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[Mibu no ookami]

When you think about the majority of major Japanese directors/producers in the 90s and 2000s, a large swath of them have left their companies and decided to create their own studios.

This happens in the West too, but in Japan, I feel like it's been largely done to little success. Like, I feel like Japan was already behind the West who embraced using Unreal Engine to consistently make games, and the gap has just widened through the HD and 4K eras. Like these directors don't have the financial resources to make the games that match their creative visions and then these original companies don't have the creative talent to make the games anymore and are particularly risk-averse anyways.

Konami
Hideo Kojima
Koji Igarashi
Keiichiro Toyama

Capcom
Keiji Inafune
Yoshiki Okamoto
Shinji Mikami
Hideki Kamiya

Square Enix
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Hiromichi Tanaka
Yasumi Matsuno
Koichi Ishii
Tetsuya Takahashi
Masato Kato
Toshiro Tsuchida

Sega
Yuji Naka
Yu Suzuki

As I said, it's fairly normal to some degree to see people move from company to company, but it's just striking that almost no one on this list has had any degree of significant commercial success after leaving their companies at least not compared to what they were doing before.

Death Stranding has probably been the most commercially successful but had significant backing from Sony rather than independently published, but also comes nowhere close to the commercial success of Metal Gear Solid.

It seems like these devs are feelings stifled by the corporate side of their companies and seek a level of freedom, but that freedom hasn't really resulted in commercial success. So I'm not sure that betting on themselves has yielded results (commercially). Maybe ultimately, that's the big thing, they'd rather work on the games they want to work on whether they are commercial hits or not, but I can't help but think console gaming in Japan has shrunk because these guys aren't making the hits they once did and neither are their companies (at the same rate they used to).

 

[GHound]

I personally feel mobile games have hurt it far more but then I guess the two things aren't completely unrelated. At least when taking into account the people on that list that are pretty much only doing mobile games now. Really is disheartening to see people who used to be involved in some amazing stuff pushing simplistic gacha trash 'cause it makes a lot of money.

 

[Kiddo Cabbusses]

Doing a comparison between Konami and Sega, I feel like the theoretical success/future reception of a "hotshot developer" post-leaving company seems directly proportional to how crap that company is seen as treating it's developers. Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki had a lot of pull in the old Sega, and feel washed-up now, while Kojima and Igarashi who were literally forcibly driven out of Konami are both doing considerably better.

 

[kingfey]

People got old, and want to do their own things. You can't depend on the same people to do those genre. They want to do new experience, but gamers don't want changes. They want their old experiences. As long as that option exists, you wont see big commercial success.

Its up to the new generation to take the mantle, and release their vision.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Doing a comparison between Konami and Sega, I feel like the theoretical success/future reception of a "hotshot developer" post-leaving company seems directly proportional to how crap that company is seen as treating it's developers. Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki had a lot of pull in the old Sega, and feel washed-up now, while Kojima and Igarashi who were literally forcibly driven out of Konami are both doing considerably better.

That's interesting, but I think that's because Konami's games reached such a larger audience than Sega's.

Like Sega never really had anything that was as commercially viable in the modern era as Metal Gear. It'll be interesting to see how people view Kojima if he has another game that is questionable in terms of commercial viability. I don't think Yuji Naka and Yu Suzuki have gotten anywhere near the opportunity to put something together as big as Death Stranding.

I can't imagine that no companies want to work with these guys, so it must be that they don't want to work with big companies.

We'll see how long Shinji Mikami stays under Microsoft.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Keihart]

When you think about the majority of major Japanese directors/producers in the 90s and 2000s, a large swath of them have left their companies and decided to create their own studios.

This happens in the West too, but in Japan, I feel like it's been largely done to little success. Like, I feel like Japan was already behind the West who embraced using Unreal Engine to consistently make games, and the gap has just widened through the HD and 4K eras. Like these directors don't have the financial resources to make the games that match their creative visions and then these original companies don't have the creative talent to make the games anymore and are particularly risk-averse anyways.

Konami
Hideo Kojima
Koji Igarashi
Keiichiro Toyama

Capcom
Keiji Inafune
Yoshiki Okamoto
Shinji Mikami
Hideki Kamiya

Square Enix
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Hiromichi Tanaka
Yasumi Matsuno
Koichi Ishii
Tetsuya Takahashi
Masato Kato
Toshiro Tsuchida

Sega
Yuji Naka
Yu Suzuki

As I said, it's fairly normal to some degree to see people move from company to company, but it's just striking that almost no one on this list has had any degree of significant commercial success after leaving their companies at least not compared to what they were doing before.

Death Stranding has probably been the most commercially successful but had significant backing from Sony rather than independently published, but also comes nowhere close to the commercial success of Metal Gear Solid.

It seems like these devs are feelings stifled by the corporate side of their companies and seek a level of freedom, but that freedom hasn't really resulted in commercial success. So I'm not sure that betting on themselves has yielded results (commercially). Maybe ultimately, that's the big thing, they'd rather work on the games they want to work on whether they are commercial hits or not, but I can't help but think console gaming in Japan has shrunk because these guys aren't making the hits they once did and neither are their companies (at the same rate they used to).

While the famouse creator or teams, have not all go on to make big block busters (which makes sense, since i doubt many of them have that as a priority after leaving the big corps seeking freedom), all the big companies are now in better shape than they were at the end of the PS3 era, Capcom has managed to make out of MH a success on the west, big money and brand success. Not to mention that they have revitalized almost all their tarnished franchises, like DMC and RE.

Konami was only Kojipro at that point, so i would go as far as to say that nothing was lost there, SE is doing pretty alright and Sega has pushed the Persona machine and Yakuza pretty hard.

So idk, i see these staples companies as strong as ever, if anything, the ones struggling are the smaller ones, but even then, we have a lot more small japanese studios making games for a global market now.

 

[Woopah]

Platinum seems to have done pretty well for themselves.

I don't think there's a single reason which explains any publishers problem. The situation and issues faced by Konami are very different to those faced by Sega or Ubisoft.

 

[Keihart]

Platinum seems to have done pretty well for themselves.

I don't think there's a single reason which explains any publishers problem. The situation and issues faced by Konami are very different to those faced by Sega or Ubisoft.

there are some interviews about it, but Platinum has been holding on by a thread for a long time, i think it was around Nier Automata that they were about to go down.
I love their games but i wouldn't call them a comercial success, although, as long as they can keep making games, that is a success by itself.

 

[Woopah]

there are some interviews about it, but Platinum has been holding on by a thread for a long time, i think it was around Nier Automata that they were about to go down.
I love their games but i wouldn't call them a comercial success, although, as long as they can keep making games, that is a success by itself.

Not massively so, but they are still an independent studio who has survived and still gets a lot of work. I don't think you can say that about many Western splinter studios.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Not massively so, but they are still an independent studio who has survived and still gets a lot of work. I don't think you can say that about many Western splinter studios.

It'll be very interesting to see what happens with Deviation Games. If they are anywhere as good as Respawn for example.

One of the things that makes this Activision purchase so interesting is going to be how many key people from Infinity Ward end up going over to Respawn.

 

[Elysion]

I think the bigger issue was the fracturing of the Japanese console market in general during the seventh generation. Most Japanese publishers probably expected the PS3 to be just as dominant as the PS2, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the PS3 floundered in Japan for a long time, while the 360 took market share from Sony in the west and the Wii became a global phenomenon that outsold them both.

The Wii, together with the PSP (which was very successful in Japan), and later the 3DS, allowed Japanese developers to stick with 6th gen hardware much longer (in case of the DS even 5th gen), while the west fully embraced 7th gen technology. Even combined the PS3 and 360 never reached PS2 numbers (or Wii numbers) in Japan, and some of the best selling 3rd party games in Japan during that gen came out either on Wii, DS or PSP (Dragon Quest IX or the Monster Hunter series, for example). Capcom was probably the only Japanese developer who didn’t fall behind the west technologically during that time.

Thankfully today it seems most Japanese publishers and developers are much more capable than they were a decade ago, so it seem the worst is behind us in this regard.

 

[Alexios]

Capcom is doing pretty great with great games selling gangbusters, why would they be at fault in any way? SEGA's/Sonic Team's money making didn't change with Naka's departure either. And if they couldn't save their own hardware then they weren't the reason other consoles sold anyway.

 

[Rest]

Old guys get replaced by new guys. Just because an old guy worked at a place that included their name in the marketing campaign doesn't mean that that old guy was particularly important to the quality of the products that company made.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I think the bigger issue was the fracturing of the Japanese console market in general during the seventh generation. Most Japanese publishers probably expected the PS3 to be just as dominant as the PS2, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the PS3 floundered in Japan for a long time, while the 360 took market share from Sony in the west and the Wii became a global phenomenon that outsold them both.

The Wii, together with the PSP (which was very successful in Japan), and later the 3DS, allowed Japanese developers to stick with 6th gen hardware much longer (in case of the DS even 5th gen), while the west fully embraced 7th gen technology. Even combined the PS3 and 360 never reached PS2 numbers (or Wii numbers) in Japan, and some of the best selling 3rd party games in Japan during that gen came out either on Wii, DS or PSP (Dragon Quest IX or the Monster Hunter series, for example). Capcom was probably the only Japanese developer who didn’t fall behind the west technologically during that time.

Thankfully today it seems most Japanese publishers and developers are much more capable than they were a decade ago, so it seem the worst is behind us in this regard.

I don't know if the PS3 can take the blame for this.

I think it ultimately comes down to the games.

The PS2 did considerably better than the PS1 in Japan, but that was probably due to a lack of competition than anything else.

PS1 + N64 + Saturn = 30.74 million

PS2 = 24.4 million

Gamecube + Dreamcast + Xbox = 6.97

Overall you're looking at about the same number of consoles sold in the generation.

What were the best-selling PS2 games in Japan?

Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Winning Eleven, Gran Tursimo, Everybody's Golf, Onimusha, Dynasty Warriors...

Pretty much all of those franchises either disappeared on PS3 or went significantly downhill.

Compare FFX and 12 to just 13

Dragon Quest 8 on PS2 verse Dragon Quest 9 being on NDS. Home consoles went over a decade without a single-player main-series DQ game. Both Winning Eleven and GT are going to be byproducts of user base. Same with Everybody's golf.

No Onimusha at all on PS3 after the decline of the series in Onimusha 3.

Dynasty Warriors I'm assuming has failed to evolve which is why they instead do licensed games now.