Japan's gaming industry

The Japanese gaming industry is in decline. Twenty years ago, Nintendo’s Mario and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog was born in Japan and dominated video games. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, the West have now overtaken Japan’s video designers. Now Japanese gaming industry are asking whether they should learn from the West and make games more appealing to them.

The West’s dominance in the video games industry was evident in this year’s Tokyo Game Show (September 18-19) and has continued to thrive. Part of the reasoning for Japan’s decline from Japanese video designers’ perspectives is that Japanese games are repetitive and have no diversity or originality. So rather than thinking of new ideas and presenting them in a different way, Japanese video games have continued to update existing games and have tried to make them better, presenting them in the same way.

Japanese video designers are realising now they are not just designing games for a niche audience, but a global one. Since the gaming industry is continually changing, and Japan’s domestic market is shrinking, there is a need to alter games and sell more games overseas. Thus, designers will be looking to get some inspiration from the West so as to save Japan video game market from further decline.