Sega announces 7.1 billion yen losses

Wow. Plenty of stuff I'd like to add to this thread.

Firstly, the main problem with Japanese gaming companies is that they just don't have the money and resources to compete on an even playing field. This is of course partly their own fault. They didn't look far enough ahead when they were at the top of the business, and always had that attitude of "We'll make the games for Japan, and if people from other countries like them, that's a bonus." They weren't prepared for America starting to throw money at developers the way they did.

Now we've got teams of hundreds working on games, and it's all due to the fanatical nature of the PC development teams, the way they always tried to make games bigger and better in scale, graphics, sounds... everything. While Japanese console developers were happy to make good games for 5 year old technology, the big PC developers were always aiming to make their games utilise the most advanced stuff on the planet.

That's why the Japanese are still dominant in the area of handhelds - they work to create the best game within these strict limitations, while Western developers would rather make their ULTIMATE MASTERPIECE using THE BEST AND NEWEST CUTTING EDGE ADVANCED AWESOME TECH! Of course, with the rise of mobile phone games, this is changing as well, so it will be interesting to see if the Japanese make a return to prominence on the back of mobile gaming.

The fact that Western developers are always looking into the cutting edge, it has raised expectations so much that most Japanese games look like budget titles comparatively. Not just Japan that suffers either. Have a look at Serious Sam 3 which was developed in Croatia. Awesome game, but looks so dated when placed next to one of those Ubisoft/EA monsters. At least for the next gen consoles, we may be looking at a situation similar to the movie industry, where you have the super big budget Hollywood crap that everyone eats up due to advertising more than anything else, and every so often one of those obscure foreign films will make a small impact.

Just another point, I looked into working at Sega back in 2003, and their starting pay for game devs at their Tokyo office was something like 200,000 yen a month. That was like $2000 at the time, which was peanuts for Tokyo. From what I've heard it's not much better today. Japanese developers are still underpaid compared to their Western counterparts, and that does mean they lose out on a heck of a lot of potential talent just due to people literally not making enough to survive in the industry.

As for the fall of Western manga publishers, a lot of that has to do with them overpublishing. Tokyopop brought out some great series, but they flooded their own market by bringing out a lot of lower quality manga as well. They also tried pumping money into amateur Western manga artists to grow the community, which was good intentioned, but to be harsh, many of these artists didn't have anywhere near the storytelling or artistic abilities the Japanese artists had, so of course their stuff didn't sell.

However, one area the Japanese still have an advantage over the West in terms of both anime, manga and games is that they've got more decent stuff aimed specifically at the young female market in all of those areas, while the female market is still relatively neglected in the West by the big publishers. Japan makes silly cutesy girly games that are actually good. They just haven't thought about capitalising on it yet because they think there's no market.

By the way, that article on the popularity of Japanese pop culture overseas was a really nice read too. However, I think a lot of the well received Japanese exports that were successful were actually the ones that were least culturally unique. Ninjas did great not because they were Japanese, but because everyone appreciates costumed badasses with funky weapons. Dragonball did well because it was so much like WWF wrestling. The cultural stuff was the topping, not the cake.

 

What? Serious Sam 3 is one of the best looking titles on PC AND it runs very well. It does have some silly downscaling enabled by default because of how many effects are actually built into the engine. Gameplay-wise it's always been very similar to Doom/Duke3d, and that's a GOOD thing. The on-rails CoD-style stuff is a boring and shallow way to design a singleplayer campaign.

The bombast in a lot of western games is creatively conservative, for what it's worth. They only want to ape Hollywood most of the time. The market is healthy so they can do it. It's been on a decline too in terms of creativity and complexity, but that's largely because of the switch over to console.

Well, he's not really talking about ninjas. In my exp with the late 90s and early 2000s anime/'otaku' stuff was a lot more sophisticated. I attribute that to the fact the writers could afford (budget-wise - they could profit) to take take risks on something new. In the previous parts of the article, the author looks at the Japanese economy and how it relates to pop culture. He shows that the price of living has gone through increases in the past 15 years or so due to stagnant economic growth. Since then, that type of experimentation become less economically viable in pop culture products as a whole. With anime in particular it now appeals only to the insular nerd community that demands 'moe' and other genre tropes along those lines, with a few exceptions.

 

See, I thought Serious Sam 3 looked awesome too, until I showed it to some of my friends who flat out said it looked outdated and old compared to COD and Battlefield. It seems that's the perception amongst the casuals.



Anime related wall of text coming up...

I'll agree, in the area of anime and games especially, there was a lot more room for experimentation when things were going good, but consider this also. In the 80's, Japan's animation industry and in particular the mecha anime genre was at its peak. Things were great and besides making their own stuff, there were contracts coming in from America for animation work on things like Thundercats, Ghostbusters and GI Joe. Yet, during this period the industry was content to churn out the same old same old until people got sick of it. In the area of manga, Shonen Jump was so dominant that they rested on their laurels and raked in money from Jojo's, Kinnikuman, City Hunter, Dragonball and Hokuto No Ken, while completely neglecting to develop their next generation of artists. The major innovation was the switch to doing OVAs for higher quality at the cost of ridiculous prices. Even today most non-otaku Japanese are shocked that we pay more for a 30 minute OVA than full length movies.

It's the 90's which was the period for major innovation in anime, as the golden era of mecha anime came to an end, and the trend of Japanese animated American cartoons faded. In manga, Shonen Jump's long running money spinners all ended, and they managed to piss off practically all the artists involved with those so that most of them left, but the remaining younger artists were not ready to take over that mantle. Animation budgets for many TV series were actually cut, and that is the reason why framerates in dropped even lower than before in 90's anime. It's this period where they used even more dramatic stills and long scenes of people talking with only 2 or 3 frames of movement in their mouths. This down period was what caused true innovation, and Neon Genesis Evangelion is the most well known success story from this time. Besides that, this period signalled the rise of new approaches to anime from every side of production. In the area of music, we had Senju Akira, Tanaka Kouhei and Kanno Yoko who changed the face of anime BGM. We also had huge changes in drawing style as artists tried finding ways to recapture audiences who were tired of the usual style. All this led to the late 90's anime coming into their own. They didn't take risks because they could, they took risks because they were losing their audience and had to do something new or die out.

Now in current day, since otaku culture has started to be embraced, things are actually better for the animation industry than during the 90's, and the proof is in all those high frame rate dance sequences they keep putting in various shows. Those sequences like the Suzumiya Haruhi ending take a huge amount of time and effort to do, even with advances in technology. However, since they're doing better, we're seeing less innovation because they already have their captive audience and are happy to pander to them just like they did in the 80's.

Back to the reception of Japanese popular culture overseas, a lot of the stuff that was popular overseas wasn't necessarily the best or most innovative stuff from Japan. Grendizer, the 70's anime was dubbed as Goldorak in France and was ridiculously huge over there, but in Japan itself, it was always living in the shadow of its parent series Mazinger Z. In the 80's, Golion was a hit in the US when dubbed as Voltron, but in Japan it was mediocre, because there was so much other stuff like it that was better. Carl Macek, who translated Macross into Robotech, once made the statement "It's new if they haven't seen it." which says a lot about the success of Japanese exports. Anime was cool and edgey when we didn't have so much of it.

This does not mean however that culture alone sells a product. Shonen Jump's longest running manga is Kochira Katsushika Ku Kameari Kouen Mae Hashutsujo. In terms of cultural wealth, this series is the most Japanese thing in the entire Shonen Jump lineup, but it's so Japanese that it's practically unreadable by anyone who hasn't lived in Japan.

 

Sega didn't promote some of the great games out there like Vanquish. The marketing campaign for that game compared to something like Bayonetta was nothing and both of these games were from the same studio.

 

OK, I would like to discuss this more, since its an interesting topic, and maybe I can learn something.

So courtesy of Neogaf, heres the latest games chart in Japan:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=469061

Media Create Sales: Week 13, 2012 (Mar 26 - Apr 01)

01./00. [3DS] Kingdom Hearts 3D -Dream Drop Distance- # <RPG> (Square Enix) {2012.03.29} (Â¥6.090) - 213.579 / NEW
02./00. [PS3] Pro Baseball Spirits 2012 <SPT> (Konami) {2012.03.29} (Â¥7.980) - 90.433 / NEW
03./00. [PSP] Pro Baseball Spirits 2012 <SPT> (Konami) {2012.03.29} (Â¥5.980) - 60.141 / NEW
04./01. [3DS] Kid Icarus: Uprising <ACT> (Nintendo) {2012.03.22} (Â¥5.800) - 47.179 / 179.705 (-64%)
05./03. [NDS] Pokemon Conquest <SLG> (Pokemon Co.) {2012.03.17} (Â¥5.800) - 30.535 / 267.608 (-53%)
06./02. [PSP] Black Panther 2: Yakuza Ashura Chapter <ADV> (Sega) {2012.03.22} (Â¥6.279) - 26.655 / 131.592 (-75%)
07./09. [3DS] Super Mario 3D Land # <ACT> (Nintendo) {2011.11.03} (Â¥4.800) - 24.936 / 1.464.696 (+23%)
08./07. [3DS] Monster Hunter 3G # <ACT> (Capcom) {2011.12.10} (Â¥5.800) - 21.288 / 1.358.410 (-5%)
09./08. [3DS] Mario Kart 7 <RCE> (Nintendo) {2011.12.01} (Â¥4.800) - 19.653 / 1.621.631 (-6%)
10./00. [PS3] The Idolmaster: Gravure For You! Vol.6 <ETC> (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.03.29} (Â¥9.980) - 17.759 / NEW
11./00. [PSV] Pro Baseball Spirits 2012 <SPT> (Konami) {2012.03.29} (Â¥6.980) - 17.264 / NEW
12./12. [3DS] Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games <SPT> (Nintendo) {2012.03.01} (Â¥4.800) - 12.947 / 112.603 (-23%)
13./04. [PS3] Devil May Cry HD Collection <ACT> (Capcom) {2012.03.22} (Â¥4.990) - 11.926 / 55.717 (-73%)
14./15. [3DS] Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project Mirai # <ACT> (Sega) {2012.03.08} (Â¥6.090) - 8.267 / 124.618 (-27%)
15./00. [PS3] Silent Hill HD Edition <ADV> (Konami) {2012.03.29} (Â¥4.980) - 7.971 / NEW
16./13. [PS3] One Piece: Pirate Warriors # <ACT> (Bandai Namco Games) {2012.03.01} (Â¥8.190) - 7.851 / 804.601 (-52%)
17./16. [3DS] Harvest Moon: The Land of Origin <SLG> (Marvelous AQL) {2012.02.23} (Â¥5.040) - 7.657 / 154.764 (-23%)
18./10. [PSP] Shining Blade <RPG> (Sega) {2012.03.15} (Â¥6.279) - 7.535 / 148.824 (-60%)
19./00. [PSV] The King, the Demon King and the 7 Princesses: New King Story <SLG> (Konami) {2012.03.29} (Â¥6.480) - 7.141 / NEW
20./21. [WII] Wii Sports Resort with Wii Remote Plus # <SPT> (Nintendo) {2010.11.11} (Â¥5.800) - 6.596 / 905.638


Top 20

3DS - 8
PS3 - 5
PSP - 3
PSV - 2
NDS - 1
WII - 1

HARDWARE




OK guys, I am honestly asking now, what does this kind of chart say to you?

My gut reaction: goddam 3DS! And looking at the games, they are all Japanese made (Is Marvelous AQL Japanese?)

Even Sega games chart in Japan! How weird.

What do you guys think about this?

 

Frostbite 2 has some pretty cool physics modelling and sound design (the sound is really what's exceptional about it for me), but that's somewhat tangential imo. There are a shit-ton of graphics options in Serious Sam 3, and a lot of them are off by default because of how taxing it can be on older systems.

CoD runs on a heavily-modified Quake 3 engine to this day...the weapon models are pretty great but the environments are tiny and ugly.

 

I just want to add, if you thought $2000 per month for VG developers is bad, a beginning animator for the anime industry gets paid about half as much. Working at a McD is a better deal in Japan especially given all the unpaid overtime one must endure.

 

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Game sales charts</div></div>

Handhelds rule the charts in Japan, and at the moment, the 3DS is the big thing due to Nintendo's brand power and decent games being released. In addition, the Japanese particularly love their little gimmicky portable devices since they don't have a lot of space, and most people spend a lot of time at work or commuting. Due to the work culture there, many people might not even go home except on weekends, so a home console is much less preferable.

Vita is having a very slow start because of the tiny game library, while PSP sales are low because it's been out so long that most gamers already have one. Hence the 3DS is way ahead in current sales mainly because most people haven't gotten one yet and are in the process of doing so. PSP games are still doing really well. People like PS3 games, but the fact is that the game selection for handhelds is so huge because it's so much cheaper to develop for. Thus a bigger portion of top games are handheld ones simply because there are so many more of them.

Hatsune Miku(Vocaloids) and the Shining series are 2 of Sega's big franchises that they haven't bothered to promote outside Japan. They've done a few Vocaloid promotions to the anime community outside Japan but not much else. You'll realise from Sega's reports from the previous financial year that most of their losses are from their overseas departments and even though that wasn't mentioned specifically in this latest report, I expect that it continues to be the case. Why do you suppose the cuts they're making are all in regards to US and Europe? Domestically in Japan, Sega are still doing pretty okay.

Marvelous AQL is Japanese. Harvest Moon dude!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Serious Sam 3</div></div>

One problem is that Serious Sam goes for that really crisp and clean look while Battlefield and COD have that more blurry anti-aliased bloooooooom look which lets them get away with more imperfections.

Some people used to tell me VF4 looked better on console than arcade and it was probably due to that anti-aliasing on console. Doesn't matter that they were wrong. That was their perception.


Edit: Yeah, animator's pay in Japan is trash because they're paid by the number of completed cels rather than by the hour. Back in 2003 if I remember, it was 400 or 500 yen per cel, so if you were slow and took half an hour to finish a cel, it was less than $10 per hour. Even if you had godlike speed and could finish a cel in 15 minutes, it was still only $20 an hour at most.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574551834260925714.html

"A survey conducted this year for industry executives showed that animators in their 20s made just 1.1 million yen ($11,000) a year on average, while those in their 30s earned 2.1 million yen."

(The article is from 2009.)

 

BF3 with the color correction mod still does look good. It's not really a sharpness thing. The lighting engine can be atrocious and the game just recently improved its support of MSAA(true AA) so blur isn't a problem... okay enough derailing.

 

No one was disputing that JP-developed games were popular there. In fact, those games are the only popular ones, it's just that the market's overall sales have contracted. In the west, JP-developed games do not sell well anymore. What about this is hard to understand?

 

The sales chart can be misleading even if several of the games on there are made by SEGA. Notice how they don't even sell 150k copies yet even though some games have been out for a some time. To be fair, they are lower cost games too. I'm not quite sure what a meaningful number would be in Japan. Here, early 500k per console (usually 1+ million when combining PS3/360) is very good and often happens on major titles. I don't expect SEGA to do 500k per console, but their large backlog of IPs are left to be forgotten and lose their brand awareness.

Only old people like us remember what is Golden Axe, Alex Kidd, and Altered Beast. Nintendo constantly reinvents its franchise such as Mario. Who says Alex Kidd couldn't do the same if Sega kept trying. With Golden Axe & Altered Beast, SEGA made a crap spiritual games of those brand. They flopped of course, but SEGA just gave up completely. Could had just learn from their mistakes and try again. Altered Beast came bundled with the original SEGA Genesis/Megadrive! The trojan horse to promote future games in the series!

 

I dont know either whats considered 'good' in the west,

In US the numbers are much bigger that everywhere else, AFAIK neogaf is good to track sales in US/EUROPE but Im not an expert.

I know that in UK/US Xbox is bigger than PS3, everywhere else is the exact opposite, PS3 is bigger in Europe,

Games-wise, theres so much going on on digital dowloads, but no solid numbers that I know,

Check this link for the latest charts:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=465949

Software
01. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)** Activision Blizzzard
02. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3, 360)** Square Enix Inc.
03. UFC Undisputed 3 (360, PS3) THQ
04. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (360, PS3, PC) Electronic Arts - 330K
05. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3) Ubisoft
06. NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, PSP, Wii, PC, PS2) Take 2 Interactive
07. Soul Calibur V (360, PS3)** Namco Bandai Games
08. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)** Bethesda Softworks
09. Twisted Metal 2012 (PS3) Sony - 221K
10. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)** Electronic Arts


It seems that 200K is the bare minimum to chart, but the thing is, I have no idea how much a game costs to make. IMO Sega can expect to sell 100K copies of FS (at best). Would that make them money or lose them money? I really have no idea what the costs involved in porting/developing are.

Surely though, FF13-2 must have costed S-E a lot of money to make? Or maybe not, since all the assets were built for the previous game?