Shuhei Yoshida, Sony's president of Worldwide Studios, believes that Western gamers are finally beginning to find some traction with Japanese gamers. Japanese players tend to prefer domestically-developed titles, with our larger releases not doing as well in the Land of the Rising Sun. In an interview on the Official European PlayStation blog, Yoshida explains that Uncharted's position on the Japanese Vita launch lineup is indicative of a larger change.
“Actually, we collect data from retailers taking pre-orders and we know that Everybody’s Golf (note: known as Hot Shots Golf in North America) is the most popular and Uncharted: Golden Abyss is number two. I’m very proud that they are both Worldwide Studios titles,” said Yoshida.
“Japanese people traditionally have a strong local preference, particularly with the Manga style look of characters that they love. But as technology and presentation advances in games like Uncharted and Call of Duty, they are rightly seeing their quality. Also, it helps that SCEJ paid a lot of money to get Harrison Ford to appear on TV playing Uncharted!” he added.
Yeah, Harrison Ford saying “cool” in Japanese is officially a thing.
