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Japan becoming more inclined: for 2nd year in a row Western games occupy half of top-selling titles.

Gerrard

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You should look at the reasons for why Japan hates these games. Like FF15 is disliked by them because it's too hard.
No it isn't.
 

J_C

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Umm, western games leading sales charts in Japan is not the incline, it is the polar opposite. Since japanese games are >>>>>> western games, if japanese gamers have started to like western crap more, it means that they are sinking in deep retardation.
 

Zeriel

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always remember that "the average japanese gamer" is actually worse than the average western gamer. The jap casuals buy the absolute dregs of bottom-tier media and do it in droves, hence gachi shit and mobile gaming, and the constant deluge of waifu-games with no redeeming qualities.

Gacha shit is actually more hardcore than most western games being released today so it's not really a compelling argument from an east vs. west standpoint. If you look at the most grognard games coming out from each region, we see the same story, the most niche japanese games are way more brutal than the most niche western ones. I think you'd know this, being a Wizardry madman.
 

Machocruz

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Meh, I don't really care what Japanese people think of their own cultural products. From what I can tell, games and anime that were cool to me and my friends, like Metroid, Castlevania, and Ninja Scroll weren't as admired there as in the U.S.. I could be wrong though, I don't have any figures to back that up.
 

Gerrard

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You should look at the reasons for why Japan hates these games. Like FF15 is disliked by them because it's too hard.
No it isn't.

Am too tired right now to translate those Amazon reviews but I bet those people stated what they didn't like about their games.
And not a single one of the "Most helpful" reviews on FFXV says "it's too hard".
>filled with fetch quests
>story possibly worse than XIII
>shitty "your buddies that you don't actually know anything about" characters
>feels like a wank of the director
>feels unfinished
>20 minutes of loading time per 1 hour of play time is normal
 
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aweigh

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One thing I do agree with is that niche-jap shit > niche-western shit.

For example there is no way something like Elminage: gothic would ever be made in the west nowadays. It's too pure.

EDIT: This doesn't mean that jap gamers like their own niche-jap shit, though, as all of these products invariably fail and their studios go out of business and/or they transition into making gormless gacha-mobile dogshit.
 

Zeriel

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One thing I do agree with is that niche-jap shit > niche-western shit.

For example there is no way something like Elminage: gothic would ever be made in the west nowadays. It's too pure.

EDIT: This doesn't mean that jap gamers like their own niche-jap shit, though, as all of these products invariably fail and their studios go out of business and/or they transition into making gormless gacha-mobile dogshit.

Name one western niche developer who doesn't follow the same path. I'll wait. If anything western niche devs are even worse since instead of going out of business making great games, they make a few great games then transition into backstabbing their fans and trying to make blockbusters and THEN go out of business.

The reality is niche games have niche followings in any country, if you are going to lambaste most nips for being idiots while most americans are also idiots its a rather silly distinction to make, just accept most human beings are that way and move on and enjoy the occasional good game that is released.

Personally I've got way more fondness for nips than my fellow burgers, since at least the nips are producing something of value, while we produce nothing.
 

Machocruz

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Are Klei considered niche? They do pretty well

Edit: are we including free games? I'm playing nothing but Cataclysm DDA now, and I'd take that over any niche game coming out of Japan. Or anywhere else for that matter.
 
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Suicidal

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I don't get it. If the Jap gamers are as dumb as you guys say (Final Fantasy 15 too hard, lel) then how come nowadays Japanese developers consistently produce games that are more interesting, challenging and demanding than the west?

I can't imagine a big name western developer making something like Nier Automata, a game where you can get oneshotted in the tutorial on several occasions and then be forced to replay the entire tutorial because you unlock the ability to save only after you beat it, or something like Dark Souls, where dying is very easy if you're not careful.

Also Japs are making a lot more RPGs and dungeon crawlers that are more mechanically interesting and challenging than western ones.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Well, the best way to understand it is that there's two big gaming markets in Japan: The first is what we'd probably call normal, the one where the people into it are gamers with regular gamer habits. The second is the one where you have the average Japanese salaryman, who is just trying to spend an hour or at maximum two to unwind a little to stave off karoshi.

When you have working conditions as fucked up as a lot of Japanese have (we are talking about a country where you can get fired without severence for NOT SMILING ALL THE TIME AT WORK), you probably just want to have as much relaxation as possible, so even something like FF15 is probably unacceptable stress to add on top the way your endless uncompensated work hours and demands of displays of corporate fealty are slowly killing you.
 

newtmonkey

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I will build upon what Vaarna_Aarne said, as he is largely accurate.

Your typical Japanese "salaryman" can basically never be fired, unless he (and they are are by and large "he"s only), I dunno, just doesn't show up for work for several weeks straight. The people getting fired for not smiling are part time or contract workers. Japanese employment laws are ridiculously strict in this area; once you've hired someone as a "regular" employee, it really does take something completely bonkers to fire them. (On the other hand, even if it does come to court, in the worst case scenario as an employer, all you will need to do it backpay lost wages; there is not really a concept of punitive damages in Japanese law).

On the other hand, if you are a regular employee and are (even today) enjoying "lifetime employment," you are expected to be working 50-60 hours per week. Good companies will pay you for the 10-20 hours of overtime, shitty companies will make you punch out and then go back to your desk.

With that in mind, the largest gaming demographic in Japan is overworked office guys playing games on their phones when commuting back and forth to work, likely in a state of either extreme sleep deprivation or hungover from mandatory drinking parties with coworkers. This is why the Japanese game market is dominated by free to play mobile games with in game currency; they don't want to think, they just want something to do that makes them feel like they are accomplishing something without actually doing anything, since their jobs consist of doing nothing and accomplishing nothing for years and years until they are in their mid to late 40s and finally making a decent wage.

Inclined stuff like Elminage Gothic or even Stranger of Sword City is a niche of a niche.

As for Dark Souls, etc., I had to introduce that series even to my one Japanese friend who is a "gamer" (i.e. grew up playing games and still does). He liked it a lot, and then next time we met he suggested I give Fallout 4 a try.

The fact of the matter is, Western games were seen as absolute shit in Japan for the last, I dunno, 20-30 years. But in a very real sense, Western games are seen as "cool" among actual Japanese gamers now, and you might be suprised at how many people here know about Fallout (i.e. Fallout 3+) or Witcher series.
 
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aweigh

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i like watching japanese chicks play western video games like last of us, usually they are a voice actress or something. it's funny watching them react to the cut-scenes and dialogue and stuff haha, they're all so amazed at how "realistic" everything is and how it's "like a movie", i assume mostly due to not looking like an anime.

"ooohh, sugoi!!" repeated 100 times
 

Suicidal

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I will build upon what Vaarna_Aarne said, as he is largely accurate.

Your typical Japanese "salaryman" can basically never be fired, unless he (and they are are by and large "he"s only), I dunno, just doesn't show up for work for several weeks straight. The people getting fired for not smiling are part time or contract workers. Japanese employment laws are ridiculously strict in this area; once you've hired someone as a "regular" employee, it really does take something completely bonkers to fire them. (On the other hand, even if it does come to court, in the worst case scenario as an employer, all you will need to do it backpay lost wages; there is not really a concept of punitive damages in Japanese law).

On the other hand, if you are a regular employee and are (even today) enjoying "lifetime employment," you are expected to be working 50-60 hours per week. Good companies will pay you for the 10-20 hours of overtime, shitty companies will make you punch out and then go back to your desk.

With that in mind, the largest gaming demographic in Japan is overworked office guys playing games on their phones when commuting back and forth to work, likely in a state of either extreme sleep deprivation or hungover from mandatory drinking parties with coworkers. This is why the Japanese game market is dominated by free to play mobile games with in game currency; they don't want to think, they just want something to do that makes them feel like they are accomplishing something without actually doing anything, since their jobs consist of doing nothing and accomplishing nothing for years and years until they are in their mid to late 40s and finally making a decent wage.

Inclined stuff like Elminage Gothic or even Stranger of Sword City is a niche of a niche.

As for Dark Souls, etc., I had to introduce that series even to my one Japanese friend who is a "gamer" (i.e. grew up playing games and still does). He liked it a lot, and then next time we met he suggested I give Fallout 4 a try.

The fact of the matter is, Western games were seen as absolute shit in Japan for the last, I dunno, 20-30 years. But in a very real sense, Western games are seen as "cool" among actual Japanese gamers now, and you might be suprised at how many people here know about Fallout (i.e. Fallout 3+) or Witcher series.

First of all, thanks for the explanation, I had no idea about that shit.

What I find strange is that, if what you say is true, shouldn't the big companies then be servicing those overworked salarymen with shitty microtransaction filled casual games, since they are the largest demographic instead of making demanding games like Dark Souls, Devil May Cry, Nier, etc.

I forgot the last time I was interested in an American-made AAA game, while the Japs keep making shit that I'm looking forward to (Sekiro and DMC 5, for example). The only good western AAA games tend to come from Europe nowadays.

Games like dungeon crawlers and turn based combatfag RPGs are as much of a niche here as they are in Japan, except we see more of them coming from the west because of stuff like Kickstarter.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Well the other part is that Japanese nerds are the other major demographic, and Japanese nerds are supposedly WAYYYYY more autistic about their likes than in the West and much more generous in paying for it. Like, there's a reason why the respective otaku demographic is catered to so much by idol and anime industries (the idol otaku are also where you can best see that whatever disgusting specimens you might see at some cons, it could be way, way, wayyyyyy more fucked up).


(Also Japanese liking Fallout is not that surprising considering Fist of the North Star pachinko machines have made more money than all James Bond movies gross box office put together; Japs absolutely adore Mad Max and its derivatives)
 

newtmonkey

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I think most companies are indeed servicing the salarymen with casual games, mobile stuff is by and far the largest demographic in Japan. That's not to say that some great games like Dark Souls series and Nier don't come out on console; there is still a large market for console games, though Western games are definitely getting more and more popular.

It's like Vaarna said, the other demographic is nerds (I use the term without any malice here) that are obsessed with certain types of games. I mean, put aside all the weird loli stuff and whatever, let's just focus on niche stuff any normal person would like. A company like Starfish survived for many years, just on (basically) Wizardry clones. That's impressive for sure, and would simply not happen in the Western market.

To be honest with you, I'm not certain how popular Dark Souls series is in Japan. I mean, it's obviously popular enough and sold enough to keep getting sequels, and I don't think it's a Metroid situation where Japanese people ignore it while it's popular in the West. I think part of it is that From Software is small enough and efficient enough, where they can get relatively less sales and still make a nice profit.

My post was just looking at Japan only, but you are right that dungeon crawlers etc are a niche anywhere. They are super niche in Japan, but the fact of the matter is, a company released a hardcore dungeon crawler like Elminage Gothic in Japan in consoles (and that means licensing fees and paying for carts/media I suppose), whereas when was the last time a company in the West released a hardcore dungeon crawler on physical media? That suggests there was a market, at least at that time. Grimoire, Sword & Sorcery, and Bard's Tale Trilogy are pure incline in every way, but even they did not dare to release games to retail, so that is something.

As for AAA (which is a bit of a different topic), I agree with you 100% (especially if Dark Souls series is considered as AAA). Nioh blows any AAA Western game in the past 5 years out of the water, and even Nier (which may not have the most interesting mechanics) is so much better than bullshit like Fallout 4 or any recent Far Cry/Assassin's Creed game that it's laughable.

Having said that, I don't even know if you can compare these games to Western AAA. I don't think the budget for a game like Nioh, Nier, or Dark Souls is anywhere close to a Far Cry or Assassin's Creed. I mean, we can definitely compare them in terms of quality. If Japan has an AAA, it's gotta be stuff like Final Fantasy 15, which is just as awful as the worst of Western AAA imo.

Anyway, I'm a bit drunk, so I'm now rambling a bit, so I apologize if my post is all over the place!
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Having said that, I don't even know if you can compare these games to Western AAA. I don't think the budget for a game like Nioh, Nier, or Dark Souls is anywhere close to a Far Cry or Assassin's Creed. I mean, we can definitely compare them in terms of quality. If Japan has an AAA, it's gotta be stuff like Final Fantasy 15, which is just as awful as the worst of Western AAA imo.
That's another thing to consider really, the number of Japanese games with AAA level budget is pretty limited compared to the West. Like, if you think about it, the only ones offhand that get that level of resources are Final Fantasy (in no small part due to inertia from the heyday of the series, I suppose), and Hideo Kojima, and even in case of Kojima his budgets are big by Japanese standards (and of such size because he is a unique talent in games industry history but also because since 1998 his games have been guaranteed worldwide critical and commercial hits). By contrast in the West, you have annual or near-annual franchises like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty with even more massive budgets per entry, along with studios like Rockstar who from a game dev perspective have effectively unlimited time and money.

It's not all that different from movies really. These days Hollywood's got such gigantic amounts of money to throw around American movies simply dwarf any local film industry in production values. The same applies to games industry in the end (even the same cross-pollination of money between US and rest of the West applies).

So in that sense it's not really that much of a wonder that after video game budgets exploded last console generation that Japanese audiences are impressed by just the sight of what money can buy. Even if personally I'd say we've recently seen courtesy of Arc System Works that there are visual heights money cannot buy (or well, at least not until guys like ArcSys' team have done it first and then it can be replicated with brute force via sufficient cash). And like with movies, this also means that unique and outlier voices instead gain more weight because it's what offsets money. German and Japanese cinema may not have the money Hollywood has, but they have Werner Herzog and Shinya Tsukamoto instead. And Japanese games industry might not have EA's hoard of blood money, but they do have people like Yoko Taro. Japan's also got kind of a cultural advantage in this regard, since Japan's been a pioneering country for video games there's a long-established foundation from where such people to come from and probably a kind of pride to defend.

I'd actually argue that part of the reason why Japanese games industry produces such high quality content and relatively often genuinely good storytelling is precisely because there's less money involved. Kojima's again the dark horse that bucks the trend (but then again, that's Kojima) by doing that despite having all the cash involved, but when you think about something like NieR: Automata, Yakuza, BlazBlue, or Guilty Gear a big part is that there's genuine passion and vision behind the game while lack of cash means that there is need to stay focused and not get distracted by superfluous details that bog down or consume the game (a good example of this is the copypasted content of Assassin's Creed because all the time and money went to making the most expensive open world possible; whereas Kamurocho is the best open world because it feels so intimate and realized). And as kind of a unique thing, Japanese developers have often treated gaming in terms of non-self-derogatory metafiction. Cross-pollination of nerd subculture is probably also a major factor in the creativity, whereas nerd subcultures in the West have become very segregated (just consider how niche comic books are, and the cost incurred to Western game narratives when nobody has genuinely hired Grant Morrison to write for games despite his interest in doing so) and dominated by the shadow of the Hollywood blockbuster. I don't recall any Western developer personality saying they wanted to make a game series that both captured the wild and hyper-stylized look of a manga while also being like their own signature like Daisuke Ishiwatari said about Guilty Gear.
 

newtmonkey

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Vaarna_Aarne

Those are some very good points, and that's one reason I sort of struggled to come up with AAA for Japanese games, what else is there but FF at this point? Even Biohazard would be AA level I think, in comparison to Ubisoft/EA stuff.

I think no matter where you look, you need to first discount AAA entirely; AAA is good for what it is, but you almost can't even consider it when talking about the rest of the industry, because it works on a whole different level. I mean, people will just buy the latest Far Cry and be completely happy, cuz it's the previous Far Cry plus more stuff.

I think that is also getting truer and truer for Japan; keep in mind, Japanese gamers only really got exposure to Western games with the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, and until that point they considered all Western games as shit (this excludes PC gaming completely). I mean, they were definitely right to think so—what was your typical Western console game in the 16 bit days, Boogerman and Clayfighter? Now, a Japanese gamer who plays, say, Far Cry 4, for the first time, will be extremely impressed. It's like 100% gameplay, there's nothing janky about it, and it looks amazing. I think anyone would be fooled by Western AAA at first glance.

One thing that's very interesting to me about the Japanese industry is that people like Yoko Taro and Daisuke Ishiwatari can maintain a strong hold of their projects in the AA industry, and still make games that are interesting to play. I guess it's partially budget related, no one man can be in charge of a AAA project I guess. Still, I really can't think of a similar "celebrity" developer/designer in the West who is still making awesome and interesting games. I mean, obviously, long ago, this was Richard Gariott, JV Caneghem, Roberta Williams, all the guys behind Wizardry, Peter Molyneux in his heyday.
 

CryptRat

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I'll give my take on the East vs West topic because why not. I disagree with many things which have been said, different taste and all. I don't like these East >>> West or West >>> East statements. Without any details they are just plain wrong regarding to my taste.

- Are we talking about volume, and only about RPGs? Because in that case true Japan incline is these Etrian Odyssey/Elminage/Class of heroes series, that's exactly the same reason why the best RPGs are by far the pre-1995 western ones and NES/SNES JRPGs, tons of titles which are interesting at least on paper, most of them crappy like at any time (although I'd say average quality was also at its best and very higher but that's not my point) but in the mass there are tons of great titles. The PS2 had tons of RPGs, handelds have a lot too, and unfortunately I like less playing handeld titles, but they still exist, it's just me. Meanwhile in the west the number of RPGs made since the 2000s resembling what I'm looking for are very rare, and that's even counting those made by one guy in a basement who couldn't make a good game. It's sad because in the rare case of western dudes who just make the kind of games I want to play (KOTC, Swords & sorcery : Underworld, and I'll add Wasteland 2 even if everybody think it's pure shit) I like these games more than your average Dragon Quest-like. There's one exception, roguelikes and I also need to relativize because since 2013 I play more modern western than japanese games (still plays and have tons of old ones to play, some japanese ones not even translated yet), one reason is because they are all PC games.

- Also still only about RPGs, I totally disagree when people associate good with innovation, the reason why many PS2 JRPGs are good and many other decent is because they are exactly like the good old ones. In my best dreams RPGs stopped evolving in 1993.

- Do you discard any game made by one dude in its basement? In this case the west clearly produces nothing good but playing games produced by one dude in its basement is not that new, I have never seen anybody refusing to play Prince of persia or Another World. I don't deny, at all, that with dematerialisation it's a big mess with anybody selling some one month work. Now that I said that what I have in mind is that I had more fun with Super Meat Boy or FTL than with any non-RPG recent japanese game, I unironically think these two games are GOAT materials. Other genres I like besides RPGs are 2D plateformers, classic adventure games, turn-based strategy, genres which, during the last years, are present on PC, and 2D plateformers especially are completely different from RPGs in that a 2D plateformer is a 2D plateformer while you can say there are also a lot of RPGs on PCs but that includes tons of stuff I don't care about like story-heavy and/or action games (and some similar things can be said about adventure games unfortunately).

- Also old >>> new, or at worse old-school >>> new, that's what I think, East or West, or whatever the genre.

Also people use Dark Souls as a metric for everything, and since a part of the thread is talking about players, my impression is that the number of people who like hard action games (Dark Souls) is very far from null while the number of people who like hard reasoning games (not Dark Souls but Realms of Arkania) is much lower.
 
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Machocruz

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I think that is also getting truer and truer for Japan; keep in mind, Japanese gamers only really got exposure to Western games with the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, and until that point they considered all Western games as shit (this excludes PC gaming completely).

A bit of a shame. Exposed to western games when western games became mindless dog balls. I come from a console background. Grew up with ColecoVision, NES, SMS, Gameboy, Genesis, spent a lot of time in arcades. I didn't get my own PC until I was 25. I've since come to believe that the 90s to 2000 (to include Deus Ex) on PC represents the peak of design and innovation in video games. My top ten list is dominated by the likes of Deux Ex, System Shock 2, X-Com, Baldur's Gate 2, Thief 1 and 2. Except for DX (which I first played on PS2), all games I played after 2005. There really was no answer for those games and many others on console or coming from Japan, imo. They missed out on this era. Well, most people in the west did too, which is the reason behind so many ills of modern game design. Most people don't know what has been and can be achieved, so expectations are low, falshehoods are spread, and game companies can sell old shit as new innovations.
 
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newtmonkey

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You are right, you can't just say JPN games are better than Western games or vice versa (unless you are talking about console games in the late 80s through mid 90s, I think there is no question that Japanese games on the 8-bit/16-bit consoles were WAY better than Western games on the same hardware).

I was just talking about AAA and AA, but if we are talking about indie stuff (or even single-A studios like inexile), all bets are off.
There's not a lot of companies, big or small, making the kinds of games I like, but we still get some gems or masterpieces these days, like the Elminage PC ports, Swords & Sorcery, and Grimoire. I even really like "classic" JRPGs like Dragon Quest 2&3, Mother, and Final Fantasy 1-3, which all have somewhat expansive worlds to explore and interesting combat/character development systems that, imo, are not unlike top-down Wizardry games (or at least, like Ultima 3).

Machocruz
I think Japan was not without innovation in the 90s, there are some really great RPGs on the PSX and PS2 (Saga Frontier is really interesting, as is the Romancing Saga remake on PS2; also, the King's Field series is great). Outside of RPGs, Siren 1 & 2 are simply amazing if you haven't tried them; there is really nothing like them.

The sad fact is, PC gaming was never much of a thing in Japan outside of MSX or kids rich enough to have PC-98 computers back in the day. It's been mostly consoles from beginning to end, and consoles will eventually be replaced with mobile I suppose.
 
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aweigh

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I think the main reason japs have traditionally disliked western games was:

- During console gaming boom (PS1/PS2 eras) the majority of the western titles making waves and penetrating media were:
1) war shooters of some sort, be it WW2 or something else, and japan just flat-out dislikes FPS/war shooters
2) something "generic" like racing, sports or "modern platformer" that Japan could also already do as well if not better

...However with the advent of PS3 era and onwards the "AAA Cinematic eXperience" came to fruition and this is NOT something the japs also already had or were able to do as well or better, so this was something new and amazing.

Lastly, the above said combined with the fact that they're "realistic" instead of the glut of jap titles which are anime/moe in some way or another.

Pretty huge stylistic difference between Last of Us and Tales of Cucks f, amirite?

Anyway the budget issue is the main thing here, because in the West the console boom of ps2 era kept making budgets rise and rise whereas in japan I don't think they ever had such a huge increase like that. Also I *think* japanese companies use sketchy practices to keep costs down like paying very low wages or not paying overtime: why? because... they managed to crank out Metal Gear 5 for supposedly around 100 million bucks which seems pretty impossible to me considering the years of wages and size of the teams involved.

EDIT: Damn, you guys remember when Half-Life 2 was making the rounds in media because of its "enormous 40 million dollar budget"? I think these days western AAA devs spend that amount on the advertising alone.

Random thought about Dark Souls popularity in the west versus Japan: It combined japanese design intentions with western realism in presentation making it a stealth-western game.

TLDR: I'd rather play Red Dead Redemption 2 than play Hyperdimension Neptunia, that's for damn sure!

:)
 

hexer

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EDIT: Damn, you guys remember when Half-Life 2 was making the rounds in media because of its "enormous 40 million dollar budget"? I think these days western AAA devs spend that amount on the advertising alone.

Bioshock Infinite spent $100 million on marketing.
The same amount they spent on development.
 

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