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Has Sony made PlayStation "too Western"?

For me, yes. I used to view Sony as a predominantly Japanese company that gained an identity for their charming, peculiar, and, experimental games. However, they really shifted gears towards becoming more western oriented ever since the PS4. Their own flavour of Japanese quirkiness was/is barely present during the PS4.

From a gamer pov, I think its a loss, but at the same time they're a business. It might not appeal to me, but it probably does to others.
 

kingkaiser

Member
In my opinion it was always the 3rd party support from Japan that made the PlayStation outstanding. Everytime I think about the glorious days I think of Konami, Capcom, Namco and Square when they were in their prime.
Sadly these companies are now just a shadow of their former self, some of them even gave up completely on video games. Sony is pushing more and more into the narrative driven and interactive drama scheme which as a result makes me less and less interested in their platform.
 
I understand that Sony and other Japanese companies are trying to adapt to the industry and changing trends, but imo becoming more Western wouldn’t be a good thing. Eventually Sony and the Japanese companies could lose their identity and what made them special or unique in the first place. That’s one of the things that make Nintendo special and distinguish them from the competition. I think that’s one of the things that damaged the Xbox. Sony has many of the same games, highly acclaimed Japanese and Western games and more. There isn’t really much to set the XBOX apart from PlayStation now unfortunately.

Sony is definitely favoring the West more most likely because they are making more money which is understandable as a business. Hopefully they won’t neglect Japanese games just because of they usually make less money. It’s a little concerning especially if you want to see Sony be more experimental and take more risks. We’ll see what happens.
 
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reksveks

Member
The companies/people I care about from the japanese game dev space are:

- atlus
- rgg
- some of square enix
- Yoko Taro
- Tetsuya Mizuguchi
- Ueda

If a good game from those guys goes completely exclusive then I will probably buy a ps5 (if there is a slim version) but it seems like they are likely to release on PC as well (barring Altus and I know Sega is trying to become more multiplat)
 

fersnake

Member
What is up with these threads lately?
MtZ9N.gif
 

ZywyPL

Banned
They moved away from the Japanese market because the Japanese market moved away from home consoles and switched to mobile gaming instead, fair and simple. So obviously they are aiming for the western audience now. The Japanese devs seem to be stuck in the past with their game/level designs, animations, tech/visuals etc., if you want to experience the same charm the oldschool games from 15-20 years ago had, then the Japanease games are the ones to play, but most of the western audience is not interested in that, they want realism, games that are believable, not the ridiculousness from Japan. Personally, it's a change for the better.
 

Edokataki

Banned
For the most part, PlayStation as a brand for the PS1 and PS2, was distinctly Japanese with many of its well known titles being third party games from Japanese developers, as well as many first party games being developed in Japan such as the Ape Escape series and Team Ico games. This echoed the Japanese origins of the company behind it, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., which was headquartered within Sony's Tokyo offices at the time. But starting with the PlayStation 3, things were changing. Microsoft helped revolutionize the market with its focus on Online services and Western AAA titles in the Xbox 360. With the PlayStation 3 struggling, Sony needed to combat it by moving PlayStation towards a more western focused direction. It started with SCE placing more focus on its western studios like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica. Then by bringing in Mark Cerny to architect what would be known as the PlayStation 4, and by making a bunch of deals with western third parties for exclusive content in multi-platform titles. This all culminated into Sony's decision to merge Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment, into Sony Interactive Entertainment, and relocate the whole division to San Mateo, California, where it exists today.

The only thing that PlayStation has Japan related now, is the fact that they have a studio in Tokyo. I get Sony's need to make PlayStation more a more western-oriented brand in order to keep up with Microsoft, and in a lot of ways, that's a good thing. But do you think that Sony may have went too far in that direction? And if so, should Sony move SIE back to its original home in Tokyo?
One farmer sells potatoes, he has 100 of them so he goes to X village every moth and sells 5 potatoes then he goes to Y village and he sells 95 potatoes. That happens all season long, where the farmer has to go next season to feed his family and grow his farm?
 

odhiex

Member
Sony is still a Japanese Company, but they have global brands e.g. the PlayStation, Bravia, Camera, Sony Pictures, etc.
 
Western games are where the quality is right now. What was the last great game out of Japan that wasn’t from soft or Nintendo? I think that western developers are just a step ahead talent and sales wise rn.
I disagree unless maybe you are talking about Sony’s first party and a handful of other Western developers. I feel we had too many disappointing, glitchy, janky and broken games to say Western games are better quality than Japanese games right now. Personally, I don’t think bigger budgets, larger worlds and prettier graphics necessarily equate to better games.

When was the last great game Japan put out? I think some good to excellent Japanese games are Resident Evil Village, Scarlet Nexus, DMC5, Persona Strikers, Death Stranding, Guilty Gear Strive, Neir Automata, Monster Hunter, Astral Chain, Octopath Traveler, Disgaea 6, Yakuza:LAD, Nioh 2, FF7:Remake, Soul Calibur 6, Demon’s Souls, Neir Replicant, DOA6, Judgment, Virtua Fighter 5:US, 13 Sentinels, Tekken 7, Resident Evil Remake 2 and 3, Atelier Ryza 2 to name a few.
 
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Spidey Fan

Banned
Japan is mobile industry now. Focusing on it heavily means, your competition will surprise you.

Look at Nintendo. Mario, Zelda, metroid, Pokémon. Those are all western oriented games. Even their recent hit game AC was a more western oriented.

Outside people loves western stuff. Movies, games, etc. This means printing money 💰 💰
 

GeorgPrime

Banned
For the most part, PlayStation as a brand for the PS1 and PS2, was distinctly Japanese with many of its well known titles being third party games from Japanese developers, as well as many first party games being developed in Japan such as the Ape Escape series and Team Ico games. This echoed the Japanese origins of the company behind it, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., which was headquartered within Sony's Tokyo offices at the time. But starting with the PlayStation 3, things were changing. Microsoft helped revolutionize the market with its focus on Online services and Western AAA titles in the Xbox 360. With the PlayStation 3 struggling, Sony needed to combat it by moving PlayStation towards a more western focused direction. It started with SCE placing more focus on its western studios like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica. Then by bringing in Mark Cerny to architect what would be known as the PlayStation 4, and by making a bunch of deals with western third parties for exclusive content in multi-platform titles. This all culminated into Sony's decision to merge Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment, into Sony Interactive Entertainment, and relocate the whole division to San Mateo, California, where it exists today.

The only thing that PlayStation has Japan related now, is the fact that they have a studio in Tokyo. I get Sony's need to make PlayStation more a more western-oriented brand in order to keep up with Microsoft, and in a lot of ways, that's a good thing. But do you think that Sony may have went too far in that direction? And if so, should Sony move SIE back to its original home in Tokyo?

Ahh thats the reason the Xbox failed so hard every gen
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Nah, I still see them as Japanese brand.
They have more western studios sure, but the little things that sets them apart from Xbox.
As the saying goes, You can take Playstation out of Japan, but you can't take Japan out of Playstation
 

nush

Gold Member
One farmer sells potatoes, he has 100 of them so he goes to X village every moth and sells 5 potatoes then he goes to Y village and he sells 95 potatoes. That happens all season long, where the farmer has to go next season to feed his family and grow his farm?

Yup


Not a single Japanese title in the top ten best selling PS4 games.
 

Yoboman

Member
If anything I'd hope their disconnecting from Japan makes them more aggressive in the region

Sony Japan have been tip toeing around the Japanese market for years. Didnt make JRPGs cause they'll step on toes, didn't make a lot of things in fact for that reason
 
There's plenty of localised games from AA developers/ publishers like Bamco, as well as more budget constrained companies like D3, that i don't see it myself. I suppose if all you seek is a AAA experience then you may be right
 

KAL2006

Banned
It's not Sony fault Japan has declined in terms of making decent games. The PS3 generation took them a step back but luckily PS4 generation they have improved. There are plenty of exceptions like Capcom recent games. But Konami is dead, Sega isn't as good as they used to be. Even Platinum Games ain't doing great these days. JRPGs ain't a big as they used to be with PS1 generation. Sony focus on good games whether it's Japan or Western. Even Nintendo are outsourcing a ton of stuff to Western Devs with Luigi's Mansion. Alot of Japan have moved into mobile gaming. The last time Japan dominated was with 3DS.
 
All these clown companies are following the money as they're supposed to. It's just down to the bottom line. That's it and that's all.
I'm trying to see how this applies to Nintendo. A history of baffling decisions, sticking to their roots, adhering to a philosophy, and an amount of equal successes and failures. They seem to somehow not capitalize on their potential, buck trends, innovate, and survive. Partly, or mostly, due to the conservative nature of their financial management.

Sounds more like they lead themselves not really follow anything.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
I think this Thread is not remembering the type of games and the studios that made them in PS1,PS2 days. Eastern developed games still came from Enix, SquareSoft, Capcom, Konami. Sony was just the publisher for a good amount of them.

A lot of the big hits that Sony had on their platform were exclusive but not made by them. And you can't blame SOny for pivoting when companies like Konami pivoted their business to Pachinko.
Jet Moto, Crash, Spyro, Medievil, Twisted metal, God of war, Mark of Kri, all western developers. The games like Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Legend of Dragoon Japan studio yes. But that studio has been reformed into Team Asobi, and made larger by incorporating it into their Global publishing/studios.

We got a remake of Colossus and I think sales wise it did not light the world on fire, neither did last guardian which had a shit development.
I mean outside of Japan studio not many of the things most people remember from that era came from Sony eastern development?

Not like Sony has discontinued their support and connections with eastern developed games big and small. We have Kena, Stray, Little devil inside, Sifu on top of lots of Square exclusive titles.
Eastern development got better not worse. PS3 era had a lot of bad things happening in the eastern world because US/UK and Europe were the only markets really buying Eastern developed games. Eastern markets changed to mobile at that time and a lot of the teams we grew up with left studios to form smaller ones or got out entirely.

I mean if we didn't see a lot of games from China, ASIA MARKETS getting promoted by Sony I would say you are correct in your assumption OP. But it's farther from the truth. PS4 showed a big surge in eastern developed games because of not only Sony but Nintendo. If you want those smaller games like Bravery Default get a switch or buy them on PC?

Sony is still being Sony in my opinion I mean they made a lot of the remakes and remasters for classics like Spyro/Crash happen through their talks and being close to activision. Not their failt Activision is a shit company and basically turned those studios who made those titles into COD factories now.

I disagree with OP greatly. We now are in a crazy renaissance of Easter games. Just that a lot of them are all on different platforms or come in different forms.
 

Aion002

Member
Yes, the West won.

On the ps3 Sony tried both sides of things, they made western games like Uncharted, Resistance, Killzone, The Last of Us, God of War, Infamous and others. In the eastern side Sony also pushed hard, with Siren, White Knight, Folklore, Genji, Tokyo Jungle, Bleach, Puppeteer and others.

The western games won a shit ton of prizes and sold way more... On the beginning of the ps4 Sony also pushed a little bit on Japanese side and guess what? Again the west won, European and American Sony studios turned out to be the main thing that the consumers wanted, while the Japanese side slowly started disappearing.

I did my part, I own every single Sony Japan games... Too bad most don't.

In the end it's all the consumers fault... So if you didn't bought Sony Japan games and now wonder why they are disappearing... Well...

Star Wars Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
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Unknown?

Member
Uh I feel they've always been pretty Western. PS1s biggest titles had a lot of western games. Twisted Metal, ESPN Extreme Sports, Tomb Raider, 989 Sports made tons of American Sports, WipEout, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, etc.
 

Methos#1975

Member
Are they more westernized now? Certainly but that's because Japan is becoming increasingly less important to console gaming as their taste have changed while the West is becoming bigger and bigger as far as revenue goes.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
The japanese market only cares about mobile these days, so unless you wanted Sony to turn Playstation into a mobile console first and foremost, the only option was to focus on a more western audience.

Overall what has happened is that 3rd party Japanese publishers themselves have become less interested in games focused on the Japanese market, when in the PS1 days specifically it was all about that.
 
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Is it true that anything west of Japan is western? :messenger_dizzy:
if you walk long enough to the west everything is western!

Why can't people use continental or country names instead of east/west? Even as a kid if made no sense to me... because you know, the earth is not flat, maybe?

I think Sony is doing pretty good for themselves in terms of output, it's the Japanese studios that are past their prime, and sadly I don't think they will recover for a very long time.
 
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FingerBang

Member
No, Sony made the right choice and that's why they're dominating.They still have good Japanese games, their first party output is the best in the industry and they have made 2 machines that developers love to code for.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
I haven't played a Japanese style/made game in years, the look just doesn't interest me neither does that whole anime/schoolgirl shite with car sized swords, Sony are simply following the money, not enough money to be made out of fucking nerds and their loli pillows besides Sony's western studios produce far better games than anything coming out of Japan/Korea imo.. at least the plots make fucking sense to me

edit: Completely forgot about Last Guardian & Shadow of the Colossus, those are epic games
kawaii loli GIF
 

yurinka

Member
No, Sony is as Japanese as always. But Japan is now a way smaller part of the global console market than it was in the past, so they focus less on Japan and more in a global, more western audience because the global market now is less Japanese and more western. But not only for Sony, for all companies.

As always Sony has the support of all Japanese 3rd party companies, to the point that in addition to publish all multi games on PS4 basically all known Japanese publisher or dev had at least a PS4 exclusive, something Nintendo or Microsoft can't say. Specially in JRPG and fighting games they had important exclusives like Final Fantasy, Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy and so on.

And not only with 3rd party exclusives, they also got many Japan Studio (now refunded as Team Asobi) games like TLG, Gravity Rush Remastered, Gravity Rush 2, Astro's Playroom and so on, Gran Turismo from Polyphony and 2nd party games like Bloodborne, Déraciné, The Tomorrow Childer, Everybody's Golf, Everybody's Golf VR and many remasters or remakes like SotC, Demon's Souls, Loco Roco, Parappa, Patapon etc.

Now 2nd party will be handled globally from their best 2nd party team, XDEV, and they plan to increase their effort on 2nd party and 3rd party exclusives including Japanese ones as Jimbo and Hermen said and as we saw with related job offers. And we also know they are working on (who knows if Japanese) acquisitions. In fact, recently Sony made a deal with From Software's parent company.

Playstation no longer being Japanese happened with Sony corps approval.

It's now a USA company which has its pros and cons for Sony, the main pro is that is makes it easier to dominate the USA market which is the biggest consumption based economy in the world (good for selling games).

The con is that Playstation is now subject to the cultural wars of USA and whichever way the winds blow in that, this is especially annoying for those of us outside the USA. Also putting all your eggs in the USA basket is a risky position given the megacorps of USA (who have a lot more money than Sony) are a major risk to their business should Playstation ever falter. Lastly being too USA centric can weaken your international position which competitors can capitalize on, which is part of Xbox problem.

As long as Sony stays on top in the USA market they aren't going back to being an international company like they use to be.
In addition to what I said in the reply posted above, I would say that they didn't go from a Japan to a USA company, instead they went from being a bit too Japan focused to a more global corporation.

Yes, USA may have now the HQ and their biggest 1st party gamedev studios, but the biggest PlayStation market is EMEA, not USA. Jimbo and Hermen are European and they have been put there because they were the ones with a bigger improvent and performance in their areas. All Sony 2nd party games will be globally handled by XDEV, their most successful (and European) 2nd party team. Same goes with marketing and localization, instead of having multiple teams spread around the world they will have a single team with their best talent.

During decades Japan Studio had a free pass while they were shutting down many underperforming European and American studios. It doesn't mean that now they have something against Japan, it just means that now Japan is under the same position than the other regions.

Sony Japan also handles the console hardware and OS (with exceptions like the EyeToy/Moev/Singstar/Playlink/VR accesories stuff, which is from EU) with the help of Cerny, who in addition to work with Japan Studio games also collects the feedback and suggestions from all global teams to keep improving their console hardware and tools.

Regarding the cultural war with the woke stuff it doesn't only affects USA, it's going global. As an example it also affects Europe and many Latin American countries. But even Capcom Japan sent an internal memo asking devs to avoid certain topics, to be more 'inclusive' with their characters, use less revealing costumes for the female ones, etc.
 
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Excess

Member
When you say "Western", I presume you mean the Silicon Valley "inclusivity & diversity culture" that has permeated much of the tech industry. Then yes, good sir, it was a mistake.

iu
 

Derktron

Banned
I just think the console is too big and ugly. The rest is pure flames bro!
I agree the console is nice per se but when it is way too damn big the Series X is just right in size and I can see why Sony is having trouble keeping up with demands. I think if they kept the design but changed the size of it to a bit smaller. I think they'll do fine in the demands
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Is there something I missed recently about this topic? Because like mentioned earlier in this thread, it does seem to be coming up more frequently as of late. Essentially the whole "East vs West" thing. I feel like it started with that "West lacks gaming icons" thread, lmao. At least from what I noticed.

I don't think there's an issue with anything being "too Western", hell, I don't care if it's "too" anything. All I care about is great hardware, and great games. I don't think it's fair to say "x region is better that y", that just seems kind of ridiculous. Especially when great ideas and great games can come from all over. Sure, people may have their preferences, and that's fine. But I think it's cool to embrace the fact that greatness can be achieved from all over.
 

nush

Gold Member
I agree the console is nice per se but when it is way too damn big the Series X is just right in size and I can see why Sony is having trouble keeping up with demands. I think if they kept the design but changed the size of it to a bit smaller. I think they'll do fine in the demands

They obviously made it for the western market.
 
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