In a post on PlatinumGames’ official blog, studio president Tatsuya Minami wrote about what has been missing the Japanese gaming industry and what Platinum will be bringing to the table in the future. Minami lamented the current lack of originality and energy that once characterized Japanese developers. His comments mirror those of fellow ex-Capcom employee, Keiji Inafune, who recently announced his own development studio, Intercept.
“I believe that games exist to offer fresh surprises to those who play them. However, the current games business is struggling. The 'fresh surprises' I mention are becoming few and far between, especially in our home of Japan,” wrote Minami. “Not so long ago, Japan lead the world’s games business, and it was not a stretch to call games a uniquely Japanese specialty; however, now it appears that Japanese games companies have lost their vigor.”
“Series grow ever-longer; original titles are on the decline. Games with new at their core are disappearing. Japanese games that garner worldwide acclaim are slipping away. This state of affairs deeply saddens us.”
Minami named PlatinumGames “The Japanese Standard Bearer in Global Competition”, and pledged to be “face of Japanese game studios on the worldwide stage.”
“I feel it is fair to say that PlatinumGames is currently one of the very few healthy Japanese games companies. I also came to realize that we must now consider our work in creating games to be that of a mandate. We want our contributions to not only be towards the games industry as a whole, but also be contributions towards our homeland of Japan. That is the principle that will guide our company into the future,” he continued.
“We aim to bring happiness to gamers worldwide. We seek to ignite a Japanese games revival. And our troops will have the highest morale,” Minami added. “We’re in this fight for the long haul.”
Platinum’s next title is the multiplayer brawler Anarchy Reigns, slated for release this year.
4 Comments
April 1, 2011
What I would love to see out of Japan is a Bethesda Open world style game, or a Bioware Jade Empire style game. Seriously, the spikey haired androgynous male lead that is in almost every JRPG game is really really old. Random combat encounters should be a thing of the past too.
I would love to see an open world game like Oblivion/Fallout 3 in a ancient japan world with Magic, or a future wasteland Japan where the entire country is the map.
April 1, 2011
See fearmonkey that would be a problem if it was true. While I would absolutely love to see Fallout meets Final Fantasy, I don't think Japanese developers would ever take onto the idea, and I'm not entirely against that.
The "cliches" of JRPG's you describe are Final Fantasy 7's problem alone, that perfect wheel can be done right with improvement "See Lost Odyssey", unfortunately they've been sucking lately because they are trying to do things differently in all the wrong ways, the same could be said about shooters these days, they are getting abhorrently bland because they are all super serious elephant men that are supposed to be "REALISTIC" and its obvious devs are getting sick and tired of it because in the last 2 years alone shooters have gone from Call of Duty and Gears of War, to the once epic ways they used to be with DNF, Serious Sam 3 and Bulletstorm.
Not all Japanese games have gotten bland, everybody runs into a rut, but the economic climate champions bland and sell-worthy over innovative and risk-taking, and honestly it sucks, nobody wants to lose there job, but nobody wants to make the same game over and over again.
April 4, 2011
I have an idea for them Japs games makers. Based on the recent disasters in Japan maybe they can make an action game called, "The Tsuname Wave Fighters", or maybe a horror game like, "Intensity 9.0", or another horror game like, "The Japanese Zombie Village". These are just titles but that's just giving them an idea.
April 4, 2011
Seems like someone read my critique of Japanese RPG games about a year back: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/opinion-japanese-rpgs-are-dead/ ;)
Seriously though, a lot of the problem stems from a lack of risk taking and many of the development decisions coming down to business people, not designers. So in many cases, not only are there not new franchises, but there aren't even new takes on old franchises. Maybe the hope for the AAA games industry in Japan comes to studios and people, like Mikami, Inafune, Itagaki and Platinum, that have left major publishers to forge their own path.