While many things set Sony and Microsoft apart in the East – their Japanese market share, their catalogue of games, their choice of accompanying music (US pop for Microsoft; jazz for SCEJ) – one thing, in the opinion of the disenchanted Japanese gaming media, seemed to unite the console giants: a bias toward the west.

Take as but one example two nearly overlapping media events help by the companies in the same hotel. What happend at these event, and the behavior ot he attendees, was so instructive as to become a microcosm of today's gaming culture in Japan. They warrant looking at in further detail, because unless TGS can ripple the water this is, for better or worse, the disheartening shape of the region.

Traditionally, a SCEJ conference at this time of year would be about the entire PlayStation family. PlayStation 2 would be mentioned to show how the company continues to undermine Nintendo’s dominance with its perennially significant sales around the world; PSP would be touted as the must-have accessory to complete the PS3 experience; and PS3 itself would have centre stage. But, as SCEE president David Reeves quipped the previous month at Leipzig’s Games Convention: “The times they are a-changin’.”

The focus of the Japanese videogame industry has shifted from its domestic market to the west, creating a bigger gap between developers and gamers in Japan. Simultaneously, a new generation of SCEJ executives has been ushered in to ensure that PlayStation adapts to such times. So with Japanese PS3 sales persisting at a weekly rate only a few thousand above that of PS2, Sony chose instead to dedicate this conference to PSP, currently enjoying another resurgence thanks to Capcom’s Monster Hunter Portable – the popularity of which has eclipsed the handheld on which it runs to the extent that PSPs are now often referred to as ‘Mohan’ players.



But even as SCEJ president Shawn Layden celebrated PSP’s successes in Japan, he managed to do little to reassure the tetchy audience that Sony still had the concerns of Japanese gamers specifically in mind. Journalists could not help but note that familiar figurehead Kaz Hirai was nowhere to be seen, and the feeling of national disenfranchisement was further amplified by grumbles about Layden’s level of Japanese. While fluent in the language, Layden tended to pronounce English words without Japanese inflection, occasionally making him difficult to understand. Though a faux pas of minor proportions, it was nonetheless taken as an indication of the company’s increasingly western outlook, particularly given that many of the announcements seemed designed to nudge Sony’s handheld towards the global market.

In mimicry of Ken Kutaragi’s reveal of the original PSP, Layden drew the PSP-3000 from his jacket pocket, detailing its improved LCD screen, microphone and interconnectivity with PS3. It did not go unnoticed that, excepting the new screen, many of these improvements directly target western proclivities, or use services that are as yet unavailable in Japan. Japanese media were unmoved by the potential for Skype communication, or in-game voice-chat – seen as a predominantly western facility associated with first-person shooters and contrary to the kind of face-to-face socialisation that has made PSP such a success in Japan.