Mega Man Creator says the Japanese Video Game Industry ‘is Over’
Japan was once the heart and soul of the video game industry, with Nintendo and Sega and Capcom and Square churning out memorable hit after memorable hit, but according to one of its own, the Japanese game industry is not what it once was. Here’s rather black and white quote from Capcom’s Keijii Inafune, the creator of Mega Man.
“Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.”
And of course he quickly backtracked, saying that obviously all of Capcom’s new games are totally awesome, but his point remains. With a ton of game development now taking place in the States and in Europe, Japan no longer has the power position it did in the industry.
A lot of this is the relationship between Japanese and American pop culture. Japanese developers make games for Japanese audiences, and lot of times that doesn’t translate well across the ocean. Most Americans view the scope of Japanese development to be somewhere in between Dance Dance Revolution and Dragon Quest, and they don’t branch in to the types of games that American’s love above all else, FPSes like Gears of War, Call of Duty and Halo, and if they do attempt them, they don’t do it very well.
I have little doubt that Japan will figure all this out and learn how to make globally appealing games again. Their sense of originality (think back to characters like Mario, Sonic, Zelda, Mega Man etc.) has yet to be matched anywhere else in the world, as all we’ve done recently is churn out grizzled super soldier after grizzled space marine. They may be good games, but Japan has always had a creative spark that we’ve been missing.
[via GamePolitics]
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Everyone keeps saying that the Japanese gaming industry is dead, yet Nintendo is destroying the competition, and its games sell VERY well in the west. Super Mario Galaxy is one of my favourite games ever, actually.
Perhaps people such as Keijii Inafune don’t take Nintendo seriously, so Nintendo’s domination of the gaming industry doesnt register with him. But that could be because he utterly failed to innovate with Mega Man, while Nintendo put out the Prime series.
The quote is even more bizarre given the recent success of the Resident Evil and Street Fighter franchises in the west.
One thing I do agree with is that Japanese developers are not creating as many original IPs as western developers. But that doesn’t mean the industry is dead, just that it hasn’t found its footing in the next gen market.