Japanese Video Games: Then & Now

As popular as manga and anime have become in the West, video games are arguably Japan’s best known and most loved cultural export. This is a look at how they reached that status, and what things look like now.

Then

The Mighty Donky Kong

Video games had been around in the U.S. for almost a decade before Japanese companies began to make an impact. Nintendo, which began in 1889 as a playing cards manufacturer, got into the video games business initially as the Japanese distributor for American game consoles in the 1970s. In 1981 they released the arcade game Donkey Kong, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, the success of which spurred the company to make video games its main focus. Nintendo released its first home game console in 1983, and Sega followed suit shortly after.

Japanese companies were able to conquer the worldwide home gaming market in short order for a couple of basic reasons. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System were, like many other Japanese electronic products, higher in quality, more advanced technologically, and produced more efficiently than the competition from American makers like Atari.

Nintendo Entertainment System

However, the real innovation that Japan brought to video gaming was more creative than technical. Nintendo’s games in particular from this period were successful in combining fast-paced, fun, arcade-style action with memorable characters and narratives in a way that hadn’t been done before.

Into the mid-1990s, the gaming market branched off into four sectors. The console market was divided almost entirely between Nintendo and Sega, with Sony to arrive soon after; the handheld market, despite Sega’s best efforts, was dominated by Nintendo; the arcade market saw competition between Japanese and American makers; and the PC gaming market was the domain of U.S. and European publishers, with Japanese companies playing a decidedly minimal role.

Now

Sony Playstation 2

The console landscape has shifted dramatically since the turn of the century. Missteps by Sega in the face of fierce competition from Nintendo and Sony forced it to get out of the hardware business. Sega’s place as the third major console maker was taken by Microsoft toward the end of the 6th generation of consoles.

Microsoft’s Xbox was introduced as a direct competitor to the dominant PlayStation 2, and although Sony remained the sales leader. The Xbox, and its more successful successor the Xbox 360, introduced trends to the industry, most notably a move towards a PC-influenced style of system architecture, that have served to end the one-sided domination of Japanese-designed consoles.

On the software side, Japanese publishers have gradually lost market share outside of Japan. Sports games such as the ever-popular Madden franchise have long been dominated by North American and European developers. The arrival of the Xbox brought with it a tendency for games in genres that would previously have been exclusive to PC gaming, such as first-person shooters and Western-style role playing games, to also appear on consoles. Some of these, perhaps most notably the Halo series, have proven to be enormously successful.

Nintendo Wii

The Japanese game industry is now faced with a minor crisis. Japanese publishers have clearly lost ground overseas, and even domestic sales of some flagship titles, such as Final Fantasy XIII, have been disappointing. No less an authority than Keiji Inafune, designer of Mega Man, recently proclaimed the Japanese game industry “dead.”

On the other hand, the massive success of the Nintendo Wii has proven that things aren’t all bad. The Wii is still the leader in sales among this generation’s consoles by a wide margin. Whereas the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are mainly aimed at self-described “gamers”, Nintendo has opened up an entirely new segment of the market by appealing to a broader audience and supporting lifestyle software like Wii Fit.

Microsoft is now set to respond with a motion control peripheral of its own, so in a sense, Japanese companies are still setting the agenda in console gaming.