The death of certain genres in Japan

[newbrain]

I've begun to notice that a few notable Japanese genres are dying or dead in Japan, most seriously the hard boiled detective genre where there are now next to no new games and the drifting genre.

I think we have sadly seen a generation shift were such awesome games are no longer profitable and instead the "Senran Kagura"-generation has taken over.

Last Wangan Midnight, PSP 2007
Last Shutokou Battle 360 2006
Last Initial D 2008 PS3, yes there was a very weak one on 3DS 2014 that's not really a racing game.

These sort of games are now relegated to the arcade market in Japan.

Last Tantei Jinguuji Saburou (Jake Hunter) 3DS 2012, long running series since 1987, this game has strong hits of being intended for localization but I think they took a look at their candlestick charts and made the correct economical decision of not doing so.

And also the fact that we haven't had anything near Snatcher/Policenauts in aeons.

Just a reflection on the state of things.

[lupianwolf]

Chase: Cold Case Investigations came out on 3DS. The Silver Case made it's way to the West. The Danganronpa series is still big and we're getting the new on PS4. Cruisi'n and Daytona are getting new arcade games and they could potentially get a port to consoles. This and the driving series never seemed that big and I don't think it's dying per se.

Detective Pikachu came out in Japan. It's apparently getting a movie made out of it so maybe that hints towards a western release?.

[alphex]

I thought I knew what this thread was gonna be about based on the thread title, but the actual content mostly confused me.

Also, there's still an Arcade market?

[earthphantomts]

Ehh...I kinda prefer the Senran Kagura stuff to detective stuff, so I'm not really negatively affected by this turn of events. But, keep this in mind: as long as there's demand somewhere, someone will try to supply it. Maybe Western developers will still be interested in the stuff you're interested in, maybe some indie guys will. So, I think it's a little early to mourn it.

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

[Kubo Caskett]

Now that you mention it, newbrain, I seem to remember reading that the Japanesey turnbased cross something strategy games are almost completely extinct save for Fire Emblem; that and the action games with over the top s--t that isn't necessarily FPSes ala Devil's Third fit the bill too.

[GamerL]

I gotta throw in survival horror of course, I can understand why such an esoteric genre couldn't survive forever but it still hurts.

I still dream about what a Team Silent PS3 Silent Hill would have been like, to say nothing of a PS4 one.

[jackcaeylin]

very crazy japanese games like LSD Dream Emulator or Suda51 crazy games

Yours sincerely

Jack Caeylin

[GamerL]

Dec 31, 2016 6:04:09 GMT -5 jackcaeylin said:

very crazy japanese games like LSD Dream Emulator or Suda51 crazy games

Yours sincerely

Jack Caeylin

The Tomorrow Children seems to actually fit that mold pretty well, I'm honestly amazed the game exists (has anyone actually played it?)

[ZenithianHero]

Many genres and type of stories in Japan definitely are reliant on mostly one or two companies from my observation. If Tecmo is not making a new Fatal Frame, you are probably not going to see that many ghost survival horror. If Atlus is not making a Trauma Center, you are probably not going to see medical stories.

[surnshurn]

I think that a lot of the games that are ported over to the west are the sure-fire moneymakers these days. This could be in part to: A, high cost of production to a mainstream western audience. B, flood of domestic Japanese indie games, what with easier and easier software development tools for designers being available to the more creative types.

I can speak more authoritatively on A than i can on B, but that's really not saying too much. I mean... if you think about the cost of maintaining Sony's PSN, and the sheer difficulty of combating rogue companies using DRM. It's just not viable to ship odd titles over here in the hope that they'll take off with audiences. The costs are just too high to be justified, at least now that the research has been done on what gets a title to sell in a certain market.

I speak very broadly with that statement, though. You have Sony on the one hand, who is much larger and very much joined the game in search of profit. Then you have Nintendo, who had been a toy company for 80 years before the NES gave them whopping profits. Their motives are different, but their realities are the same. Nintendo suffers more from lack of making people angry, which has been a huge detriment to their creativity, in my opinion. Sony is more the cool businessman, who takes a risk and then capitalizes on what works and forgets the rest. Keep in mind that Sony was a technology company first. If I'm wrong about Sony's history, please correct me about their past.

[surnshurn]

**waits for someone from microsoft to show up** come on, you're like 30 minutes down the highway!

[Weasel]

Dec 30, 2016 11:02:23 GMT -5 newbrain said:

Last Tantei Jinguuji Saburou (Jake Hunter) 3DS 2012, long running series since 1987, this game has strong hits of being intended for localization but I think they took a look at their candlestick charts and made the correct economical decision of not doing so.

I suppose it doesn't help much that the first "Jake Hunter" release was critically panned for being kind of archaic and having a spotty translation, and when the "Memories of the Past" update was released with more cases and a touched-up script, US gamers just couldn't find it in them to care. (Honestly, as much as the updated re-release helped readability, the script is still really dry compared to the likes of Hotel Dusk. Only one part really stands out to me now, and it wasn't anything actually relevant to the case...)

[kaoru]

Yeah, Memories of the Past was super boring and unwieldy to me, I really hated that one. But I guess it is made entirely out of remakes of the first Famicom games and early mobile phone cases, so probably not the most shining examples of the best entries in the franchise.

Dec 30, 2016 12:29:33 GMT -5 lupianwolf said:

The Danganronpa series is still big and we're getting the new on PS4.

That's not quite "hard boiled detective" stuff, Danganronpa is as weeaboo as you can get

[jackcaeylin]

my wall of text disappeared, well things happen


thanks for the recommendation Gamer Griff, I will check it out.



Post by surnshurn on 20 hours ago
I think that a lot of the games that are ported over to the west are the sure-fire moneymakers these days.

I don't believe that. Many dead genres were never fix money makers and never AAA. I don't believe that games like No More Heroes or mystique Visual Novels are big sellers.
Many companies try to get max money with the lowest efforts in various cases, thus many companies are developing smartphones game, for example: Irem, hell Atlus created 52 cell phone/smartphone Shin Megami Tensei games in their existence. Now compare the amount of SMT console titles.


Today, niche market is growing and we even get weird fetish games. Games like Moero Chronichles from Idea Factory got an Asia release, which was the only possibility for the international audience to play it in english. This is not really a "money-money" decisions.

I totally agree with your points, but economical factors are also very important: globalisation, growing distributions, networking, creating publishing departments and the blossom of the Internet since 2006 are heavy factors. Internet is helpful for expecting sales and marketing.

Yours sincerely

Jack Caeylin

[Bumpyroad]

Cannon Spike/Power Stone type of arena shooters or fighters. People hold as much nostalgia for PS in particular as for Darkstalkers i imagine, but it's a pretty 'strange feeling' for Capcom.