I am trying to think of the best game that ever came from Japan for any platform. The answer is the Metal Gear Solid series. The latest and greatest involving Solid Snake has yet to be released on PS3. It probably won't come to the XBox 360. I probably won't lose any sleep about that.
What annoys me, however, is the news that XBox doesn't do jack in the Japan market. That may bother the guys at Redmond but it doesn't bother me at all. So I read..
Xbox 360's year-long head start was all for naught. At least in Japan. Since its launch one month ago, the PLAYSTATION 3 has outsold the 360 by 10,000 units. Both of them were, of course, outsold by the Nintendo Wii. But that's neither here nor there.
No, actually it's there. Why is there so important? The way I see it, foreign games are just like foreign films. Interesting, quirky and sometimes of high quality. In fact, we're only interested in the best foreign films, and the best of the best always get translated nicely for the American market. So there's the world of games, then there is the continent of games for PS3, then there is the city of games for the PS3 that are actually good. Then there is the neighborhood of good PS3 games that are exclusive to the console and only available in Japan. By definition that's a little ghetto that doesn't amount to a hill of bean in this great big world. Yeah I know, but somebody lives there.
So I ask the question, honestly because I don't know, what do the Japanese get that Americans really want and can't get in the gaming world? My bet is that it's very little.
On the other hand there is the feedback from a bigger market. Sure there's value in that, but how do you characterize it? If Japanese gamers like robots with snaky arms, what are the chances that their having a larger market will change what's popular in the English gaming world? It is a distinction I think most American gamers don't care about, except of course for those who love the PS3 and hate Microsoft.
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