The Japanese Angle 15/09

15 Sep 2008 at 13:16:33 by Jake Kawaguchi

Hello and welcome to the new Japanese corner of IncGamers where, every Monday, I’ll be telling you everything you need to know about the games industry from this fascinating part of the world. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

News from Japan:

Last week was a pretty busy one all round. On Thursday, Microsoft’s Japanese Xbox 360 price cuts came into effect, a new 60GB variation of the 360 hardware was launched, and Square Enix’ Infinite Undiscovery also made its bow in Japan. This triple-whammy seems to have had the desired effect, with encouraging first-day sales of Infinite Undiscovery apparently hitting somewhere around 90,000 copies and a fair number of new Xbox 360 owners made out of the improved 60GB SKU. There are still some machines available at my favourite local games store, but I was told that enthusiastic consumers had bought a significant number of new machines already. We’ll have to wait for the final weekly stats from Media Create on Thursday, but the early signs are that Microsoft’s new attack is working.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about the Xbox brand’s plight here in Japan – why it’s never really taken off, what Microsoft is doing wrong, how the Japanese are somehow xenophobic with their spending (which I maintain is a largely baseless accusation; just look at how popular imports such as McDonald’s, KFC and Apple products are in Japan). But I remember a senior person at Xbox Japan (the wing of Microsoft responsible for its consoles’ success here) saying that what Microsoft needs most in Japan is time. And I can see the logic in that.

Even the iPod was less popular in Japan than locally produced MiniDisc, MP3 and ATRAC players for some years, but eventually it became a phenomenon in Japan just as it was elsewhere. So yes, the original Xbox was roundly beaten by the PS2 and even by Nintendo’s GameCube, and the PS3 and Wii are performing better than the 360, but there has been a very gradual improvement in the Xbox brand’s image in Japan over the past few years: at this stage, I wouldn’t feel confident stating unconditionally that an Xbox machine will never be the Number One format in Japan. It could happen. But there is, patently, still a long way to go.

Yakuza incident:

On Friday, I picked up the new issue of Famitsu and was delighted to find news to the effect that Ryu Ga Gotoku 3 is coming to a PS3 near me in the near future. Hurrah. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this series’ Japanese title, it refers to the SEGA games you’ll know as Yakuza. The first two games in this awesome series were PS2 productions, and Yakuza 2 is only about to arrive in the UK this month (incidentally: BUY IT!), even though it’s been two years and two months since it debuted in Japan.

Earlier this year, there was a new PS3 game in the series, Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan!, released in Japan, but it turns out that title (a side-story set in 17th Century Kyoto, but featuring characters familiar to those who have played the mainline of 20th Century Yakuza games) was not the real Ryu Ga Gotoku 3/Yakuza 3 after all. The genuine article, as featured in this week’s Famitsu, takes us back to the future, relatively speaking, and reunites players with the games’ loveable but dangerous Yakuza cast. Instead of the mostly urban settings of previous Yakuza games, Ryu Ga Gotoku 3 sees Kiryuu (the protagonist) journeying to Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost islands. It’s an unlikely scenario but the screenshots in Famitsu show a fairly awesome PS3 version of idyllic Okinawa – which is to be expected after the amazing, but very different, graphics seen in Kenzan!

As with Kenzan!, SEGA has brought in a cast full of famous Japanese actors and actresses to provide the voices of characters who also resemble them in the flesh/textures. I’ve met Yakuza series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi a few times and I’m convinced he has film director aspirations – he’s a big fan of Takashi Miike, too, who was commissioned to direct the Ryu Ga Gotoku movie that appeared in Japan’s cinemas earlier in 2008. Nagoshi’s appreciation of cinema is clear to see in the Yakuza games, which make players feel as though they’re actually taking a role in a film with high production values, but it’s remarkable how he went from Super Monkey Ball and Daytona USA to this; that’s quite a change of direction.

Ryu Ga Gotoku 3 won’t be playable at next month’s Tokyo Game Show, but there will be a stage show complete with new footage of the game at SEGA’s booth. Famitsu lists the game’s release date as “TBC”, although it looks quite far along and the voice acting work is evidently almost finished. I’m hoping the game will appear early next year. If that is the case, sad to say, English-speaking territories will probably get it by about 2011. You could always learn Japanese and import it, though…

The popularity of Pokemon:

On Saturday, Nintendo launched Pokemon Platinum, the DS-based sort-of-sequel to Pokemon Pearl and Diamond. I’ll confess that I’m not a big fan of Pokemon these days – loved Red and Green, but lost interest after Yellow – and it seems Nintendo realises there are lots of people who are like me in this regard.

To that end, in the run-up to Platinum’s launch Nintendo aired a TV ad campaign where people who were apparently just members of the public (and not at all financially motivated by Nintendo or told what to say… yeah, right) had a quick go on Platinum in front of the camera and then broke out into gooey nostalgia-talk about how much they loved the first Pokemon Game Boy games. I didn’t buy it, but Nintendo is aiming big and was rumoured to have made more than a million copies of the game available from day one, and I’m sure plenty of people did buy it.

My tip for the week: Platinum to go platinum.

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