Speaking at the DICE Summit Asia in Singapore on Thursday, Sony Computer Entertainment’s senior vice president of Japan Studio offered his views on how a developer must be global to succeed.
Using a translator, Yasuhide Kobayashi told the audience of developers and professionals that many issues face his group. “The Japanese market is really shrinking,” he said. Looking to the US and European markets, he asked, “How are we going to gain success in these markets?
“We have to develop the global title in the first place,” he said. However, he acknowledged that some Japanese gamers seem to show a lack of interest in such titles. “This is something the Japan studio is annoyed with. This is our dilemma.”
Worldwide, Sony has 14 development studios. Two of those are in Japan, (the other is Polyphony Digital), and Kobayashi’s Japan Studio is the largest, with 350 employees in Tokyo.
He explained that Sony’s marketing operations are divided into four regional groups: America, Europe, Asia, and Japan. Those regional headquarters have complete discretion as to which titles they’ll sell in their territory. Sony development studios make detailed presentations to each regional headquarters, who then decide whether or not to sell the game. Kobayashi said that if none of the four say yes to an internally developed game, the project is cancelled.
The Japanese market has dramatically shrunk since the PSone era, Kobayashi said, and development costs are now much higher. “Unless we gain success in the overseas market, our studio will go bankrupt. That sort of recognition of the crisis is what we’ve experienced.”
Kobayashi said that localisation is key to selling games overseas, stressing the importance of character design and genre. He also said to make effective use of the data accumulated from user testing.
Kobayashi then revealed a chart: Japanese Publishers Domestic Sales Comparison. The numbers were based on internal figures from Sony and public fillings from Japan’s other major publishers. 91.8 per cent of Koei’s sales come from Japan,- the most of any publisher. Tecmo follows at 89.6 per cent. Square Enix receives 86.6 per cent of sales from its home market. In contrast, 66.9 per cent of Kobayashi’s Japan Studio’s sales come from Japan. The closest competitors are Konami, with 74.8 per cent, and Namco Bandai with 76.8 per cent.
Words by N. Evan Van Zelfden