Friday, October 22, 2010

Pokemon no 1 in Japan, but sales dropped. What's with the Japanese

Pokemon Black & White reign as king in Japanese sales chart, moving 168.541 copies. Despite this, the overall sales in Japan dropped by whopping 34% from the week before.
We probably heard it before that Japanese game market is slowing down. Many people blame Japanese developer as lack of creativity when compared to the Westerner. Even some publishers like Inafune branded Japan games market as doomed. Japanese developers keep making more or less the same game as a decade ago. So where is those creativity gone?

Before we put the blame to those games developer, let's try to see from other perspective. Japanese economy has been slump lately. There is no sign that it will pick up soon. The yen is keep getting stronger and stronger, thus making Japanese product less attractive to the global market.
The population is dwindling, means that nobody support the old generation. Job market shrunk. Japanese people are afraid to open business and rather work to a company.

With the economy gloom, people are afraid to spend and brings the whole thing down. It might be a reason to be pessimistic. It probably not because lacks of creativity of Japanese people that drives the gaming market down, but maybe the whole market in such a bad shape that makes the gaming industry as it is right now.
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