Japan Game Industry Resurgence

Japanese video games have had an amazing run over the last 20 years. They were major contributors to the early 90s big boom of unforgettable video game characters. Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, Samus, Kirby, and Link top the list as some of the most beloved. Final Fantasy, Pokémon, Resident Evil, Metal Gear, and Kingdom Hearts were the biggest names in gaming towards the end of the 1990s. Japanese video games and its characters held our hearts and invaded Western shores with a brunt force that hasn’t been seen before. Recently there has been a decline in the development and sales of Japanese gaming products. http://goo.gl/VZh76E

This is in part has to do with the passing console generations. In 1994 Sony introduced the Playstation; a video game console that was the beginning of a revolution that occurred in the gaming industry. It was a console that enabled Japanese developers to move over from the dominated market of arcade games to reach the home consumer market. It had the advanced graphics and availability in enough homes to make it profitable to produce games for. Thus you saw a plethora of games that were only available on PSOne that were created by Japanese developers offering new and exciting gameplay experiences not available on other consoles at the time.

With the introduction of Playstation 2 Sony had solidified itself as a major player in the gaming market and continued to grow and expand its Japanese developer pool. By then the developers had begun making games localized and only releasing them in Japanese markets. This made the games even more exclusive and US consumers did whatever they had to do to get their hands on these games even resorting to buying Japanese PS2’s just to play those games.

By 2002 the Japanese the Japanese video game market made up 50% of the global market. Japan Firmly had the world in its palm then. By 2006 Sony released PS3, but they had a fairly poor launch. They released a year later than its competitor and had an expensive price point due to the technology inside. Basically a very rocky start and because of this the Xbox 360 had a strong foothold on the industry. Since the Xbox was created by and American company, Microsoft, you saw more and more western developers develop titles that didn’t appeal to a Japanese consumer base.

Today Japanese dev’s hold about 10% of the global market. With the release of the PS4 and Xbox One they are beginning to have faith in western consumers again because now they will be on an even playing field with their competitors in terms of technology in the consoles themselves and marketability of new IP. Japan game development has a bright future aheadhttp://goo.gl/lz3Zjx