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American Games in Japan: The Other Side

We already know how well Japanese video games and consoles have faired in the U.S., but how do American games fair when they are sold in Japan? If we are to follow through with the idea of Japan being "the Hollywood of video games," it is helpful to think of the position of foreign games in Japan as being similar to the position of foreign movies in America. Japan has a large video game market of its own, leaving little room for non-Japanese games and creating a market of consumers that has become accustomed to the local games of their country. Japan doesn't have the long history of assimilating foreign games that the U.S. does; Japanese games established themselves firmly in Japan with the advent of the Famicom when there was no competition from outside markets at all, and that is why American games in Japan don't share the same special position that Japanese games occupy in America.

American hardware developers like Atari never marketed any of their systems in Japan. The Japanese market is constantly saturated by its own domestic systems, offering no window for an American system to step in. Microsoft is the first company to make an attempt on the Japanese market with their Xbox system; and they have done so with limited results which were compounded by early hardware defects that resulted in a recall.¹ The recall has been the least of their problems though. With the limited amount of support they have received from Japanese game developers,² the Xbox is lacking popular Japanese titles and franchises which most gamers demand. In a story printed in The Los Angeles Times last January, a Japanese game player was quoted as saying, "I'm not interested in Xbox. It just doesn't have any games I want to play. I'll stick with PlayStation 2, which has sequels of the games I've been playing a long time."³ Despite these disheartening results so far, Microsoft has already made great progress by making their Xbox present in Japan at all, no matter how small its presence may be. This may open future doors for Microsoft and other American hardware developers.

Japanese cover for "Crash Bandicoot"

American-developed games for Japanese consoles have also faced similar problems in Japan. The Japanese game market is saturated with domestic titles, and there is very little extra market share for American titles. Japanese game genres have become highly developed and specialized to meet the needs of local taste so that there is no place for games which do not fit into the established Japanese set of genres.⁴ Whereas Japanese genres like the Japanese RPG have become an established genre in the American market, no genre of American games has achieved this sort of status in the Japanese console market on any significant scale. There are very few cases in which an American game has been successful in Japan. "Crash Bandicoot" was one of the very first American games to become a bestseller in Japan, and that was in 1997. The number of American games that are published at all in the Japanese console market is minor.

If there is any sector of the Japanese gaming market where the U.S. has made a large impact, it is the PC game market. PC ownership in Japan has traditionally been lower than in the U.S. so that the PC game market in Japan has long been regarded as small and secondary to the console market. When the majority of Japanese PC's were still using NEC PC-98⁵ architecture rather than the standard IBM/compatibles that were used in the U.S. and are now used worldwide, Japan had a small but healthy PC game market that was virtually free from outside competition. That all changed, of course, after computing became more internationally standardized, largely due to widespread internet use. From then on, Japanese PC game makers had to compete with a large number of American companies that wasted no time in establishing themselves in Japan. Today, the vast majority of Japanese PC games are adult titles, with a small handful of companies which make 'regular' PC games. American game genres like the real-time simulation (RTS) and first-person shooter (FPS) have managed to find a small following of Japanese PC gamers. Even Japanese history-themed games like "Shogun: Total War"⁶ are available in Japan. "Oni" is available in Japan on the PC, but not on the Playstation 2. This is because "Oni" is able to compete and find a following in the Japanese PC game market, but not the Japanese console market.

Though the current state of American games in Japan may look grim, there are many small rays of hope for their future success. The establishment of American games in the Japanese PC market, combined with the large growth of the American console market and the slightly dwindling Japanese console market⁷, may eventually lead to a Japanese game market that has room for American and other foreign games. Microsoft's Xbox may not have been a success in Japan, but it may still pave the way for the future success of American games and consoles in Japan.

Click one of the following links to continue to the other sections of this editorial:

1. Introduction: A Brief History of the U.S. Video Game Market

2. Japanese vs. American Video Games - Do Cultural Differences Exist in Game Production?

3. Assimilation of Japanese 'Otherness' into the U.S. Market

4. Orientalism: When Exotic or Japanese-looking Imagery is Used to Sell Games in the U.S.

6. The Asian Video Game Market: Not Profitable Enough?

7. Conclusion

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