Japanese studios shouldn’t imitate US developers

It feels like it was in another lifetime, but today’s 40-somethings did experience a time when video games were mostly about Japan. Whether games or consoles, they were first marketed in the land of the Rising Sun before – eventually – landing in the United States and Europe. Over time, the trend has reversed, in particular because the market has become international. As a result, some Japanese studios have started to offer productions based on certain standards imposed by Western developers. An error according to the President of Square Enix who believes that Japanese studios should not seek at all costs to please foreign players.

“Nowadays, the video game industry has become internationalizedexplains Yosuke Matsuda in an interview with Yahoo! JAPAN – and relayed by Video Games Chronicle. The Japanese market has always been important, but today it is behind China and the United States. If you don’t have global reach, you can’t exist. But what’s interesting is that if Japanese developers try to ape Western games, they won’t perform well. Monster design, visual effects and sound design still have that Japanese style. Players around the world know what makes Japanese games great. Once again, foreign markets are important, but it is not a question of developing products that take into account their tastes.“

Last year, we learned that Square Enix had decided to favor the English dubbing for Final Fantasy XVI, and that the recording of the Japanese voices had not even started. We also remember that when Ghost of Tsushima was released in 2020, Toshihiro Nagoshi, the creator of the Yakuza series, wanted to congratulate Sucker Punch for his incredible work. “I think it’s a game that should have been developed by Japanese people, but I heard that they did a monster job collecting a lot of data. There is also the “Kurosawa” mode which shows that they wanted to give the game a cinematic dimension. In fact, it’s the kind of work done by a Western studio that shows they’re even more Japanese than we are. It’s just amazing. We often think they could never do certain things unique to our culture, but this game proves us wrong.“Sucker Punch couldn’t ask for a better compliment.