Japan to west: "Your FPS'es are gooseberry fool, and your RPG's too"

Ginga wrote:
TheTurnipKing wrote:It's because Fable is shite.

Nah, Fable has the misfortune to be on the Xbox, which is a relatively niche console over there. Actually, I wonder if it might not benefit MS to release older XBox exclusives on the PS3 for that market, even on PSN or something. Releasing a version of Fable 1 on PS3 might do wonders for the sales of the Xbox.

"You've played Fable 1... If you want to play the sequel, you're going to have to get an Xbox 360 or wait for the PS4, by which time all the cool kids will be playing Fable 4" sort of thing.

Which sort of plays into my point about Japanese gamers being fiercely loyal and for all intents and purposes, narrow-minded.

I just think it's one of those things that we're likely to never see change. For various reasons, Europe and North America are prone to cultural shifts on a fairly regular basis, which is why we can even see a distinction and evolution in console generations (read: buying habits) over here that you'd be had pressed to find within the Asian market.

Fortunately, Microsoft (love them or loathe them) have done so well, along with Western developers on easing our reliance on second-hand trends and tailor making games that we want to play. Instead of number-crunching and worrying what missing out on the second biggest market could do to sales, studios have focused intensely on squeezing European and North American pockets for all they've got.
There were even reports, I'm not sure how on the money they were, that Britain had overtaken Japan has the second-biggest market on the planet.

And I think that's why this generation is probably going to go down as the best so far. Just a ton of large-scale variation that we hadn't really seen before from the likes of Little Big Planet to Left 4 Dead through the intellectual reinvestment in sports titles and Rock Band. Sure, a lot of that has to do with the exploration of expanded hardware but I think it's also because the real success stories of this generation, outside of Nintendo, are British, Canadian, US and French based.

Anyway. Just buy a strawberry floatin' Xbox, Japan. You're missing out on so much.

It's niche, not totally unbought. So there are Japanese players out there playing these games, just as there are western players playing (shudder) Star Ocean.

But the XBox has a reputation out there (not totally undeserved) of basically having very little to offer but first person shooters, a genre that as we can see, is not as fondly beloved of the players out there, which somewhat limits it's exposure.

To be honest, this has almost as much to do with regioning as anything else. Sony were right to largely reject region locking in the PS3.

Dual wrote:We think Japan Devs are crap for pumping out the same JRPGs over and over again. They think Western devs are crap for pumping out the same FPS and Football games.

¯\(°_o)/¯

But that's a lot of shite.

As someone has already stated, there's only so many ways you can adapt football sims - but then, the Japanese are still continuing to eat up PES instead of FIFA despite it being a complete shambles. Japan's sales of Winning Eleven are keeping that series afloat because in Europe Konami can hardly give it away. EA Sports are now up to 80+% of the market, which is a 15-20% jump in over two years.

The same could be said for FPS - Halo, COD, and Bioshock are completely different.

I need to call bullcrap on the "only so many ways to adapt football" thing. There are any numbers of ways you can adapt football into a game. "Footballer Of The Year" on the 8-bit computers, iirc, turned the game into a football trivia challenge with a goal-scoring minigame.

Genius.

''..sniping ans corpse-desecrating'' :twisted:

The main thing with me with Jrpg's is that almost everyone is so young and ....err. effeminate :shifty:

that they've never really appealed to me but I don't want to go on the hate too much.

I'm calling it - it's only a matter of time before someone makes a proper football RPG.

+2 Boots of Passing FTW.

TheTurnipKing wrote:I'm calling it - it's only a matter of time before someone makes a proper football RPG.

+2 Boots of Passing FTW.

Japan's already got that covered, I'm afraid.

Inazuma 11, invading your DS, 2010.

TheTurnipKing wrote:I'm calling it - it's only a matter of time before someone makes a proper football RPG.

+2 Boots of Passing FTW.

It'd have to be a JRPG, a combination of Blitzball from FFX, blood bowl and final fantasy, complete with whooshy backgrounds, OTT magic effects and an angsty ladyboy as the protagonist.

trelliz wrote:
TheTurnipKing wrote:I'm calling it - it's only a matter of time before someone makes a proper football RPG.

+2 Boots of Passing FTW.

It'd have to be a JRPG, a combination of Blitzball from FFX, blood bowl and final fantasy, complete with whooshy backgrounds, OTT magic effects and an angsty ladyboy as the protagonist.

Nearly right, then :lol:

Clearly better than that jap crap.

It was probably animated in Korea.

Winckle wrote:
Carlos wrote:Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and KOTR are the exceptions. Every other western RPG basically embraces the shadow of Diablo/Warhammer/Tolkien and does not move from the Orcs/Dark Elves/Armour of Gilded Power +3 cliche's it has become steeped in.
JRPGs can be original: Shin Megami Tensei and Persona at least try to break the mold but both sides of the pacific are guilty of the same crimes.

Deus Ex is hardly Tokeinien. Nor is Freedom Force or STALKER or Borderlands.

They are all Sci-Fi RPGs as opposed to Fantasy and Sci-Fi has the advantage there are no real genre constraints/cliches to work with. Every Sci-Fi RPG we've mentioned above is original in its plot, characters and setting becauser there is no major work overshadowing the whole thing. Warhammer 40K/Star Trek/Star Wars/Terminator/Alien are all examples of highly regarded work but not one has been an overriding influence on RPGs whereas Fantasy is seemingly bound by the Tolkien template.
WH40K influences FPS games and RTSs more than anything else (Starcraft, Gears of War)

So what you're basically saying is, "ALL WESTERN RPGS ARE TOLKEINIEN, except, err, that large subset which isn't"?

I think the point is that all western FANTASY RPG's are Tolkien-ish.

Though I feel fairly confident that too is a non-starter of an argument (for starters, Diablo - despite already being namechecked - is about as non Tolkien-ish as you can get. Remind me of the bit in Tolkien's books where a single heavily armed hero descends into the depths of Hell itself to fight the devil one on one, please, and I'll admit to being wrong.).

edit: fixed Tolkien's name :oops:

His name was Tolkien. I before e.

Continue.

TheTurnipKing wrote:I think the point is that all western FANTASY RPG's are Tolkien-ish.

Though I feel fairly confident that too is a non-starter of an argument (for starters, Diablo - despite already being namechecked - is about as non Tolkien-ish as you can get. Remind me of the bit in Tolkien's books where a single heavily armed hero descends into the depths of Hell itself to fight the devil one on one, please, and I'll admit to being wrong.).

edit: fixed Tolkien's name

I did say 'the shadow of Diablo/Warhammer/Tolkien'. Diablo was an original RPG that whilst copying the structure of Rogue had at least an original story that was more Milton than Middle Earth and set the template for every Baldur's Gate/Elder Scrolls/Everquest that followed.
Warhammer is a franchise clearly guilty of ripping off the Tolkien template but its influence over current fantasy cannot be ignored. This is largely the fault of Blizzard though as the original Warcraft was meant to be an RTS of Warhammer but the licence fell through so they still released it. This is why Warcraft's races look just like their Games Workshop counterparts. Observe:

Dragon Age sits closer to the original Tolkien stylings than its contempories though but the Dawkspawn dont half look like a cross between Chaos Warriors from WH and the Witch King from LotR. The problem is this is how people expect the characters to look and breaking out of the Western fantasy archetype requires a lot of imagination.
I can struggle to name one fantasy RPG made in the west that doesnt at least borrow some resources from Diablo/Warhammer/Tolkien whereas Eastern RPGs at least have Japanese mythology to borrow from. Games like Okami and Muramasa are good examples of this and because the west is not big on japanese myths they at least seem more original.

OMG I should be a game designer. The only thing I forgot was the Obligatory Evil Football Regime and their Legion of Evil Footballing Minions.

Jeez, stereotypes eh? They have a habit of playing themselves out.....

One million Japanese can't be wrong...

Did anyone ever play that Rapelay game?

Japan to west: "Your FPS'es are gooseberry fool, and your RPG's too"

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