Japanische Videospiele-Industrie steckt in Schwierigkeiten

Keiji Inafune Interview

During this year’s Captivate you’ve talked a great deal about your new initiative to “globalise” Capcom’s games. But are you not worried that this strategy may mean you lose some of the distinctive Japanese qualities celebrated by so many Capcom fans?

No, there are no plans to lose what makes Capcom games special – we are going to keep the Capcom ‘flavour’. We instead try to evolve, not throw away and replace with an international design philosophy. In general, creators are selfish, they make games for themselves, they make games that they’re going to like. So what you end up with – especially in Japan – are games that appeal to males of the same age. Japanese developers are not thinking outside the box.
This global design approach allows Capcom to keep its flavour, but also help us think about other markets. I think this approach will make Capcom a stronger company and it will help us evolve and solidify that Capcom flavour that fans celebrate.

What do you think are the main problems facing Japanese developers today?

Basically, Japanese creators are very similar to Japanese consumers. And they have a very stereotypical view on what games should be and how they should play out. So Japanese gamers will say ‘oh, shooters are boring, I want to play RPGs’, and if it is an RPG then it has to be Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.

So they have a fixed view of what games should be and this filters into the designers who design the games, and they’re designing for a fixed group of gamers. They’re not thinking outside the box, they’re not doing anything but a small set of games that fit in key Japanese gaming genres.

Right now the West is huge, it’s a big market, there are lots of types of games in the West that are popular, but when they get to Japan, Japanese gamers aren’t interested. They don’t realise that they are way behind the trend and are not making the types of games on a worldwide scale that they need to make, because they are only thinking about Japanese gamers. They need to change the stereotypical views of what games should be and what games to make.

So, that said, have you faced any opposition from within Capcom or from Japanese gamers to your globalisation efforts?

Not necessarily, because we do have major hits that are popular in the domestic market – things like Ace Attorney, things like Monster Hunter. So, from your typical Japanese gamer perspective, Capcom is still a company that makes the hits that you want to play. So there is not necessarily a lot of flak that we get for that aspect.

But a game like Street Fighter IV, for example, sold 200,000 copies in Japan and something like 2 million abroad – that is something they don’t realise in Japan. From purely a Japanese gamer perspective, they probably think ‘oh SF IV didn’t sell that well’, which is a shame because they don’t realise that Capcom’s strategy of balancing titles between East and West is the correct strategy, until after a while some Japanese publishers disappear, and then they realise ‘oh, Japan isn’t a big enough market’. You have to think on a global scale in order to make it in this current market.

You mentioned you were surprised that Western gamers could easily figure out that the original Dead Rising was made in Japan, and that you wanted to make sure DR2 was a Western game “at its core”. So, what makes a game feel Western according to Capcom?

You know, when you try to break it down to what is at the core of a Western game, it starts to get philosophical. But as we mentioned in the DR2 presentation, things like how guns handle, what Western gamers expect guns to do, how they expect the character to move when holding a gun, is something we think about.

Take, for example, the motorcycle from the first Dead Rising, it simply didn’t control that well, but here in the second game the attention to detail, how smooth it rides, these are things that Western gamers would expect. But in the first game we couldn’t achieve that, so therefore it didn’t feel like a Western game. That’s a few examples of how we’re reaching the core of a Western game with DR2.

Capcom has supported Xbox 360 quite strongly with Lost Planet and Dead Rising. Has supporting the format been a part of your globalisation strategy?

We were developing Dead Rising and Lost Planet for 360 before anyone knew it would sell, because it hadn’t been released yet. So, it wasn’t like ‘we’re going to develop for this system because that is what Western gamers like’. We didn’t know what was going to happen. It was merely because the 360 came out first, and so we had more time to work with it and get better at programming for it. That’s why Capcom adopted 360 development very early on.

We’ve always been known for grabbing new hardware and coming out with games quickly from the get-go. But actually it’s funny because when Xbox 360 was coming there were a lot of Japanese publishers who saw we were putting all this time and energy into its hardware, and they thought that Capcom was finished – they thought we were crazy for doing that. From a purely Japanese perspective, no one knew it was going to sell or what would happen.

Quelle: nowgamer.com/news/437/keiji-inafune-interview

Interview mit Jun Takeuchi von Capcom

16.09.09 - 1up führte ein Interview mit Jun Takeuchi von Capcom, der als Produzent an Lost Planet 2 (PS3, Xbox 360) arbeitet. Die wichtigsten Aussagen im Überblick:

- Der schlimmste Trend in der Videospiele-Industrie ist für Takeuchi, dass die japanischen Entwickler in technologischer Hinsicht unfähig sind, Spiele für die aktuellen Konsolen und für den Geschmack von Kunden in USA/Europa herzustellen.

Früher hätte man deutlich mehr Respekt vor japanischen Entwicklern gehabt, was sie technisch auf den Konsolen leisten konnten.

- Als positiv empfindet er, dass immer mehr Japaner sich mit westlichen Spielen anfreunden, die in den USA oder Europa entstanden sind. Ebenso sei es gut, dass die Kunden aufgeschlossener gegenüber neuen Spielarten (z.B. drahtlose 'Multiplayer'-Spiele) sind.

- Die japanischen Nutzer laden viel weniger Spiele herunter als in den USA oder Europa. Der Hauptgrund liegt seiner Ansicht nach darin, dass sehr viel weniger Spieler in Japan ihre Konsolen mit dem Internet verbunden haben.

- Takeuchi kann nicht sagen, ob das Bewegungs-Steuerungs-System Natal von Microsoft für Xbox 360 von japanischen Entwicklern mehr oder weniger angenommen wird als von westlichen; er hat einfach noch nicht die Meinungen von Entwicklern im Westen gehört.

Was er allerdings weiß, ist, dass japanische Entwickler Natal als ein neues Problem ansehen und sagen: 'Wie werden wir dafür Spiele entwickeln können? Was sollen wir damit jetzt machen?'

Takeuchi kann nur für Capcom sprechen und betont, dass seine Kollegen in Osaka Natal gegenüber sehr aufgeschlossen sind und sich freuen, ein paar gute Ideen dafür umzusetzen.

- Ebenso hat Capcom eine Menge gute Ideen für Sonys neuen Controller mit Bewegungs-Sensoren, und er freut sich, sie in die Praxis umsetzen zu können. Über andere japanische Entwickler habe er gehört, dass sie sich sehr über den neuen Controller freuen, weil sie einfach ihre Wii-Spiele auf die PS3 umsetzen können.

- Als Aufsteiger in der Branche sieht Takeuchi Platinum Games und CyberConnect2 an. Platinum Games sei wirklich gut darin, Spiele für Kunden im Westen zu machen. Außerdem hat das Entwicklungs-Studio bei Grafik und Technik was auf dem Kasten.

CyberConnect2 würde zwar sehr viel mehr japanische Spiele machen, doch die würden vom Westen sehr gut angenommen.

Quelle: Gamefront

(...) Eurogamer: You've been outspoken in your views about the Japanese games industry in the last year or so. Now this year's E3 and gamescom are over, do you still feel as sceptical about the industry as you were last year?

Keiji Inafune: I still stand by my comment I made last year. I haven't seen any change whatsoever in Japan. Therefore I'm very pessimistic about the games industry in Japan. The Japanese game creators have to admit we're behind the Western games at this moment and try to be humble and learn why. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to start all over again.

I have a question for you, actually. Since that comment, every single Western journalist I encounter asks the same question. However, none of the Japanese journalists ask why I made that comment. I want to know why. Is it apathy, or are the Japanese not particularly interested or not taking it seriously? Why are you interested in asking me that question?

Eurogamer: Perhaps it's because Western gamers have a history with Japanese games from their childhood, and their view is that it is a magical place that creates brilliant games. Perhaps to bear witness to its decline is a little sad. Maybe Japanese gamers hope if they ignore the problem it will go away.

Keiji Inafune: Does that mean in the West you guys actually agree with my comment from last year at the Tokyo Game Show that the Japanese game industry is in decline?


Eurogamer: Yes. Perhaps the main disparity is in graphical quality. Maybe Western developers have been better able to get used to the current generation of consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, than Japanese developers. What do you think?

Keiji Inafune: Yes, I completely agree with your analysis of what's happening in the Japanese market and the Western market. I see it inside Japan as, traditionally, not many people play Western games to start with. Now, they are starting to release some of the games.

However, still, the centre of the market is Japanese games. They're just looking at Japanese games. They don't even compare with Western games because Western games are seen in a completely different category.

eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09…-inafune-interview?page=1