@lordlors said:
The main reason why Japan has become irrelevant today is because they are not into PC gaming. These are what they lacked by ditching the PC platform.
1. Game Engines - In Japan, the use of engines like Unreal, Unity, etc. is fairly recent. What they usually do is create a game engine for every game. As technology advanced, using game engines like Unreal and Unity has become more cost efficient. But as they turn to these engines, they are already very behind in the technological know-how as the West have been using these for a long time and they aren't adept at English.
2. Mods and map editors - These tools are the hallmarks of PC gaming. It is how MOBA was born and so is Counter Strike. The Japanese aren't exposed to these tools because they do not game on PC hence their lack of knowledge of using such tools. And without these freely available tools, there's no creation of content. Again, the inability to understand English is going to make it harder for them without any attempt of localization.
3. Digital Distribution - It is because of this format that indie games became widespread and with it the desire to create games independently. In Japan, DD is unpopular. They are stuck in the past with the traditional publisher-developer relationship. Indie games from the West have to be published over there. Strange, considering the very definition of indie is being independent (lack of publisher).
So you see? It is PC gaming that is at the forefront of the industry. It is where the ripples of change start. Consoles this gen are just PC wannabees.
1. Japan has been recycling game engines for decades. For example, Sega recycled the Super Scaler and Virtua engines for countless arcade games, and Nintendo did the same with the Super Mario Bros engine, Capcom with the Final Fight and Resident Evil engines, Squaresoft with the Final Fantasy VII engine, etc. The use of first-party, in-house engines has always been common practice in the Japanese game industry. What was less common among leading developers is the use of third-party engines. However, it was common to see engines from major developers being adopted by different developers, like with the Namco Galaxian and Sega Super Scaler engines in the arcades. And on Japanese home computers (PC-88, PC-98, MSX, X1, X68000, FM-7, FM Towns, etc.), it was common to see commercial third-party engines for RPG's, adventures, visual novels, and strategy games, with the RPG Maker series in particular still used by indie 2D RPG developers around the world to this day.
2. Japanese home computers (PC-88, PC-98, MSX, X1, X68000, FM-7, FM Towns, etc.) frequently had mods and map editors in the 8-bit and 16-bit days, when there was a thriving Japanese computer game industry, something most Western gamers are unaware of. However, the Japanese computer game industry eventually declined after the 16-bit era. With the 90's Japan recession, and local Japanese computers eventually losing out to IBM/WIndows-based PC imports, most Japanese computer game developers shifted to the the thriving console industry, so the use of third-party engines and mods/editors eventually became restricted to just "doujin" indie developers.
3. Not true. Japanese indie "doujin" developers have been using digital distribution for decades. However, only a small percentage of them ever get translated/localized in English, so it's no surprise that most Western gamers are unaware of the Japanese indie gaming scene. If anything, Japan probably has the biggest online indie gaming scene, considering how it has the world's largest mobile game market, where the majority of indie developers release their games.
And finally, console gaming is almost dead in Japan, so it's curious how you equate Japan with console gaming. This may have been true a decade ago, but certainly not today. It is mainly arcades, mobiles and handhelds that dominate Japan, not consoles or PC.
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