Why Isn't Grand Theft Auto HUGE In Japan?

[wraggster]

Game developer Yoshiki Okamoto is best known for his years at Konami and Capcom, where he worked on titles like Gyruss and Forgotten Worlds as well as his involvement in Final Fight and Street Fighter II. He's an industry vet and has been around. When he looks at the current Japanese game landscape, Okamoto says there's at least one thing that does not compute:

Rockstar is not unsuccessful in Japan, but their success here is on a much smaller scale than elsewhere in the world market. The low Japanese sales of the sandbox-style GTA series simply do not make any sense to me.

But does it to you?

http://kotaku.com/5065716/why-isnt-g...-huge-in-japan

[Mc_Logical]

Well the same fact that I don`t like japanese games, they have they're own style, and the side of action/killing reality doesn`t relate to them, as they like all the fantasy crap, plus japanese games allways have a $#@! gameplay feel to them, more of taking your time to think, whch where im better at reactions, not saying I can`t think, it`s just there time consuming

[devdj]

i prefer the old japanese games like on snes the dragon ball ones were the best and easy to understand but now we have likes of all these cool new looking rpgs that will probably never see any english translation the jap games i can't wait to play are star ocean 1 and 2 which will arrive soon in english for the psp.

[jrsmaster411]

They'd rather play average rpgs than a great shooter, and bad hack and slash like monster hunter and dynasty warriors rather a great one like god of war or devil may cry

[cornervizion]

I think this could boil down to a comment made by someone in the magazine GAMEStm even though the remark was made in respect to the Xbox360 not being huge in Japan I think it could be applied here as well... "It's not that the Japanese are anti-american there more pro-japan" So naturally they're more loyal to home-grown than US or European Titles.

[KeenCommander]

Japan and the US/West are two completely different game markets. I don't consider one better than the other, but they both have very different preferences. GTA is very much oriented towards the Western style of gaming, I don't find it at all strange that it does at least relatively poorly in Japan...it just doesn't suit that market's interests for the most part.

[Coolie4]

i dont think the reason is because they rather play rpgs. japan has indeed produced some (good and well known) rpgs, along with some quirky wierd games. but they have also released alot of gory, scary games. so i dont think its the violence that they dont like.

i think its because gta is very very americanized. everything about it is. the music, the big explosions, the 1 man army. even europe can adapt to gta because they are familiar with some of the culture. but i think it would be hard for the japanese to adapt to gta. maybe if gta5 was set in tokyo, threw in some jpop on the radio, and made it more rpg-like, like san andreas was with weightlifting, then it would be more popular.

edit:not to mention alot of the humor is westernized. americans can get japanese humor, but i doubt japanese would appreciate katt williams stand up.

[WhizzBang]

The appeal of GTA is lost on me so I am with the Japanese on this. I found GTA 3 sort of fun for about 3 days and then got bored with it because I couldn't be bothered to plod through the missions.

[Accordion]

Maybe the majority of Japanese gamers dont like buying tech demos will no substance?

[Justise]

Maybe they found it too... American.
The game is full of american colture, and their colture is very deferent. They simply "didn't get it".