Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

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It still blows my mind boobs are now taboo. In fucking America of all places.
 
Article is slightly old (2 weeks old) but I don't think it's been brought up once.

Translation:

To begin, I received a notable response to my previous article. In reading it, one can see that there are a number of game users who harbor internal anger towards Sony (SIE). In the past few years, we’ve seen Sony (SIE) become more focused on the U.S. market while beginning to steadily drifting away from Japanese PlayStation users. The intent of my previous article wasn’t to ruffle feathers with a sensationalist title, but to inform Sony headquarters and SIE of Japanese PlayStation users’ profound feelings of despair; I think it’s likely that they have understood that.

However, Sony HQ has told us directly that they value the Japanese market, a comment that we were grateful to hear. I do think it’s highly probable that Sony does take Japan seriously. That said, while their feelings are valuable, their actions do not match those feelings. That’s why users believe Sony and CEO Jim Ryan have shown disregard for the Japanese market. In mentioning this, one might think this is simply conjecture by the ACE Economic Research Center.

To be a bit more specific,

1. The PS4 launched in 2013, but Japan’s release came afterward.
2. After fall 2018, Sony implemented its own regulations on depictions in games, which has censored content aimed at Japanese users
3. The PS5 reveal video had no Japanese narration, while there were issues with the font used for the subtitles as well as their Japanese translations
4. The confirm button was changed from O to X in order to set a global standard
5. Due to manufacturing issues, the initial launch allocation for PS5 in Japan was barely above that of the PS3, preventing the system from reaching early adopters


And so forth. As counterpoints to the above, all that can be said is that E3 and year-end PlayStation sales campaigns (price drops) were implemented on a global basis and that the PS5 launched in Japan at the same time as the rest of the world. In all probability, the PS5’s global launch was simply in response to Microsoft’s attempt to go on the offensive, with Japan’s status as a Tier 2 region remaining unchanged. It’s difficult to agree that Sony is taking Japan seriously when taking these measures into account. The main issue concerns the 2nd point above. Aniplex, which is part of the Sony umbrella, is deriving large amounts of income from Fate/Grand Order’s swimsuit characters, but on PlayStation, games that depict swimsuits either cannot be sold or have had alterations forced onto them. This is nothing but a double standard. All this does is feed into users’ distrust. This policy should immediately be rescinded. However, it unfortunately seems to be taboo for Sony’s upper management to breach the topic of censorship, so we predict that ACE Economic Research Institute’s opinion will be ignored.

Next, let’s look at 25 years of data.

Post-Launch Sales Data for 25 Years’ Worth of Consoles


(Source: Famitsu)

As I mentioned previously, PS5 has fallen below PS3 as predicted. Based on this graph, can one really sense that Sony (SIE) has plans for success in the Japanese market? ACE Economic Research Institute cannot see it.

Even then, PS5 sales in the 4th and 5th weeks are around 11,000 units, while the 6th week is 17,000 units. These sales are far too low. Total sales of 240,000 are by far the lowest in the history of PlayStation home consoles. If this were to continue, lifetime sales of PS5 would perhaps end up at less than half of PS4. Such a small penetration poses a threat to Japan’s console games market.

Quantitative analysis shows that Sony is not taking Japan seriously. That is why users have accused Sony of disregarding the Japanese market and why it’s not unreasonable for those users to feel a sense of hopelessness.

One more point I wanted to make is that SIE shifting its HQ to the US led to its attitude towards Japanese users becoming rather cold, and why SIE has lost its Japanese principles. As mentioned previously, Japanese users aren’t likely to channel their dissatisfaction on social media, so US SIE HQ staff might perceive that as the Japanese just politely accepting whatever is given to them, regardless of how cold they have actually become. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth: they’ve simply begun to vanish into the sunset quietly.

With all that taken in account, Sony (SIE) might believe that their high end game experiences are not needed in Japan, where moe is mainstream. The platform maker has lots its motivation to take responsibility in the Japanese market. Early PS5 trends have shown that the PlayStation brand in Japan is in decisive decline and ACE Economic Research Institute cannot help but be disappointed. We think Sony will come to regret this.

Even then, as I said before, half of the global game market is concentrated in the US and there are many people who believe that winning there will round things off neatly. Indeed, in a global context, the Japanese economy has been stagnant for 30 years, and its share of electronic products is now only around 10 percent, which has led Japan to having a thinner presence.

It’s not clearly understood why Japan’s economy has been sluggish for this long. The ACE Economic Research Institute believes that the increase in single-person households and small living space are major factors, but this isn’t the place to discuss this, so let’s move on.

With Japan only having a 10 percent share, it’s conceivable to see that some may stop caring about it, but is Japan actually a market where game consoles don’t sell? Should Japanese users be resigned to accepting this situation?

Yearly Japanese Hardware Sales

(Source: Famitsu)

Shown in this graph are yearly sales of the 3DS, PS4 and Switch from launch. There are years where both the 3DS and Switch have sold over 5 million units. Furthermore, Switch sales in year 4 are incomplete, but show that its peak has surpassed that of the 3DS, showing that concerns about Switch running out of steam are falsehoods. Total sales of Switch have surpassed 17 million units. In all likelihood, total sales will exceed 25 million units.

Also, we have commented that sales (shipments) of Switch in its entire lifecycle may exceed 150 million units. We think that sales are progressing in line with our predictions. On the other hand, PS4 has never sold more than 2 million units in a single year. Final sales in Japan will total around 9.5 million units, below that of the PS3. It’s highly likely that total PS4 sales will end up at below half of Switch sales. Even when taking into account the presence of the handheld-only Switch Lite, we can see that PlayStation sales are unambiguously in decline.

What do you think? Does Japan look like a market where games don’t sell? Japan is a market where you can be rewarded with 20 million sales for your efforts. Abandoning this market because one thinks photo-realistic games are not mainstream or that non-portable home consoles don’t sell is a very problematic business approach, and I can’t really feel a strong response from Sony (SIE) in this regard.

Also, if investment markets feel that PS5 is selling, then perhaps they might not perceive of the decline of the Japanese market as a problem at all.

The late Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s former president, was known to avoid using the word “failure” because he thought it had an adverse impact, but the ACE Economic Research Institute believes that admitting when something has failed will lead to success in the next generation.

We still think Sony (SIE) will continue to ignore these points. However, looking at the present situation, in which Sony (SIE) has failed to ship enough PS5s to Japan for the year-end shopping season, we cannot help but be deeply concerned for the future of the PlayStation market in Japan.

The PS5 is selling so badly in Japan (unit sales are currently much lower than the Vita and even the WiiU experienced) due of poor stock amounts but also because of a low public demand, even the holiday season didn't see an increase at all. You get cases of lotteries that lead to automatic wins for the participants because only a few of them are interested to obtain it. Sony is discontinuing all the PS4s save for one model to help the PS5 production in Nipponland but I sincerely doubt it would revert the situation in Sony's favor there.

Meanwhile the Switch has sold a whooping 6 million hardware units in Japan and all the Switch games are entirely filling the Top 30 for a long while (including the monopoly board Momotaro Dentetsu from Konami or Sakuna Rice among the third-parties dominating the charts, even the Earth Defence Force spinoff sold better on Switch).
 

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Well they just announced that cool new open world Indiana Jones game is going to be made by the Wolfenstein Youngblood devs, one of 2019's worst and most aggressively woke games.

Fuck you Bethesda.
 
Well they just announced that cool new open world Indiana Jones game is going to be made by the Wolfenstein Youngblood devs, one of 2019's worst and most aggressively woke games.

Fuck you Bethesda.
Christ I forgot about Youngblood. Did the team that did New Order just up and leave? New Colossus was fucking wretched and reeked of rushed development, cut content, and woke compromise.
 
Well they just announced that cool new open world Indiana Jones game is going to be made by the Wolfenstein Youngblood devs, one of 2019's worst and most aggressively woke games.

Fuck you Bethesda.

Based tbh. Youngblood sucked, but the other Wolfenstein games they made were decent.

I hope they put a gay character or two in there. It's always entertaining to see people sperg out and rant about wokeness.
 
Christ I forgot about Youngblood. Did the team that did New Order just up and leave? New Colossus was fucking wretched and reeked of rushed development, cut content, and woke compromise.
It's the same team. They're from one of the most cucked cities (Uppsala) in the most cucked country (Sweden) though, so you get what you get.
 
The PS5 is selling so badly in Japan (unit sales are currently much lower than the Vita and even the WiiU experienced) due of poor stock amounts but also because of a low public demand, even the holiday season didn't see an increase at all. You get cases of lotteries that lead to automatic wins for the participants because only a few of them are interested to obtain it. Sony is discontinuing all the PS4s save for one model to help the PS5 production in Nipponland but I sincerely doubt it would revert the situation in Sony's favor there.

That's what you get for killing senran kagura you assholes.
 
That's what you get for killing senran kagura you assholes.
Senran Kagura was already on it's way out when Burst Renewal got censored, especially since the censored version greatly outsold the uncensored version. Marvelous dumped a shitload of cash into making an anime series and other senran kagura related stuff(which all bombed) and it drove the company to near the point of bankrupcy (again, because the first time was BIGGEST DUB EVER). Then they had a string of games that banked on them being BIG DEAL uncensored Softcore porn games for things like Kadokawa Jet Girls and Uppers, all of which bombed as well.

The game that rescused them turned out to be Sakuna of Rice and Ruin which has now outsold the lifetime sales of the last 3 Senran Kagura games.

The PS5 isn't selling in japan because there are no traditional RPGs on the system yet. Once you get a Dragon Quest or a persona or a Monster Hunter, sales will pick up. Japan is kinda split on the souls series but westerners love it and buy it in droves, the entire reason why Fromsoft even exists is entirely due to western fans.

Final Fantasy 16 will be out within a year or so if square is super serious about not letting shit become bogged down with development, once the first big RPG comes out sales tend to spike. Currently all the Falcom games are still slated for PS4 and they have not announced a PS5 game yet, but sales for Ys9 were very good. You're maybe looking at September for when we may get the first exclusive PS5 RPGs from series that a large base will care about.
 
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"Senran Kagura was already on it's way out when Burst Renewal got censored, especially since the censored version greatly outsold the uncensored version"
Source: dude trust me. inb4 trying to compare the entire north american & european console release to the uncensored japanese release (which sold at 24,118 units on its first week launch )

Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest are both likely to stay within Nintendo considering their shared history. Especially if Rise turns out to be a massive success which seems to be a good prediction as the demo release crashed the eshop servers for half a day because far too many people tried to download it at once.

I can easily see the PS5 to become a console for japanese westaboos with a very few selected japanese games that do not trigger the fee-fees of californian overlords. Basically another Xbox at this point but selling just in the few thousands instead of one hundred units per week as the actual Xbox is a joke in Japan.
 
"Senran Kagura was already on it's way out when Burst Renewal got censored, especially since the censored version greatly outsold the uncensored version"
Source: dude trust me. inb4 trying to compare the entire north american & european console release to the uncensored japanese release (which sold at 24,118 units on its first week launch )

Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest are both likely to stay within Nintendo considering their shared history. Especially if Rise turns out to be a massive success which seems to be a good prediction as the demo release crashed the eshop servers for half a day because far too many people tried to download it at once.

I can easily see the PS5 to become a console for japanese westaboos with a very few selected japanese games that do not trigger the fee-fees of californian overlords. Basically another Xbox at this point but selling just in the few thousands instead of one hundred units per week as the actual Xbox is a joke in Japan.
Rise has a one year limited exclusivity deal after that it's already known to be coming to PC and possibly other platforms.

Dragon Quest, no new games have been announced. The switch version of 11 did wind up getting ported to other consoles and PC finally after it floundered due to retards buying pokemon. The swithc version did sell the least and it also took the longest to port over due to the hardware bottlenecks, DQ11 Vanilla sold the best out of any of the western Dragon Quests. I very much doubt square is going to ever do a downgrade port like that again since all the next gen and PC hardware is on the same format other than the switch.

Visually and performance-wise the port of the switch version of DQ11 is a downgrade on all other platforms. Which is a big form of contentment because it can't be definitive since the visual flaws are more glaring on higher powered hardware. MHRise is most definitely going to need a GOTY edition with all the non-free actual content DLC it's being paired with, it's also suffering from a visual downgrade because you can compare the Anjanath from Rise to the one in World and the one in Rise has a ton of details removed.

World is a tough act for Rise to beat because they're going down the GU path of added a ton of bullshit instead of keeping it simple which is what caused World to be made in the first place. World was supposed to be a reset, but they're jamming system on top of system again and it's to the detriment of a good number of weapon classes.

World now has all the end game mats to be easily farmable, you don't even need to do guiding lands for crystals now and can instead just do Ode to Destruction. But the endgame stuff for Rise is already tacking on too many extra steps just to get to a finished piece of gear.
 
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Dragon Quest mainline games were developed and remade for the Nintendo DS in spite of the stronger hardwares present in the market back then. The point is that it's a cult game serie that is played by children and adults alike in Japan. So yes, Squeenix is more likely to publish a new DQ game on a 33k yen tablet (which can act as a home console and handheld both) that is extremely popular across all-ages versus a 50k yen massive tower that is focused on the western "global" market, regardless of the raw power in terms of hardware.

Since your knowledge of the japanese videogame market is so poor, I should let you know the 3DS version of Dragon Quest XI was actually the best-seller in Japan according to Famitsu with over 1.1M copies, (and another source from Forbes). You know, the console with several Pokemon/Nintendo titles in it, not to mention much less powerful? The Switch version sold less on the principle it was basically a re-release (latest sightings in the Famitsu charts were 545k in September 2020 and currently 46k for the New Price Edition in 2021) but it still sold much better compared to similar cases of re-releases there. DQ11S has so much additional content and QoL improvements that acting like the "downgraded graphics" for a very good JRPG is a big deal-breaker is really silly, even when it still retains the Akira Toriyama's trademark look.

Again, stop posting anytime if you gonna pull bullshit out of your ass and hoping the less informed users here to believe your crap in the topic of japanese vidya market. I know Sony/PS fanboys are currently undergoing a coping mechanism of various sorts ("Japan is irrelevant" etc.) due of Sony's stupid decisions but still.
 
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Dragon Quest mainline games were developed and remade for the Nintendo DS in spite of the stronger hardwares present in the market back then. The point is that it's a cult game serie that is played by children and adults alike in Japan. So yes, Squeenix is more likely to publish a new DQ game on a 33k yen tablet (which can act as a home console and handheld both) that is extremely popular across all-ages versus a 50k yen massive tower that is focused on the western "global" market, regardless of the raw power in terms of hardware.

Since your knowledge of the japanese videogame market is so poor, I should let you know the 3DS version of Dragon Quest XI was actually the best-seller in Japan according to Famitsu with over 1.1M copies, (and another source from Forbes). You know, the console with several Pokemon/Nintendo titles in it, not to mention much less powerful? The Switch version sold less on the principle it was basically a re-release (latest sightings in the Famitsu charts were 545k in September 2020 and currently 46k for the New Price Edition in 2021) but it still sold much better compared to similar cases of re-releases there. DQ11S has so much additional content and QoL improvements that acting like the "downgraded graphics" for a very good JRPG is a big deal-breaker is really silly, even when it still retains the Akira Toriyama's trademark look.

Again, stop posting anytime if you gonna pull bullshit out of your ass and hoping the less informed users here to believe your crap in the topic of japanese vidya market. I know Sony/PS fanboys are currently undergoing a coping mechanism of various sorts ("Japan is irrelevant" etc.) due of Sony's stupid decisions but still.
The DS games were ages ago, and the 3DS version wasn't even released in the states. The DS games were also based off of PS2 ports.

Like it's not a fair comparison, especially since the western market is what drives console and game sales. Square also didn't bother brining the DQ Trilogy switch release to America either.

Having just a foothold in the states isn't satisfactory for a series like DQ, especially since you have it's contemporaries selling far more in the same western market. Citing Japanese figures doesn't mean shit if the big boy market isn't buying it.

People did this throughout the wii-u's life cycle as well, but just doing well in a small market doesn't translate to a console doing well overall. For a series to grow and expand you really need the western market to notice it. But the american Nintendo fanbase is fucking retarded.
 
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>DQ11 Vanilla sold the best out of any of the western Dragon Quests.
>The DS games were ages ago, and the 3DS version wasn't even released in the states. The DS games were also based off of PS2 ports.

mate, pls.
and that's with conveniently ignoring the status DQ has in japan, DQ being the best/worst type of jrpg (depending on your taste), how long it takes for a new title to release, and how much the market changed over the years. IX came out in 2010, that's 10 years ago while being released on one system alone. VIII came out in fucking 2004, which is like a different era at this point (and ports always fare worse than a new release, see XI).

treating DQ as anything but an outlier is like trying to say halo > everything else because "muh us sales numbers".

I also don't see the ps5 get a big resurgence in japan, at least not anytime soon. a big release would fix one aspect (no shit to play), but not the price and being a home console, but that release would need to be big enough - which DQ could be. however, squeenix would be retarded to not got mulitplat with XII, and sony california being the tards that they are probably don't want to pay for the exclusivity to affect a market they don't care about anymore anyway, and that's before any nintendo counter offers. it's more likely sony completely ignores it, nintendo gets a cheap exclusive deal and switch sales shit even more on playstation (and depending when that deal happens they can target switch hardware directly and not have to make a port work).
it also depends on the timing, depending how long corona will go on and it's economical effects. when things go bad (even perceived) people tend to sit on their money, that's why markets don't like the boat getting rocked. doesn't matter at that point how good any game on ps5 is when people can't/don't want to spend the money on a whole new system. and if you need one the switch is still cheaper while still being "japanese", so playstation has literally no advantages, exclusive rpg or not.
 
>DQ11 Vanilla sold the best out of any of the western Dragon Quests.
>The DS games were ages ago, and the 3DS version wasn't even released in the states. The DS games were also based off of PS2 ports.

mate, pls.
and that's with conveniently ignoring the status DQ has in japan, DQ being the best/worst type of jrpg (depending on your taste), how long it takes for a new title to release, and how much the market changed over the years. IX came out in 2010, that's 10 years ago while being released on one system alone. VIII came out in fucking 2004, which is like a different era at this point (and ports always fare worse than a new release, see XI).

treating DQ as anything but an outlier is like trying to say halo > everything else because "muh us sales numbers".

I also don't see the ps5 get a big resurgence in japan, at least not anytime soon. a big release would fix one aspect (no shit to play), but not the price and being a home console, but that release would need to be big enough - which DQ could be. however, squeenix would be retarded to not got mulitplat with XII, and sony california being the tards that they are probably don't want to pay for the exclusivity to affect a market they don't care about anymore anyway, and that's before any nintendo counter offers. it's more likely sony completely ignores it, nintendo gets a cheap exclusive deal and switch sales shit even more on playstation (and depending when that deal happens they can target switch hardware directly and not have to make a port work).
it also depends on the timing, depending how long corona will go on and it's economical effects. when things go bad (even perceived) people tend to sit on their money, that's why markets don't like the boat getting rocked. doesn't matter at that point how good any game on ps5 is when people can't/don't want to spend the money on a whole new system. and if you need one the switch is still cheaper while still being "japanese", so playstation has literally no advantages, exclusive rpg or not.
Considering that Bandai is now thinking of remastering mostly all the previous Tales of games and we're now even getting games that appeared earlier in this generation that are getting remastered. Square could easily pick a Trilogy out of Dragon Quest and do what they did with Trials of Mana. Do a smaller budget remake of an already existing game. barring the IOS ones the last time the original three games got a release in the west was on the Gameboy Color.

Japan's preference for handhelds never really did transfer over into the western market though. it more often than not lead to more issues than solutions. Nintendo's friend code and DS pass systems were all based around the Japanese lifestyle and US and Euro users hated that shit because any type of ad-hoc stuff required close contact where as it was easier to just connect to the internet than to just find another person with a DS in proximity. The switch still has the worst online out of the three systems and this is a hold over from Nintendo never really trying to understand the larger market as a whole.

I agree there's probably not going to be console resurgence any time soon in japan because that's all mostly linked to the Japanese never really being at home like they were decades ago. But many devs are more or less relying on the western market and china way more than they used to, and they also seem to be more reliable customers than the Japanese.

Also you're wrong on Sony not wanting to pay for exclusivity for Japanese games, they were the ones who have been doing this since the PS3 era and it's only gotten larger and more frequent since then. They apparently have Square down for 5 timed exclusivity games that could be anywhere in the ball park to 20-80 million and that's just one company out of many. All of Falcom's major releases are all done like this too.

There's also the whole situation with Crunchy Roll, the Re:Zero game that's out at the end of the month is being heavily promoted with the service. The switch version is even has it, so they're effectively getting stuff cross platform for the app.
 
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Also you're wrong on Sony not wanting to pay for exclusivity for Japanese games, they were the ones who have been doing this since the PS3 era and it's only gotten larger and more frequent since then. They apparently have Square down for 5 timed exclusivity games that could be anywhere in the ball park to 20-80 million and that's just one company out of many. All of Falcom's major releases are all done like this too.

squeenix also has FF and it's still timed. it depends if they do a cost/benefit ratio, how much would they gain paying for DQ? and this isn't ps3 sony, this is "we want western blockbusters" sony, which DQ is anything but. if sony thinks there's no point since it would mainly affect japan (while FF exclusivity has an effect worldwide, where they're competing with microsoft), there's a good chance they'll skip it.
 
squeenix also has FF and it's still timed. it depends if they do a cost/benefit ratio, how much would they gain paying for DQ? and this isn't ps3 sony, this is "we want western blockbusters" sony, which DQ is anything but. if sony thinks there's no point since it would mainly affect japan (while FF exclusivity has an effect worldwide, where they're competing with microsoft), there's a good chance they'll skip it.
Actually it depends on the company or IP holder, some companies have the ps4 compete with the switch, while others do not and just have it compete with xbox and PC, others will also group PC into it's own thing and segregate the consoles. You're basically getting into statistics and lying with statistics at that point, it also depends on who initiates the deal.

Like for example Limited Run games just sold over 25,000 copies for scott pilgrim within a single day. They're now overburdened because ubisoft thought the game would not sell above triple digits at retail and LRG is a much smaller company. They effectively underestimated demand and both the switch and PS4 sold around equal amounts.

I don't really see Sony stepping away from japanese games, especially since western publishers like NISA, Atlus, XSeed, are all looking and are usually the ones who do the heavy lifting when it comes to present deals and offers to the console manufacturer. Sony's strategy has always been to throw money at other unrelated teams to make stuff, Nintendo has never done this to any major extent and Microsoft just buys up shit to sit on it for years and decades. The whole Soulsborne genre became a thing because Sony throws cash at people, OTOH you also got No Man's Sky getting debacle'd due to the dev team getting money and biting off more than they could chew.

They're definitely tying Crunchyroll into their videogame assets though, since there's much overlap between the two. They're also getting a cut if the anime game gets released on another platform since the US rights get tied directly into merch sales.

Sony's own studios and satellites have been told to focus on third person adventure games(which is a very broad genre). This works because Nintendo did similar shit for platformers and pouring resources into a single genre helps perfect or improve it. It's why Rare made DKC for example.
 
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Do a smaller budget remake of an already existing game. barring the IOS ones the last time the original three games got a release in the west was on the Gameboy Color.
Dragon quest 1,2 and 3 are on Switch as Dragon Quest Collection
 
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