute record of the success of the company’s business. Perhaps her success most clearly indicates how firmly the games settled in the smartphones of Japanese users, regardless of the floor of the device holder.

To date, only more than three hundred thousand games have already been released for the iPhone. The main component of success is still simplicity and accessibility. However, it is also important that most games are conditionally free, and the company’s profit is obtained due to microtransactions. The practice of “purchases-scurries” characteristic of the Japanese market (when purchases contain particularly rare or valuable items distributed randomly) led to a feature that supports the increase in market volume in this country. This is a tracing paper from Japanese retail trade. In toys, supermarkets and other places of trade, trading machines are often installed, where a buyer can purchase a capsule with a “surprise” capsule for small coins, randomly dropping from a box with a large number of similar items.

In the situation, when smartphones games are increasingly strong positions, it is increasingly difficult manufacturers of home video games. The difficult situation in which Nintendo is located is especially noticeable. On January 28, she was forced to revise in the direction of decreasing the forecast of sales for her consolidated financial report for 2014 financial year from 590 to 550 billion. Ian.

According to June Takeuchi, Lost Planet 2 and Resident Evil 5 producer, the Japanese game industry dies, and if it does not begin to develop in the near future, it will not have the future.

“The Japanese game industry is now standing on the spot. If he does not begin to move on, I do not believe that he will have any chances. I mean innovations, some interesting finds that can compete with Europe. And you need to start working on this as soon as possible “ – claims June.

In the same way, the chairman of Cesa and the President of Square Enix Vada spoke on the Tokyo Game Show 2008. And here is the creator of the Metal Gear series Hideo Kojima believes that the Japanese Games creators are currently inferior to the Western. In fact, they “lose” the battle, which has been conducted for a long time.

“Everything in the gaming industry is quite like. But the West is more motivated. The younger generation of Japanese developers loses. Designers and future designers in the West have a goal, ambition and ability to embody your dream into reality. This approach is not part of Japanese technology and culture, we suffer from a lack of motivation. Later I came to the conclusion that work with purposeful foreigners (no matter where they are) is the only way to move forward. I am tired of messing up with people who have no passion for my profession. “.

– Hideo Kajima
This, by the way, is far from the first negative statement about the Japanese gaming industry. So, last year’s Tokyo Game Show, Capcom producer Kage Inafuna said: “Japan was blown away. I look at the stands and understand this “.
In a conversation with Edge, Boss Valhalla Games Studios, Tomonob Itagaki joined Cage Inafun in the statement that the Japanese game industry is gradually dying.

You cannot disagree with them. But Japan itself dies, and in the literal sense. Game industry is only one of the manifestations of this process.

The notorious feature of the country of the rising sun is that its citizens remain “workaholics” and at old age. 75% of pensioners aged 60–65 years continue to work. (In the USA, a similar indicator is 54%, in Germany – 29%.). While the birth rate is falling, and the number of childless steam is selected by 50%. Back in 2005, the number of elderly people over 65 for the first time exceeded the number of children under 15 years old. Women of childbearing age even then had an average of 1.4 children. Whereas for normal reproduction, this indicator should be not lower than 2.2.

Three quarters of the elderly couples live separately from children and grandchildren, and by the number of lonely old people, Japan has already caught up with England where individualism was brought to the logical end, which Margaret Thatcher formulated in its phrase “Society does not exist, there is only men and women” about the fact that there is still family, she did not say immediately.

According to the report Enterbrain, Inc. For 2012, in the console market 36% of players under the age of 18, 28% aged 18 to 35, and another 36% over 35 years old. Of these, guys are 56%, but it is interesting that among women the audience prevails in the age of 50 years. True, for the most part it is a game for portable DS type BRINE TRAINING (2005) and Nintendogs (2005).

People aged 30 to 50 years, who played on home consoles in childhood, became increasingly difficult to cut time with age to play plenty, and they moved away from the world of electronic games. Nintendo DS was designed for this audience. In 2014, players over 35 years old already became 41%. The trend is obvious and is very correlated with the growth of the population over 65, which is already 23.5%, from the total 127 million people against 21% in 2005.

The Association “Second Life” is very popular in Japan. There are school dancing schools, mugs of tea ceremony and ikebana, foreign language courses.

An elderly woman in a nursing home from the suburbs Tokyo plays arcade machines. (Photo of February 7, 2014)

“The country is now fighting not only with the deepest decline after the war, but also with the problems generated by the phenomenon, which we call“ globalization ”.”

– Patrick Smith. Japan is a modern interpretation.
The trend is quite unambiguous and it is directly related to the demographic situation in the country. The turning point can be called 2005 – 2006. It was then that a boom in mobile phones occurred, and soon smartphones on iOS and Android. But then PSP and Nintendo DS came out. They had to attract a new audience to the main consoles, but only tore it away from them, giving a worthy alternative to the occupied layer of the population.

The largest Japanese game exhibition is Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2012 gathered the largest number of projects under its roof. Here is only the ratio of mobile projects and console has shifted radically. In 2010 there were 423 console games and 141 mobiles. In 2012, out of 507 games for consoles, it was 210. In the same 2012, the income from the mobile market amounted to $ 3 billion. out of $ 9.8 billion. In 2013, the video game market amounted to $ 10.8 billion., half of which fell on mobile games and the second half for home consoles, PC and console. In 2014, the mobile market has already amounted to $ 6.5 billion.

The rise in the development of development and the new dynamically developing mobile market destroyed the popular eastern series. Fatal Frame 4 came out only on WII. Another Forbidden Sireniscent as a loaded game in PS Store. New Breath of Fire and Grandia is not visible.Dragon Quest retreated to Wii and DS. It came to the point that companies with money are slowly “fleeing the ship” – the largest Japanese publishers transfer the production of games to the USA and Europe. The last Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was collected by the Spaniards. New Silent Hill: Download Czechs.

In 2011, an earthquake occurred in Japan. In Tokyo, next to which the catastrophe took place, there are offices of Konami and Square Enix, Atlus and Namco Bandai, Capcom and Sega. Shares of the latter, after shocks, fell by 13.5 percent. Square Enix at 6.4%, Namco Bandai for 6.2%. The Japanese immediately turned off the serverfinal fantasy XIV and laid down the sequel to Yakuza. According to the report published on the Gamasutra portal, almost half of the Japanese video games developers finished the 2011 financial year with losses.

Nintendo for the first time in its history incurred losses. The results were made public in the report for 2011 financial year. For the period from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, the company’s losses amounted to $ 531.1 million. For the same period from 2010 to 2011, Nintendo’s profit was over $ 1 billion. According to the official message, such unsatisfactory indicators are associated with high forecasts, which were based on high indicators of sales of the portable console Nintendo 3DS.

The largest Gree stand for TGS. As you can see, there are not a lot of people, which characterizes their audience as casuals that are far from the tricks of the industry.

Indie games Last hope for Japanese creators. After all, not just Sony from their PS4 make a huge bet on this industry sector.

The border between indie, in our understanding, and the so -called “Doujin” is very blurry. But there are still noticeable differences. The first is a relatively new phenomenon and is popular mainly in the West, and on the other, Doujin, which have remained in the shadow since the 1970s.Indi was an answer to the oversaturation of the AAA market with projects and returning to small and cozy games developed by small studios, which over the past 15 years have practically disappeared. While Doujin was positioned precisely by amateur projects, which are created from love for art and naked enthusiasm. What makes them closer to the term “fandom”. Doujin spread among fans and as a rule with a tiny circulation, without the expectations of mega-entered. According to data for 2010, only 10% of Doujin developers earned more than 20’000 yen (~ $ 2’000) Sell your creations on Comiket. There are few such games have received recognition of the general public. Higurashi, Corpse Party, Yatagarasu more exceptions than the rule.

Japanese “Indi” unfolded only with the advent of Kickstarter. Since the necessary, for example, 90.000.000 yen ($ 900’000) relying only on Japanese services to collect about 5-10% of the required amount.

The first part of Rockman (we know as Megaman) was developed in 4 months with a team of 6 people. Crozo, most of the games of the 1980s were thereby indie. The publisher did not particularly invest and, accordingly, did not risk anything. The game could easily be canceled and then resurrected. And old people like Inafune, two -thirds of his career worked on this principle. The only serious source of pressure was the expectations of players of a good game. Everything fundamentally changed 10 years ago, when companies when budgets and restrictions on developers began to impose much more. Many left the industry without wanting to put up with pressure not only from players but also investors. Others took it as given. Kickstarter for those and others made it possible to return to development under pressure only players. Even if you come to a large company and ask for only $ 1-2 million of such freedom of action will no longer and the capital will vigilantly monitor the creative process.

Western games have never been popular in Japan, it became even more distinct with the development of such purely American genres as FPS and TPS. Shohei Yoshida believes that “most Japanese publishers prefer not to imitate foreign hits, but to create something culturally close and what they can do”. But this statement is not true for everyone. Namely, for those whose budgets are measured by millions, for example: the Souls and Blood Borne series from from Software. On the one hand, classical Japanese mechanics and an approach to gameplay were transferred to us, familiar to us, European scenery. Otherwise, it might not pay off. So, slowly but true Japanese influence is reduced.

If 15-20 years ago 8 or 9 out of 10 best-selling games were Japanese, now, approximately, not a single. If you look already at the top 50, then there will probably be 2 or 3 games from Nintendo, but that’s perhaps that’s all. Most players are well oriented in the Japanese games of the 80-90s, but he knows little about modern Japanese games. With the exception of those that were originally developed with an sight to the western market of the Resident Evil, MGS, LOST PLANET and others.

If earlier Western developers studied with the Japanese, now the situation has changed to the diametrically opposite. The Japanese better successfully master and realize their ideas as part of a lack of memory and speed, even a small number of available colors. They could work 24 hours a day, sleep in the office and not wash. Now such a “luxury” in the past. When creating the same Mega Man, the developers simply watched available resources and thought how to work within this framework. At the same time, in the West, developers for each new technology began to look very quickly as at their work limiting their work. This is the problem that anticipated the unpreparedness of Japanese developers to move forward and continued to think with categories of the previous generation. This is clearly seen in the example of such a Japanese series of games as Yakuza – no matter how the scriptwriters sophisticated, the gameplay wanders from the unit to the part without changes, and the presentation of the plot with a bunch of not voiced text is still on the spot.

All this led to a heavy start PlayStation 4. After launch in February 2014, only 410 were sold in three weeks.000 consoles, although the start of a successful one would be given, 322.083 consoles were sold in Japan in Japan. This is not comparable with, almost a million PlayStation 2 in the first day. I do not compare with PlayStation 3, because there the main problems were for purely technical reasons. This is even worse than Nintendo Wii U, with her 558.000 for the same period after launch. Sony from the very beginning perfectly understood the prospects of her native market and the situation on it.

Interesting fact: For the first time in history, the Japanese console went out in Japan not only after the American release, but in general, at the last turn. It was published in the United States on November 15, 2013, in Russia on November 28, in Ukraine on February 21 and only the next day in Japan.

And Wii U is generally a sad story. From the very beginning, neither the sexual nor age orientation of the console was clear. The success of Nintendo has always been built on a clear allocation of a priority audience. And in all cases before that this audience was. First, children, then teenagers, adolescents and adults, entire families, adult busy people (loyal fans from the 80s). And now the categories of potential customers are over. The early start did not help, as much as two years earlier. He rather hurt, because then PS3 was experiencing the peak of its popularity and the Xbox 360 did not lag behind. The need for such a “NEXT GEN” was completely absent, like NEXT GEN itself was absent in a new console.

The technology of two screens was certainly original, but easily replenished with other manufacturers with minimal tools (a simple ligament of a home console and smartphone or PS4 + PS: Vita). Even the enriching touch of Mario did not help. For example, Mario Kart 8 in Japan, with a creak, exceeded the mark of a million copies sold. The potential audience was enough of the past generation or Nintendo DS. With exclusives, too, did not set. In addition to the fact that there were almost no. Their quality turned out to be very so -so. For 3 years, the console sold 9.9 million times around the world.

Now the Japanese are more important than Puzzle & Dragons, which brings $ 4 million daily only in Japan. And a quarter of the entire population of the country has already downloaded it. Mobile games began to squeeze out large projects from the social environment. This has already happened with television. Advertising companies for promoting smartphones began to displace console projects from television. There were only portable projects, such as God Eater 2 for PS Vita or other Pocemon type 3DS projects. In this regard, the Japanese are well done, to rebuild public opinion under new realities very quickly and effectively. The drying of the console market is served exclusively as the logical development of the industry in a strictly evolutionary way.

Just a delightful example of a state of promoted and oriented to the domestic market of large projects is the Final Fantasy XV. Everything is “beautiful” in it. To begin with, it was announced in 2006.

Now the developers gave the opportunity to try a tiny piece of game. Given the standard scale of the games of the series-this was much less than a demo version, a maximum of a demo of entry. But the alpha test is very similar. Immediately after its release, Square Enix organized a worldwide survey. The topic is obvious – “Well, tell me how our game?”. Further – more. The head of the project-Khadzhim Tabata released an 84-minute video in which he voiced the results of the survey by the regions for a long time and in detail. And under the curtain announced that there would be a demo version 2.0, several important innovations will be added in it, about which again they will persistently collect reviews of fans. You need to understand that the following steps will be requests to gild the QIWI wallet and access to early access.

Previously, such creeps from such large companies were not noticed. Final Fantasy, of course, was different in quality, but against the backdrop of competitors, the level of performance and sales remained, invariably, high. One could safely release the next part with confidence in multimillion -dollar sales. Now they are more reminiscent of partisans in the rear of the enemy, whose step should be honed and deadly. In the main market, now there are simply not enough buyers. All fucked smartphones, from here these preludes-due to uncertainty in success. Be that as it may, the step is quite logical. Stagnation of the series began not today and not yesterday, but about 10 years ago.

Nintendo has problems from the same category, only in this case to release a new console in parts – unlikely practice. It’s not even in the Japanese market, but in the world. If they have already lost America and Europe, then over time, the Japanese market can cling to the release of Mario and Zeld for mobile phones or in PSN. This is not such an unreal situation. About 15 years ago, people also did not expect to see the next Sonic on Nintendo consoles.

From the beginning the problem did not look threatening, but from the perspective of today we can confidently say that therapeutic treatment is very late and now the corporations are in a very narrow corridor. Alas, everyone prefers to walk in the ranks. Those who have a strong position in the western market. The main problems are waiting, or already overtook the companies oriented to Japan. They will have to either adapt or re -profile. Well, or to close as a last resort. Small studios with a staff of 5-10 people will affect this to a lesser extent.

But large companies and corporations with capitalization of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars will feel the problem not only in the creative process, but also at the level of resource management. Additional difficulties are possible if the company shares are traded on the exchange. After all, speculators rule and in case of danger for their investments, the shares will be quickly thrown away, and their price will also fall.

One such swift outflow of investment can leave the company for the facet of survival. For example, in the USA, investors were disappointed in the prospects of Kodak, and there is no more with us. When the creditors demanded the money invested, Kodak has nothing left but to sell his assets and patents. From the once largest manufacturer of the photo and video technician Eastman Kodak Company has turned into a fairly mediocre packaging manufacturer. In essence, the exchange value reflects not the real price of all capacities and property of the company, but only the amount of expectations of speculators. Recently, by the way, Apple is stormed, simply because the profit was lower than the expected.

Summing up, it can be argued that the Japanese games of the “aaa” class are dying out (I think it’s not worth talking about the fate of Silent Hills). However, not everything is so sad. Firstly, the American and European industries stepped far ahead, and can safely take a relay wand in their hands. Secondly, most developers of those known to us will break through to the West and will create in the usual style, but their specifics. Shinji Mikami, Hideo Kajima worked with Guillermo Del Toro, From Software 100% for the Western audience try. In general, we will not disappear.