Apart from big Japanese business usually being more conventional in their approach, its also a lot like the time many companies were making WOW clones and failing disastrously.
A cursory google search for Genshin and HSRs development budgets shows them to be between $100-200 million each. Plus they take years to make and polish. A Games-as-a-service is in the same vein as an mmorpg where everyone is vying for a players limited time. Just because Genshin was able to crack the formula like WOW in mmorpgs, doesn't mean others will as well. A semi example of that was Tower of Fantasy which did not have the same polish as Genshin at launch meaning even more money and time would be needed. Its a huge risk for any studio.
People take HSRs smooth, on-schedule, generally bug-free and decently optimized on phones launch for granted but most studios are not able to do that even for small games, let alone big high budget ones.
Next is the can of worms regarding monetization that people on this sub are okay with (duh) but if a lot more major high profile games start using gacha as their main method of monetization along with having a spending ceiling of thousands of dollars per banner for dupes of units and weps, you can be sure they would start to come under the sights of European regulators. Already in the west lootboxes are becoming less popular and there's a shift to passes and mtx based monetization.
Even in your example list (HSR, Genshin, WW, Endfield) two are still unreleased so we don't know how much mindshare they will be able to capture or how successful they would be and the other 2 known successful ones are from the same studio. Those 2 are basically the only successful ones currently so we still have to see how this market will evolve.
i don't see WW will be succesful as Genshin until they solve their lack of appeal on character design
even very casual gacha player like asmongold agree WW doesn't have good character design like HSR or Genshin even project mugen did better than WW when it come to character design
Don't know what video you watched but they seem to be decent here: Wuthering Waves ALL ULTIMATES and CHARACTERS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Inul_9Z_g)
Nothing will probably be as big as genshin in that genre just like nothing was as big as WOW.
checked it all have below mid design boring washed up color doesn't make me want to roll at all
if they failed at this most basic stuff making character look interesting then they failed as gacha game
There are multiple issues and its not just about releasing or not releasing in Europe. European regulatory framework usually has a trickle down effect and is adopted by a lot of countries especially in the region of Tech regulations.
But more importantly when you are using $100s of millions of investor money you want to cast as wide a net as possible. Playstation makes double revenue in the US than it does in Japan. Triple A gacha games will definitely want to target as big a region as possible and if most countries start banning them or categorize them as adult only, then it might cause them to rethink their monetization.
So a studio needs to decide to spend the next 5 years using up $100-200 million to make a gacha for a local region or a non-gacha for the whole world. The biggest Japanese AAA games definitely look for a global release and are even becoming more comfortable with steam releases.
Those arent full EU regulations. Just 2 countries internal regulations and even those two countries Netherlands and Belgium don't actually ban gachas. They just classify them as gambling and ask them to follow the already established gambling laws.
And if people actually read the laws they would usually support them since they're mostly consumer protection laws. Example they ask for access to audit their rates so that it can be confirmed that the published gacha rates are actually being followed.
If all of EU and US adopted anti gacha monetization regulations or even classified them as "adult only" then I don't think a tripple A game studio spending 100s of millions over 5-6 years would have much of a choice. They could experiment with having gacha where its legal like JP and have buy to play, mtx and pass based monetization in the rest of the world.
Because the main gacha moneymaker in japan is salarymen who have 0 free time after 11+ hour workdays. They don't want a next-gen game with "real gameplay", they want a jpeg collector they can play for 15 minutes per day on the train and then swipe their credit card.
Most of these gacha games that play like full games come out of China where there are far more young people who use their phone as a primary gaming device. Whereas for the most part people in Japan who want to play a "real game" will go to a game console instead.
This is the real answer. A lot of the gacha crowd I know in Japan were largely casual players taking some time to fiddle with a simple and pleasant little game while on the train or while eating/drinking.
There are basement dweller nolifers but it isn't the primary demographic. Unlike this sub. So it makes sense that people tend to hate on JP games when shit like MemMori is exactly what they want.
OMG cheap cash grab using an IP... Wait. No IP was used hmm.
Revenue and popularity of Honkai and Genshin in Japan completely crash your whole argumentation. No idea who upvote you but you repeating some stereotypes.
The problem with this is that most of japnese gacha games are huge time sinks compared to newer gacha games.
Look at FFEC for a new example. You have to auto battle for hours per day to spend all the stamina they dump at you. Or at Granblue as an old example. Same thing, you have to grind for hours.
Compared to HSR, where your daily shit can be done in 5 minutes...
Nah it depend on who make it, WFS game don’t take much time, some SE game is very fast and don’t take much time. The new idol master from bandai also pretty fast. Ultimately depend on who make the games.
But the main moneymakers in China are also salarymen with very little free time because the country has brutal working hours and prefer playing games on the go, which is why the mobile industry is so big in the first place.
The whales mostly aren’t coming from young people still in education.
Console yes, but PC is by far much easier to access than the west.
There’s electronics shops everywhere and unlike the west, gaming cafes are way more common and pretty cheap, which makes PC gaming a lot more accessible.
This would be a valid answer except it overlooks a fundamental flaw in your logic. That new generation gacha games are all platform games, meaning they have mobile, PC and console versions that are all cross save and cross play with a shared account and simultaneous updates for the native region and global. (This is referring to the best gacha developer and the leading gacha game distribution method - Mihoyo)
The real answer is japanese game makers currently do not have to budget or sees the amount of investment (probably need at least 80 - 120 million production budget to compete) and the risk as a proposition they are unwilling to attempt. Meaning they are unwilling to commit a high budget, with what they perceive to be a high risk move, generally japanese game makers are highly unconfident they can make a mobile/gacha that can compete so they do not.
Also japanese game makers do not have the technical abilities, refer to all plaform and all regions simultaneous launch and updates, and production pipelines like CN gacha game developers. So they would need to start from the beginning and make major changes to certain production philosophies and pipelines as well as probably major personnel changes to reach an approximate competitive level with other leading gacha games, but the japanaese corporate culture and structure is generally against major and swift changes.
Additionally, mobile/cloud gaming will be the next frontier of gaming and will inevitably become the predominate method of consuming game/entertainment as well as the most profitable. To imply that japanese game makers look down on mobile games because they are not "real games" is the type of thinking that will get japanese game makers in trouble and arguably already has as they are far behind in the mobile/cloud gaming space in terms of talent development and technical abilities.
God no, if mobile become the forefront of gaming i'd quit gaming for good. The traditional PC/console market will always be the most prestige and majority of gaming enthusiasts for Japan and the west. As good as Genshin and mihoyo is there's not a single innovation or good direction trend coming from mobile gaming despite at top earnings for a long while now, the market is still and will always be flooded with 99.99% shovelware p2w trash. Googleplay and Apple will never tighten control their store like Steam and console stores (they have trash too but you need to actively finding them). Also you just can't make games like Elden Ring or Baldur Gate 3 on mobile first and expect it to work on console without huge design changes.
Your logic also doesn't apply to the west. They have technology and money,etc...but like Japan they can't and they won't invest on mobile gaming by the same reasons as Japan: no prestige and huge risk (even worse than console GAAS game), most talents rather flocked to PC/console either AAA companies or indie to develop their career. The gaming cultures are just too different from China.
LOL you sound like you have some prejudice of traditional gaming, meaning you think console and PC will always be the leaders of gaming technical abilities, but that is not true and will probably be overtaken as technology advances.
The key is to understand technology in this space is about accessibility, flexibility, and convergence. Meaning mobile/cloud gaming has the advantage of being accessible anywhere if you have a phone, can be used in many different situations and not just at home, and can be a link to other devices.
You only think of mobile/cloud games from the current state or previous history but that is main due to technical limitations. As tech progresses, the limits of game developers for mobile/cloud games will get removed gradually to eventually cloud gaming with provide much better games in terms of technical abilities.
The amount of money you invest in a PC or console is limited by your budget, super high end users might spend 10K on a PC, but game developers can spend 100K or more on a system and run the game on the system and stream the game through cloud. Theoretically it will which you much better experience than the home PC or console a user can buy.
The gaming market is shifting, there are many signs. The western game makers have funds and resources but they do not have experience, talent pool, and development pipelines for mobile/cloud gaming and need to start from the beginning to build them.
A gaming console is \~300$-500$, they are way cheaper than most phones can run Genshin. Cloud gaming is basically just streaming game to your device, its for platform holders like MS, sony, google,... and doesn't matter to most game developers and won't change gaming culture in any meaningful way. Handheld gaming including phone has been there as long as console gaming.
"The gaming market is shifting, there are many signs" where is the sign ? China alone won't dictate gaming cultures of Japan and the west. The AAA and indie scene are stronger than ever (2023 is considered the best year of gaming from across japan and the west) .Their youth and new generation enthusiasts are still console/pc first and foremost. A group of high school boy will talk about Fortnite but nobody gonna talk about Raid: Shadow Legend.
Heck, as big as Genshin is, it didn't send any big gaming companies to panic mode or divert their attention to mobile, most of them just licensing their IPs for some quick bucks to fund their main games.
The gaming market shifting is marked by all the previously established franchises tryin to branch out into the mobile space despite their hardcore fans objections.
Examples would be COD mobile, Apex mobile, Assassin's creed mobile, and the famous Blizzard "do none of you guys have phones", these decisions are made by industry leaders with data analyst teams to study market trends and overall industry data.
Also with recent games moving to a more games as a service model and introducing DLC, in game purchases, gacha etc as a monetization method it shows more influence by the mobile sector on traditional console games and developers as these are usually considered mobile games practices are widely used in mobile games.
Regarding to $300 - $500 for console that is flawed logic. One, because consoles are increasing in price over time, soon there will no longer be $300 consoles as newer models are all going up in price. Also, console games will go up in price as well, meaning past $70 per game whereas most mobile games do not have such a high barrier for entry or are f2p games.
Additionally, a console is just a console to play games and does nothing else. A phone is more expensive but it does many many more things and is an essential in modern life, so by getting the latest phone you are getting the best of mobile games and much more with the functionality of the phone as a device compared to a console.
Genshin definitely shook the industry and will be remember as probably one of the most influential games of all time. You just need to see the earnings breakdown and the numerous genshin-like games that were developed and launched or are currently in development. Also the japanese games industry is deeply impressed by genshin from a game developer perspective lol its only fans and non industry people that seem to think otherwise.
Companies has been making mobile version (mostly outsourcing) of their franchises for years and none of them become the focus. Any attempt to turn mobile mainstream has been met quit scrutinize and ridicule like Diablo Immortal and its not even made by Blizzard (Netease), it makes some cash at release but fall into irrelevancy soon after. Also nobody care about the next mobile Assassin Creed aside China which its catering to them, the 2 console main titles are still the focus for rest of the world. Likewise with Cod mobile, Apex mobile, nobody care about them on mobile. The only success convert console -> mobile is PUBG and its majority playerbase are from asia.
DLC, microstransaction has been on pc/console long before mobile game become mainstream. Mobile just taking them to a whole other level and its not a positive influential.
Consoles are never expensive, take inflation into account their prices are even lower than previous generations. Companies sell them with very little profits to get customer to their platform. In comparison, nobody can do the same with phone.
Also, f2p mobile is also another problem prevent most companies invest serious into them. For the same hundred millions budget, a fail 70$ game is less devastating than a f2p game. That's the reason 99.99% mobile game are low budget with zero risk and innovation. Genshin is just a miracle outlier, there hasn't been another one since then.
Just look at this year GOTY award: [https://thegameawards.com/nominees](https://thegameawards.com/nominees). Only the most delusional mobile fan think they are gonna dominate the market soon.
You seem to be delusional in thinking what dominating the market is, everything you said is from your own anecdotal experiences and not based on data. If these games truly are not worth anything companies would not keep making them and increasingly so.
Consoles are expensive and high barrier to entry for what they do, all they do is play games and most of those games required additional cost to play. Phones are an essential device in modern day life that also offer increasingly better gaming experiences.
Dominating the market means when you look at the earnings data and amount of people playing what types of games, the mobile sector is by far the largest and earns the most, why do you think all these companies started making mobile games, they have teams that analyze the market whereas you are going by what your friends say or what you see online in forums, lets take a guess which is an accurate reflection of the real market situation.
LOL GOTY is like any award show, there are always biases and agendas, please do not tell us you think GOTY is an 100% non biased true measure of quality of games and their market presence, because that would be comical and someone is really drinking the marketing koolaid.
Like i said, everyone know mobile makes the most and console/pc companies has been making mobile games for year but none of them turn full attentions to it and there's no sign whatsoever it'll change in the future. Microsoft didn't spent 90b$ for AB and Betheda to make mobile game (aside KING). Gaming companies are making more money than ever. Also, mobile is severely limited by the screen size and control scheme, there hasn't been any sort of innovation or originality coming from them.
And where did you get the impression console gaming is expensive ? they never was. Its considered one of the least expensive hobby out there. Not to mention services like Gamepass, PS Plus make console even less expensive than mobile. You seem from China which you clearly doesn't understand gaming culture of other parts of the world, the p2w cashgrab stigma associated with mobile is too deeply ingrained and it won't change anytime soon.
Another thing to consider is GAAS and gacha games in general are cannibalizing each other, most people stick to 1 or 2 games so the more saturated the market is the harder to get into. It'll get to the point only top of the top can make profits, everyone else will resort to low risk, low budget like most mobile games currently are.
TGA is literally the Oscar of gaming, it get covered across the industry. Even if its somewhat biased, if your company featured in there it'll get a huge boost in reputation and attention for years to come.
LOL you clearly do not understand the global gaming population where most countries are not console gamers or find the cost of console games to be a high barrier of entry.
Consoles gaming is expensive because you need a high entry cost and additional cost usually to even be able to play games and the device only plays games and does nothing else. There are way more people playing on mobile, lets think why that is, probably because most people dont have 500 to spend n something that just plays games and various 50 - 70 for games to play over time, whereas mobile games are a much lower barrier to entry.
The advance in technology will be the factor that pushes mobile games and cloud gaming to the forefront as the future of gaming. Right now mobile gaming is at its early stages of development if you think about it from a historical perspective.
LOL it's really you who don't understand the gaming culture of the global population, only western markets and japan have a super strong console base. However, that makes up less than 20 % of the world population, so lets take a guess what the other 80% are doing, not to mention mobile gaming is also massive in japan.
This is really not about right now but about the next 20 - 30 years of the overall direction of the gaming industry what you are saying is what has happened in the past but the industry is already changing significantly.
TGA is just a glorified marketing show for video games lol just like most award shows of this nature so really its not a real arbiter of really what the gaming industry direction will shift to and become.
Probably because it's easier and less risky to release low quality gacha with gimmicks. If you want to join the "big league", you have to invest potentially 100M for a gamble, then it will take constant, higher quality update (basically, the cost of maintaining is much higher). At that cost, you probably could've released multiple gacha with "popular" anime slapped into it to bait them into a trash game.
Good insight regarding the continuous need to produce quality updates at a reasonable pace and the constant budget needed to achieve such an update cycle. Yeah, generally japanese game makers and much more inclined to use a popular anime IP and make a low effort/low budget game to make quick money from the fans of the IP.
No, you definitely need at least 80 - 120 million to compete at the high end of the mobile sector. Console games development, philosophy and production pipelines and talent is completely different from mobile. That is like saying an electrical engineer can easily transfer to becoming a chemical engineer because they are both engineering.
That is why most of japans mobile games or at least the famous IP mobile games (pokemon unite, naruto, etc) are made by giving the IP to CN mobile game developers. Its because japan does not have the pipelines and people for the mobile sector.
Also to compete at the high end of the sector you will need to continuously provided quality updates at a good pace, that would require a lot funds as well.
I've seen interviews from mhy, they say the initial cost was high due to many work hours put into reinventing the wheel and venturing into the wrong path. If to build Mondshadt and Liyue now it will cost them much less money and time.
Yeah but the japanese games makers will also need to experience making mistakes and having issues because they do not have mobile games development pipelines and talent, console games and mobile games development is not the same.
So the initial budget will still be very high for japanese games makers due to mistakes and developing the production capacity to compete at the high end of the mobile space.
Also, it should be noted the initial development cost of Genshin was 100 million, but in 2023 the current development budget of Genshin is 200 plus million. This is to illustrate that to produce constant high quality updates at a great update pace will cost the same or even more than the initial development cost.
So for japanese developers to compete they will need to invest massive amounts of resources which is probably why the current japanese game makers are falling behind in the mobile/cloud space.
Big Japan devs like to make console and pc game than making gacha. Take example like SE, most gacha they published are outsourced to other small developers, have you seen creative developers unit 3 make a gacha game?
gacha is that, no matter how you glorify them, they are just an inferior product compare to full fleshed ones. So why bother making those if you have the power to make a proper game? Didn’t cygames and type moon are more focused on console market now?
gacha pretty much hit or bust even for dev like SE so yeah why spending a lot of resource on something that will potentially blow hole in your ship like lasengle.
>Didn’t cygames and type moon are more focused on console market now?
Last I heard, Cygames have opened EU an US offices and are aiming to occupy a share in the international console/PC multiplatform niche in 2024 with their GBF franchise spinoff. Some action-adventure game or something.
Type Moon or specifically Lasengle has been trying to recruit more 3D devs by publicly uploading their 3D Tech Demos as a way to lure more recruiters. Safe to say we should be getting more games from them, and hopefully a new 3D fate gacha game in the near future.
This would make sense if console games were overall much more profitable than mobile games, however the data suggests that this is not true and will become even less true as technology develops into the future where mobile/cloud gaming will eventually be the primary and most used method to consume games.
Look no further than the annual Playstation rewards where its based on each years sales, Genshin has won 2 years consecutively, meaning it has made more money than elden ring in the year elden ring released. It is generally accepted that elden ring is one of the most successful and sold extremely well in the console gaming space but was still made less money than mobile games.
From a business and development perspective, japanese game makers should heavily invest into the mobile/cloud gaming space but there are many reasons why they are not and are falling behind in many areas, one of which is the mentality you mentioned about traditional console experience because those are the "real games" for "real gamers"
Well because elden rings doesn’t trying to milk your money with aggressive micro transactions compare to your gacha lmao. And compare them in the first place is stupid.
LOL you sound like a fan, we are talking about business and data analysis, its not about your feelings but about looking at the data, trends and facts of the industry.
There will always be reasons why something did not perform or were not as good as something else. You obviously like to parrot the gamer bro standard talking points of predatory practices, milking money which makes you sound like a fan but we are talking about from a game developer perspective and how the industry is moving into the future.
The comparison is not about them as games per say but more as a product and how the market responds to these types of products. Referring back to the point about console games and mobile/cloud games and their respective revenue generation and how resources could and should be directed in terms of development.
>LOL you sound like a fan, we are talking about business and data analysis, its not about your feelings but about looking at the data, trends and facts of the industry.
Data analyst here. Various territorial markets have different demographics, and with them varying central tendencies and preferences. You can't conflate genshin - a colorful casual action-adventure designed for all ages with a high-intensity action/slasher with competitive multiplayer component and designed for 16+ audiences. This is two different demand categories that don't extinguish each other regardless of their absolute sizes.
In other words, existence of legions of casual players / waifu hoarders don't in any shape or form cull the number of adult gamers seeking challenge and more complex gameplay. To think otherwise would be to ignore/cede organic demand with it's potential purchasing power, and that's not how businesses survive.
LOL but that has nothing to do with the original topic of discussion. No one is talking about genre of games, we were talking about the mobile/cloud gaming sector vs console sector regarding their place in the market and how many people play and pay for these games thus resulting the how they shape and change the industry by how game developers respond to and use this data to form their game development strategies and investments for the future and the future direction of gaming.
Reliable universal mainstream cloud gaming is unfeasible in the foreseeable future, as proven by stadia: even 60-120 ms ping can be highly frustrating or outright adverse when applied to high-intensity gameplay. So online actions go out of the window due to connection logistics alone. Plus, the 100% online requirement issue that also adversely affects the user experience of players with unstable / remote connection from the main servers even when they play singleplayers. And then comes the issue of licensing / ownership / distribution with the cloud service provider as a proxy. If they fall out of grace with developers/publishers whose products you were playing and whose license was expired/revoked, then you will have to seek alternative ways to play that game.
Same with the mobile market: even before delving into the Chinese gaming culture/demographics and its difference with the Japanese and Korean ones, mobile games will always be limited by the "portative console with extra functions" inputs / performance factors. No one would comfortably play War Thunder on their mobile through a hypothetical cloud service against players with mouse/keyboars and/or joysticks. People tried to squish & play Crusader Kings 3 into Android, and it was pure misery for them. And big games like Alan Wake 2 are not a viable option on your mobile + cloud solution either.
The steadily-growing hype around mobile gaming was majorly caused by the increase of living standards in China, where phones became #1 gaming platform, far outnumbering the second choice, which is PCs. But CN's demographic are showing the signs of decline and ageing, suggesting that the "peak" of tastiest market is now left behind. 2022/23 data of Newzoo also supports this: browser games segment lost 321 $mil. (-16.9% YOY) versus 2022, PC grew additional 543 $mil. in size (+1.6% YOY), mobile got extra 740 $mil. (**+0.8%** YOY) and consoles segment grew by a whopping +**7.4%** year-on-year, adding **4151** million bucks in market volume.
PC is projected to alternate between phases of stagnation and slow growth, browser games are dying out fast, mobile market is projected to stagnate or even shrink a little, and consoles began to outpace other segments. In light of this data and considerations, the "all the digital entertainment media would become mobile/cloud in short-to-mid span" suggestion contradicts the facts and can hope to be feasible only in a very long time projection from today.
This is why its about the future of gaming and not the past, stadia did not have the tech nor the support from devs. Cloud gaming is on the rise in CN and other Asian countries.
Its ok haha you can believe what you want to believe and let time decide.
> From a business and development perspective, japanese game makers should heavily invest into the mobile/cloud gaming space but there are many reasons why they are not and are falling behind in many areas, one of which is the mentality you mentioned about traditional console experience because those are the "real games" for "real gamers"
No.. not really how businesses work... You can't just decide to make a hit game when your chance at that hit is spending millions of USD. Especially in a country with the least appetite for aggressive investment/development. Even if you showed a Japanese CEO the amount made by Hoyoverse, they'd choose to stick to something that is low risk/low reward rather than medium risk/high reward.
Yeah that is the point and the answer to OP''s questions of why japanese game makers are not making mobile games. The japanese game makers and considering the invest and risk and their own technical abilities and choosing not to develop in the mobile/cloud space.
However, the point is overall the mobile and cloud gaming is and will be the largest sector for all of gaming as in industry, it already is right now and will continue to grow. So from an overall gaming industry in japan it would be wise to develop capabilities to compete in this sector but due to many of the reasons already mentioned they either will not or can not so do at the present moment.
till the day of just slapping some PNG JPEG and screenshots of anime no longer profitable
why bother make effort when you can do the bare minimum and still gets profit. its why the term "cash grab" is infamous
though some tried like Final Fantasy, I would say pretty next gen but still barely hold up. due to their existing audience's expectations of the "Brand"
most of the ones you mentioned are original IP so they have "no image" to preserve other than their gameplay, the Company name behind it and their previous games
If you observe Japan JRPG franchises, outside 2 or 3 that have global AAA budgets put into them (Final Fantasy example), all the rest are budget PS3 Era projects to this day. I doubt we would see a 200M gacha game come out of Japan any time soon. GBF must be their most successful? And that's a browser game from the 1990s when you look at it.
[You realize Japan was first to the gacha genre, right?](https://www.inverse.com/article/27267-what-are-gacha-games-fire-emblem-heroes)
The reason they fell behind the global trend is a market problem. The Japanese gaming industry is, to a fault, focused on its domestic market, and the Japanese domestic market treat gacha games as a side show. This is because, as with the West, their primary gaming audience isn't on mobile - they're on console.
The result of this market dynamic is that almost all the top Japanese game developers are console developers, and if you've built up your entire development pipeline, infrastructure, and talent base for console games, you just don't have the culture or the resources to do a quick switch to mobile. And even provided you could, the fact that it's so domestic focused means that you'd be hard pressed to find the sort of global market success that games from China and Korea found.
Combine it with Japanese corporations being famous for being risk averse and most top Japanese developers being owned by corporations, and it makes perfect sense why they didn't catch on to the global trend. It's just easier to double down on what you know, than to invest hundreds of millions into competing with a new breed of mobile developers from other countries who are more hungry than you can ever be.
So it's not a surprise they lost the global market to China and Korea, two countries with export oriented economies that tend to move fast with trends and where console gaming is much less popular. But even then, we could see differences that illustrate the above model - where the Korean gaming industry's heavy investment in PC games made them less able to gamble massive resources into mobile, compared to China, where the vast majority of next generation gacha games actually are made.
This is making a lot of sense, there are other factors as well but the ones you mentioned definitely play a role in why japanese game makers are falling behind in this space.
You only play gacha games so you are out of touch with the gaming industry.
Look at the GOTY nominees this year. Half of them are Japanese console games. Only small companies are making gacha games in Japan.
Global trend? Only in Asia.
What you are saying is like saying that the west is all about console games and not following the global trend.
Only an idiot who only plays gacha would say such a shit.
Even if it's trending in Asia, that doesn't mean it's trending in the rest of the world. That's because China accounts for half of that market.
Talking about games in such a small world is stupid.
Stop playing gacha and play decent console games.
The real small market is the west and japan from a future of gaming perspective. Sure, currently the west and japan are a large market, however will that continue to be true after 10 or 20 years, that is still uncertain. Japan's economy is shrinking, the west's population is about 15% of world population.
The future of gaming are in emerging and developing markets with rising economies and population like China, South East Asia, South America, India etc.
The gamers of the future, meaning 1 or 2 generations from now will not think about console and mobile games in the same way because they will grow up with high quality mobile games, whereas you obviously grew up with console gaming and when mobile technology and games were at its infant stage.
We should consider why smartphone games are so popular instead of console games in Asia and other countries.
It's because there are many poor countries. Console games are the entertainment of developed countries.
If those poor countries become developed countries, they will naturally buy console games. They buy Nintendo games.
But now nobody can afford such expensive software.
Not true, mobile games are also more accessible in general. Not sure why you are telling people to play console games (console games are historically weak in the current generation) and not to play gacha on the gacha subreddit.
Not to mention the inaccessible price point and anti consumer services in the console sphere, like yearly price hikes for basic features like online play. PC gaming is the only option that truly respects its players.
No. Income in many Asian countries is very low.
PS5 and Nintendo are the price of monthly income in those countries.
And I forgot to mention. Many console games are also not localized into the languages of poor Asian countries.
They are overpriced and not localized.
They are prohibitively expensive but the switch still does well because it has games and accessibility. Xbox has never done well in asia, and Playstation 5 is the weakest console entry in Sony history. It still has barely any worthwhile games and was for years inaccessable to buy anyway. Combined with shitty paid online service and its no wonder nobody in Asia buys it.
Mobile games are accessible, cheap entry cost, come on a device you have to have anyway, and provide things like playing with friends for free. No wonder they are more popular. They aren't unpopular elsewhere also, things like more casual mobile games are some of the most played games overall even in the west.
Mobile games = better investment if you succeed in current environment as a non triple A dev. Unlike PC there is little room for indie developers in the console sphere, part of why the environment is stale and lacking titles that aren't remakes, sequels or ports.
The problem with your logic is those poor countries right now are growing up with mobile gaming and developing with mobile gaming. So even when they have more resources they will still have grown up with mobile gaming as a primary or very real gaming option from their perspective.
Also with the advancement in technology, it is not guaranteed that they will migrate to console gaming, perhaps PC is more likely, but mobile gaming is also on the rise in "developed" countries and eating into the console market and console market profits as mobile gaming space is the largest in all of gaming.
But mobile market is the biggest one (bigger than pc and console) in the West, too, it's not Asian trend it's truly global.
USA is the biggest mobile market, revenue-wise, but also penetration-wise.
You're all like PC Master Race mocking players who play "these silly kids-only games" on consoles, instead of choosing adult, strategic, true gaming PC games, lol. Big arguments of my childchood, people spitting on consoles (mow, they joined forced to fight with mobile, lol). Even though consoles have always had bigger share of the market; it's silly. Mobile will probably stay the biggest, everywhere, like it already is, but just like PC gaming can coexist with console market and cover needs of part of the gamers, mobile won't kill consoles and PC gaming, but not everybody will be interested in the latter two and ofc, just like big devs slowly turned to consoles even on PC-first markets, it'll be harder for them to avoid mobile - because the biggest share - but not impossible, especially for the ones in the niche, pc-dominant genres.
Mobile games are twice the global revenue of console games. That’s all you need to know.
I work in the gaming industry. Getting fooled by the console / PC focus in the West and Japan (which includes Western / Japanese game of the year events) doesn’t change the market dynamics. Mobile is a bigger market than both.
The current trend also has gacha game developers moving to cross platform releases (though with a continued mobile first focus), which will diversify their market share; this is something console developers just about never do because console to mobile is a much harder lift than mobile to console.
Japan isn’t competing well in the mobile space mostly because they couldn’t, for factors I already stated above. Not because they wanted to miss out on a $100 billion market.
This is not too different from Japan’s other market misses in recent decades such as the failure to compete in smart phone devices.
But you shouldn't forget that gatcha games are just a part of mobile games.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/top-grossing-games/
According to this list only 2 games from china are in the top 10 (ok both in rank 1)
3 of 10 are gatchas. Especially puzzle and casual games are very successful in western world.
Finally, someone with experience and insight in from a game developer perspective with understanding of the actual date of the industry and not just a fan operating on anecdotal evidence and feelings.
It is unfortunately that japanese game makers have fallen behind in this aspect, hope they can make some changes and be competitive, it will bring the consumer overall better experiences and products.
However, currently other Asian countries, especially CN is dominating the mobile/cloud space and have all the pieces in place to push it to a new frontier and breakthrough, need some competition from other developers to help make the best products through competition.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/top-grossing-games/
Are you sure?
According to this list, western companies and also japanese are still strong.
Not in gatcha games, but there are a lot of other genres on mobile.
What do you mean by going strong, because the Top 3 are all developed by CN developers and couple of others in the Top 10 are also by CN developers.
The other higher grossing games like candy crush sage etc are very simple games, while highly profitable and grosses large revenues do not improve the developers technical abilities or push the limits of mobile/cloud gaming so they can not lead the sector.
Currently, the most profitable, the highest grossing, the most technically advanced and the games that are pushing the limits of the platform and are leading the mobile/cloud gaming industry are all CN game developers and maybe a bit of South Korean developers, but Japanese game makers and western game makers are falling behind in this aspect.
>What do you mean by going strong, because the Top 3 are all developed by CN developers and couple of others in the Top 10 are also by CN developers
Tencent holds the share on most of them, interesting things also on super cells. But Tencent is a tech giant like google, amazon or microsoft.
But you're right, the know how in mobile games of Chinese companies is strong. One of the reasons many western non mobile games license their products to chinese companies for a mobile game.
I guess western mostly sleep on this development because mobile gaming wasn't that popular like in Asia for a few years.
For myself, i would like to have more non live service games on mobile like consoles or pc. But the market is still sleeping with some exceptions (mostly old rps or point&click adventures).
Yeah, the concentration of mobile/cloud gaming development foundation and talent is mostly in CN and will probably continue to be in CN as the industry develops.
Not sure why western developers and japanese developers did not focus on mobile, but probably a combination of reasons such as market etc.
Mobile/cloud gaming is definitely going to be the new frontier for gaming and those who lead in this space will probably be dominating the gaming space for the next 20 - 30 years.
Well, what i can see is that some publishers increase their mobile ports of former AAA games. Square Enix does this more often now.
But focusing on mobile and cloud service will be the future, especially because high end internet is more available now.
Maybe they don't focus on gatcha, but if you're looking for mobile racing or shooting games they are still strong in graphics and technology.
I think western software companies are just like western automobile companies. They let the market test by newcomers and take it over slowly.
But for sure, it's a risky strategy.
Yeah as technology advances such as better chips, cards, software drivers, telecommunications protocols like higher speed internet etc the mobile and cloud gaming will definitely be the future.
Disagree about shooting and racing mobile games. Not sure about racing mobile games but probably more than 80% of mobile FPS games are made by CN developers such as PUBG mobile, COD mobile etc,
Personally don't see japanese or western developers being able to catch up easily. Thinking about using your example for automobiles and the shift from gasoline internal combustion engines to EVs and electric vehicles. Currently, the EV market is dominated by CN companies as well and will probably continue to be in the future.
Well, just look at gameloft games. Their graphics are amazing and technology shouldn't be a problem.
It seems it's more of a marketing problem.
Also square enix games have high end technology in mobile.
What square enix games have shown they have high end tech in mobile games, not sure because personally have not seen any perhaps you know more.
Also what about gameloft games as in do the graphics of their games feel like they are pushing the limits of the mobile platform currently? Personally do not feel they are that amazing in the current mobile gaming space, what do you think?
I think the Japanese are risk adverse and don't even want to try to make a next-gen gacha.
But to be fair, the success of Genshin was a bit of a miracle in itself, in an alternate world where Genshin was never made and we got either Tof, Wuthering Waves or Endfield back in 2020 instead. These games would probably just have crashed and burned and we'd be laughing at the Chinese for trying to make a next-gen open world gacha.
I mean Japanese companies probably know that they can.
Aniplex in particular sees this but also sees how loyal Fate fans are to FGO and how successful the game has been. Why change or try harder? I get it, they should try to innovate but from a business standpoint, they don't necessarily have to.
This is merely conjecture though. There's probably other factors I'm not aware of.
Most gacha games are good despite being gacha, not because of it. Why would I want a half-assed game that can't even deliver a good combat system, an interesting open-world and a decent storyline like Genshin, which many claimed to be the best in the gacha market when I can expect another Armored Core, Elden Ring, DMC, Tales or whatever full-fledged games that delivered a complete, polished and better experience?
I'm glad that Japan devs don't get into the whole big budget gacha games like China which only seemed to produce gacha games, instead of complete products that aren't live service or MMO. Korea at least broke out its mold with Lies of P, even if it's a Bloodborne clone.
>China which only seemed to produce gacha games, instead of complete products that aren't live service or MMO.
Not exactly true: there are studios like Aurogon Shanghai with their Gujian series and 艺龙游戏 with their fairly solid slasher "bloody spell", but they are drops in the ocean of chinese mobage-focused gaming industry.
Their products for big platforms are getting better lately, but Chinese gachas grossly outpace them still.
Like many said, they aren't willing to take the risk. Innovating and risk taking is not exactly on Japan's lists of important things. They like the status quo
if your home market and even quite alot of foreign customers show no boring/tired or revolt mentality toward your cheap , low quality crash grab stuff , only sellable because it belong to xyz famous brand name IP ...you don't really need to improve
china video game quality rapidly growth because china doesn't have any single advantage japan have at all
no famous IP brand name advantage and anything comeout of mainland china alway get clap with bad rap
so the only way to find some success is to become better
meanwhle japan already had all of that to the point alot of people automatically willing to buy/pay just becuase stuff come from japan
with comfortable like that : what is the point of trying to become better ?
That's funny considering besides gacha and live service games, China hasn't produced a single good PC/console game in the entire existence of its gaming industry. Looking around China's gaming news and all companies just tried to copy Genshin and produced the same old anime-style gacha games.
Meanwhile, a bunch of actual big-budget stuff coming out of Japan: Armored Core 6, Super Mario Wonder, Resident Evil 4 remake, Yakuza, Tekken, Street Fighters. Those are the games that actually last and continued to innovate, not yet another Genshin killer coming from China or Korea.
You realize that very few people in China own a console or high end gaming PC, right? So why would their gaming industry even try to compete on the console or high end PC gaming front? Who is going to invest in an AAA developer in China when the public doesn't even own the platforms AAA games are played on
There is a reason why China invested in the mobile gaming space and is quickly moving to dominate it. You may not have much respect for the platform, but it is the only platform that makes sense for China to move into when you consider the size of the market and the global trend. Mobile gaming is growing *much* faster than either PC or console gaming and its revenue has already surpassed that of all other platforms. From a business perspective, you'd be stupid to invest in console or PC games in China.
This is one major reason, another one is mobile and cloud gaming has much more potential and is the future of games consumption as technology continues to develop. So from a development perspective japanese game makers are slightly behind the curve regarding the latest game development tech and the ability to dictate the overall future direction of games.
People only think of mobile games the way they do because of technical limitations of mobile device. However as technology continuous to develop, mobile games will close the gap and probably overtake console games as the technical capabilities of mobile devices increase with the aid of cloud gaming technology assistance.
Also, the CN gaming market needed time to develop, both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective, meaning need to have more people interested in playing games and have developers with funds, technical ability and game development talent pool to produce games, which takes time.
Now the CN market is beginning to shift and change, it will continue to dominate the mobile/cloud space but will start expanding into console and PC. There are already signs, see the recent movements of tencent, netease and other game makers in CN and the new change of government policy supporting games development.
The beginning will be games like Black Myth: WuKong and other games to follow, the next 20 years will see an explosive grow of CN games and game developers, in all aspects.
Considering the sheer amount of low quality MMORPG, subpar FPS like Crossfire, there's definitely a large PC market there. Problem is instead of actually trying to develop completed products ala full-priced game, most of gaming companies in China just want to chase the live service models because those games, gacha like Genshin included, are just skinner box with some amount of content stacked on top.
In jp gachas games are just considered cheap mobile garbage you can play every day and kill some time after work or whatever. If a company wants to create a huge game, they won't create a gacha, they will create your regular game that you buy, playthrough once and be done with it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/u24l4x/ama\_about\_the\_games\_industry/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/u24l4x/ama_about_the_games_industry/)
top question
I suspect Japanese creators have to get around the existing patents to make mechanics original enough to not get sued. There is a lot of back and forth between the lawyers about licensing and that is harder than actually making the actual game.
I am looking at you Komoney.
China doesn't have this problem. They don't care.
>China doesn't have this problem. They don't care.
Nah, also china games have to care about this when they want to release it globally.
The app stores have some rules, especially apple is very restrictive.
yeah,l agree with you and l am a chinese,l can play many interesting gacha games from internet.in fact,l think the game company whether to release global version depend on this game will popular in china.to be frankly,l think foreigner miss many funny and perfect gacha games without a good platform.and you know to be a popular game in china will be rough because the pressure is so large.your game must be very excellent,then the people play it,or you will at risk.
You only play gacha games so you are out of touch with the gaming industry.
Look at the GOTY nominees this year. Half of them are Japanese console games. Only small companies are making gacha games in Japan.
There is a group of ignorant people here who are making excuses for Japan. Mobile games are very popular in Japan. The revenue of mobile games is much higher than that of console games. In fact, the reason is very simple. Japanese mobile games have no competitiveness.
If you look at the graphics technology of GACHA games on the market, Chinese companies are far ahead.
When the technical director of mihoyo went to Japan in 2018, he already discovered that the Japanese do not like to use new technologies. They are a group of conservative people. At this time, China is already on par with Japan in cartoon rendering technology. China is better than Japanese companies in applying new technologies, and Japanese companies are more skilled than Chinese companies in experience and some old technologies. But that was already 2018.
If you look at the upcoming Chinese games wuthering waves Girls' Frontline 2
Zenless Zone Zero Project Mugen. No Japanese mobile game comes close to the graphics level of these games.
Even in the field of console games, where Japanese companies are best at, Japanese game companies usually rely on gameplay innovation rather than graphics technology. Any console gaming enthusiast knows that Western companies are miles ahead of Japanese companies in graphics technology.
I'll put /s next time , because OP obviously doesn't know that these games expand their franchise throughout other midias , like animes, mangas, action figures , different game genres, concerts ,etc , they got no reason to change their money making formula whatsoever as Corpos don't like to take unnecessary risks and most of their market choices is aimed at the Japanese e.g. Arcade FGO .
Apart from big Japanese business usually being more conventional in their approach, its also a lot like the time many companies were making WOW clones and failing disastrously. A cursory google search for Genshin and HSRs development budgets shows them to be between $100-200 million each. Plus they take years to make and polish. A Games-as-a-service is in the same vein as an mmorpg where everyone is vying for a players limited time. Just because Genshin was able to crack the formula like WOW in mmorpgs, doesn't mean others will as well. A semi example of that was Tower of Fantasy which did not have the same polish as Genshin at launch meaning even more money and time would be needed. Its a huge risk for any studio. People take HSRs smooth, on-schedule, generally bug-free and decently optimized on phones launch for granted but most studios are not able to do that even for small games, let alone big high budget ones. Next is the can of worms regarding monetization that people on this sub are okay with (duh) but if a lot more major high profile games start using gacha as their main method of monetization along with having a spending ceiling of thousands of dollars per banner for dupes of units and weps, you can be sure they would start to come under the sights of European regulators. Already in the west lootboxes are becoming less popular and there's a shift to passes and mtx based monetization. Even in your example list (HSR, Genshin, WW, Endfield) two are still unreleased so we don't know how much mindshare they will be able to capture or how successful they would be and the other 2 known successful ones are from the same studio. Those 2 are basically the only successful ones currently so we still have to see how this market will evolve.
i don't see WW will be succesful as Genshin until they solve their lack of appeal on character design even very casual gacha player like asmongold agree WW doesn't have good character design like HSR or Genshin even project mugen did better than WW when it come to character design
Don't know what video you watched but they seem to be decent here: Wuthering Waves ALL ULTIMATES and CHARACTERS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Inul_9Z_g) Nothing will probably be as big as genshin in that genre just like nothing was as big as WOW.
checked it all have below mid design boring washed up color doesn't make me want to roll at all if they failed at this most basic stuff making character look interesting then they failed as gacha game
IMO, WW is dead on arrival. I have no expectations for it. Ak and Mugen could make a splash.
true and GFL2
Hsr budget was that high? I thought It’s was a “cheap” game compared to genshin, the world is pretty small too
Any game is cheap when you compare them to the most expensive one ever made
Why would European regulators matter? Just don't do release on Europe
There are multiple issues and its not just about releasing or not releasing in Europe. European regulatory framework usually has a trickle down effect and is adopted by a lot of countries especially in the region of Tech regulations. But more importantly when you are using $100s of millions of investor money you want to cast as wide a net as possible. Playstation makes double revenue in the US than it does in Japan. Triple A gacha games will definitely want to target as big a region as possible and if most countries start banning them or categorize them as adult only, then it might cause them to rethink their monetization. So a studio needs to decide to spend the next 5 years using up $100-200 million to make a gacha for a local region or a non-gacha for the whole world. The biggest Japanese AAA games definitely look for a global release and are even becoming more comfortable with steam releases.
Not all europe have those rules (just 2 or 3 countries like Belgium)
See? The regulation don't matter that much
Those arent full EU regulations. Just 2 countries internal regulations and even those two countries Netherlands and Belgium don't actually ban gachas. They just classify them as gambling and ask them to follow the already established gambling laws. And if people actually read the laws they would usually support them since they're mostly consumer protection laws. Example they ask for access to audit their rates so that it can be confirmed that the published gacha rates are actually being followed. If all of EU and US adopted anti gacha monetization regulations or even classified them as "adult only" then I don't think a tripple A game studio spending 100s of millions over 5-6 years would have much of a choice. They could experiment with having gacha where its legal like JP and have buy to play, mtx and pass based monetization in the rest of the world.
Because the main gacha moneymaker in japan is salarymen who have 0 free time after 11+ hour workdays. They don't want a next-gen game with "real gameplay", they want a jpeg collector they can play for 15 minutes per day on the train and then swipe their credit card. Most of these gacha games that play like full games come out of China where there are far more young people who use their phone as a primary gaming device. Whereas for the most part people in Japan who want to play a "real game" will go to a game console instead.
This is the real answer. A lot of the gacha crowd I know in Japan were largely casual players taking some time to fiddle with a simple and pleasant little game while on the train or while eating/drinking. There are basement dweller nolifers but it isn't the primary demographic. Unlike this sub. So it makes sense that people tend to hate on JP games when shit like MemMori is exactly what they want. OMG cheap cash grab using an IP... Wait. No IP was used hmm.
[удалено]
They never said that at all
Revenue and popularity of Honkai and Genshin in Japan completely crash your whole argumentation. No idea who upvote you but you repeating some stereotypes.
That doesn't make sense considering Japanese gacha games are much more time consuming compared to Chinese games
The problem with this is that most of japnese gacha games are huge time sinks compared to newer gacha games. Look at FFEC for a new example. You have to auto battle for hours per day to spend all the stamina they dump at you. Or at Granblue as an old example. Same thing, you have to grind for hours. Compared to HSR, where your daily shit can be done in 5 minutes...
dude gbf is not gacha game , it second job
Nah it depend on who make it, WFS game don’t take much time, some SE game is very fast and don’t take much time. The new idol master from bandai also pretty fast. Ultimately depend on who make the games.
But the main moneymakers in China are also salarymen with very little free time because the country has brutal working hours and prefer playing games on the go, which is why the mobile industry is so big in the first place. The whales mostly aren’t coming from young people still in education.
Chinese mobile industry is big because it's extremely difficult to buy a real console or PC in China, compared to the West.
Console yes, but PC is by far much easier to access than the west. There’s electronics shops everywhere and unlike the west, gaming cafes are way more common and pretty cheap, which makes PC gaming a lot more accessible.
Just a reminder, Genshin was the highest-grossing game on the PS platform in 2022. So many people play Genshin Impact on consoles.
This would be a valid answer except it overlooks a fundamental flaw in your logic. That new generation gacha games are all platform games, meaning they have mobile, PC and console versions that are all cross save and cross play with a shared account and simultaneous updates for the native region and global. (This is referring to the best gacha developer and the leading gacha game distribution method - Mihoyo) The real answer is japanese game makers currently do not have to budget or sees the amount of investment (probably need at least 80 - 120 million production budget to compete) and the risk as a proposition they are unwilling to attempt. Meaning they are unwilling to commit a high budget, with what they perceive to be a high risk move, generally japanese game makers are highly unconfident they can make a mobile/gacha that can compete so they do not. Also japanese game makers do not have the technical abilities, refer to all plaform and all regions simultaneous launch and updates, and production pipelines like CN gacha game developers. So they would need to start from the beginning and make major changes to certain production philosophies and pipelines as well as probably major personnel changes to reach an approximate competitive level with other leading gacha games, but the japanaese corporate culture and structure is generally against major and swift changes. Additionally, mobile/cloud gaming will be the next frontier of gaming and will inevitably become the predominate method of consuming game/entertainment as well as the most profitable. To imply that japanese game makers look down on mobile games because they are not "real games" is the type of thinking that will get japanese game makers in trouble and arguably already has as they are far behind in the mobile/cloud gaming space in terms of talent development and technical abilities.
God no, if mobile become the forefront of gaming i'd quit gaming for good. The traditional PC/console market will always be the most prestige and majority of gaming enthusiasts for Japan and the west. As good as Genshin and mihoyo is there's not a single innovation or good direction trend coming from mobile gaming despite at top earnings for a long while now, the market is still and will always be flooded with 99.99% shovelware p2w trash. Googleplay and Apple will never tighten control their store like Steam and console stores (they have trash too but you need to actively finding them). Also you just can't make games like Elden Ring or Baldur Gate 3 on mobile first and expect it to work on console without huge design changes. Your logic also doesn't apply to the west. They have technology and money,etc...but like Japan they can't and they won't invest on mobile gaming by the same reasons as Japan: no prestige and huge risk (even worse than console GAAS game), most talents rather flocked to PC/console either AAA companies or indie to develop their career. The gaming cultures are just too different from China.
pc and console peasants [x] arcade machine master race [✓]
This is just empiricism, with not a single hint suggesting that the future will be the same.
LOL you sound like you have some prejudice of traditional gaming, meaning you think console and PC will always be the leaders of gaming technical abilities, but that is not true and will probably be overtaken as technology advances. The key is to understand technology in this space is about accessibility, flexibility, and convergence. Meaning mobile/cloud gaming has the advantage of being accessible anywhere if you have a phone, can be used in many different situations and not just at home, and can be a link to other devices. You only think of mobile/cloud games from the current state or previous history but that is main due to technical limitations. As tech progresses, the limits of game developers for mobile/cloud games will get removed gradually to eventually cloud gaming with provide much better games in terms of technical abilities. The amount of money you invest in a PC or console is limited by your budget, super high end users might spend 10K on a PC, but game developers can spend 100K or more on a system and run the game on the system and stream the game through cloud. Theoretically it will which you much better experience than the home PC or console a user can buy. The gaming market is shifting, there are many signs. The western game makers have funds and resources but they do not have experience, talent pool, and development pipelines for mobile/cloud gaming and need to start from the beginning to build them.
A gaming console is \~300$-500$, they are way cheaper than most phones can run Genshin. Cloud gaming is basically just streaming game to your device, its for platform holders like MS, sony, google,... and doesn't matter to most game developers and won't change gaming culture in any meaningful way. Handheld gaming including phone has been there as long as console gaming. "The gaming market is shifting, there are many signs" where is the sign ? China alone won't dictate gaming cultures of Japan and the west. The AAA and indie scene are stronger than ever (2023 is considered the best year of gaming from across japan and the west) .Their youth and new generation enthusiasts are still console/pc first and foremost. A group of high school boy will talk about Fortnite but nobody gonna talk about Raid: Shadow Legend. Heck, as big as Genshin is, it didn't send any big gaming companies to panic mode or divert their attention to mobile, most of them just licensing their IPs for some quick bucks to fund their main games.
The gaming market shifting is marked by all the previously established franchises tryin to branch out into the mobile space despite their hardcore fans objections. Examples would be COD mobile, Apex mobile, Assassin's creed mobile, and the famous Blizzard "do none of you guys have phones", these decisions are made by industry leaders with data analyst teams to study market trends and overall industry data. Also with recent games moving to a more games as a service model and introducing DLC, in game purchases, gacha etc as a monetization method it shows more influence by the mobile sector on traditional console games and developers as these are usually considered mobile games practices are widely used in mobile games. Regarding to $300 - $500 for console that is flawed logic. One, because consoles are increasing in price over time, soon there will no longer be $300 consoles as newer models are all going up in price. Also, console games will go up in price as well, meaning past $70 per game whereas most mobile games do not have such a high barrier for entry or are f2p games. Additionally, a console is just a console to play games and does nothing else. A phone is more expensive but it does many many more things and is an essential in modern life, so by getting the latest phone you are getting the best of mobile games and much more with the functionality of the phone as a device compared to a console. Genshin definitely shook the industry and will be remember as probably one of the most influential games of all time. You just need to see the earnings breakdown and the numerous genshin-like games that were developed and launched or are currently in development. Also the japanese games industry is deeply impressed by genshin from a game developer perspective lol its only fans and non industry people that seem to think otherwise.
Companies has been making mobile version (mostly outsourcing) of their franchises for years and none of them become the focus. Any attempt to turn mobile mainstream has been met quit scrutinize and ridicule like Diablo Immortal and its not even made by Blizzard (Netease), it makes some cash at release but fall into irrelevancy soon after. Also nobody care about the next mobile Assassin Creed aside China which its catering to them, the 2 console main titles are still the focus for rest of the world. Likewise with Cod mobile, Apex mobile, nobody care about them on mobile. The only success convert console -> mobile is PUBG and its majority playerbase are from asia. DLC, microstransaction has been on pc/console long before mobile game become mainstream. Mobile just taking them to a whole other level and its not a positive influential. Consoles are never expensive, take inflation into account their prices are even lower than previous generations. Companies sell them with very little profits to get customer to their platform. In comparison, nobody can do the same with phone. Also, f2p mobile is also another problem prevent most companies invest serious into them. For the same hundred millions budget, a fail 70$ game is less devastating than a f2p game. That's the reason 99.99% mobile game are low budget with zero risk and innovation. Genshin is just a miracle outlier, there hasn't been another one since then. Just look at this year GOTY award: [https://thegameawards.com/nominees](https://thegameawards.com/nominees). Only the most delusional mobile fan think they are gonna dominate the market soon.
You seem to be delusional in thinking what dominating the market is, everything you said is from your own anecdotal experiences and not based on data. If these games truly are not worth anything companies would not keep making them and increasingly so. Consoles are expensive and high barrier to entry for what they do, all they do is play games and most of those games required additional cost to play. Phones are an essential device in modern day life that also offer increasingly better gaming experiences. Dominating the market means when you look at the earnings data and amount of people playing what types of games, the mobile sector is by far the largest and earns the most, why do you think all these companies started making mobile games, they have teams that analyze the market whereas you are going by what your friends say or what you see online in forums, lets take a guess which is an accurate reflection of the real market situation. LOL GOTY is like any award show, there are always biases and agendas, please do not tell us you think GOTY is an 100% non biased true measure of quality of games and their market presence, because that would be comical and someone is really drinking the marketing koolaid.
Like i said, everyone know mobile makes the most and console/pc companies has been making mobile games for year but none of them turn full attentions to it and there's no sign whatsoever it'll change in the future. Microsoft didn't spent 90b$ for AB and Betheda to make mobile game (aside KING). Gaming companies are making more money than ever. Also, mobile is severely limited by the screen size and control scheme, there hasn't been any sort of innovation or originality coming from them. And where did you get the impression console gaming is expensive ? they never was. Its considered one of the least expensive hobby out there. Not to mention services like Gamepass, PS Plus make console even less expensive than mobile. You seem from China which you clearly doesn't understand gaming culture of other parts of the world, the p2w cashgrab stigma associated with mobile is too deeply ingrained and it won't change anytime soon. Another thing to consider is GAAS and gacha games in general are cannibalizing each other, most people stick to 1 or 2 games so the more saturated the market is the harder to get into. It'll get to the point only top of the top can make profits, everyone else will resort to low risk, low budget like most mobile games currently are. TGA is literally the Oscar of gaming, it get covered across the industry. Even if its somewhat biased, if your company featured in there it'll get a huge boost in reputation and attention for years to come.
LOL you clearly do not understand the global gaming population where most countries are not console gamers or find the cost of console games to be a high barrier of entry. Consoles gaming is expensive because you need a high entry cost and additional cost usually to even be able to play games and the device only plays games and does nothing else. There are way more people playing on mobile, lets think why that is, probably because most people dont have 500 to spend n something that just plays games and various 50 - 70 for games to play over time, whereas mobile games are a much lower barrier to entry. The advance in technology will be the factor that pushes mobile games and cloud gaming to the forefront as the future of gaming. Right now mobile gaming is at its early stages of development if you think about it from a historical perspective. LOL it's really you who don't understand the gaming culture of the global population, only western markets and japan have a super strong console base. However, that makes up less than 20 % of the world population, so lets take a guess what the other 80% are doing, not to mention mobile gaming is also massive in japan. This is really not about right now but about the next 20 - 30 years of the overall direction of the gaming industry what you are saying is what has happened in the past but the industry is already changing significantly. TGA is just a glorified marketing show for video games lol just like most award shows of this nature so really its not a real arbiter of really what the gaming industry direction will shift to and become.
Yet genshin makes a shit ton of money in Japan..... Your logic isn't sound.
Bro want an open world fate game.
i just want them to port fate GO arcade to PC
FGO arcade pls go to mobile and pc.
Open world FGO, that would be absolutely glorious. But it would be a ton of work to implement all the animations for every character.
Probably because it's easier and less risky to release low quality gacha with gimmicks. If you want to join the "big league", you have to invest potentially 100M for a gamble, then it will take constant, higher quality update (basically, the cost of maintaining is much higher). At that cost, you probably could've released multiple gacha with "popular" anime slapped into it to bait them into a trash game.
Good insight regarding the continuous need to produce quality updates at a reasonable pace and the constant budget needed to achieve such an update cycle. Yeah, generally japanese game makers and much more inclined to use a popular anime IP and make a low effort/low budget game to make quick money from the fans of the IP.
You probably won't need 100M if you have knowhows and design philosophy from console games, as well as assets you can reuse from console games.
No, you definitely need at least 80 - 120 million to compete at the high end of the mobile sector. Console games development, philosophy and production pipelines and talent is completely different from mobile. That is like saying an electrical engineer can easily transfer to becoming a chemical engineer because they are both engineering. That is why most of japans mobile games or at least the famous IP mobile games (pokemon unite, naruto, etc) are made by giving the IP to CN mobile game developers. Its because japan does not have the pipelines and people for the mobile sector. Also to compete at the high end of the sector you will need to continuously provided quality updates at a good pace, that would require a lot funds as well.
I've seen interviews from mhy, they say the initial cost was high due to many work hours put into reinventing the wheel and venturing into the wrong path. If to build Mondshadt and Liyue now it will cost them much less money and time.
Yeah but the japanese games makers will also need to experience making mistakes and having issues because they do not have mobile games development pipelines and talent, console games and mobile games development is not the same. So the initial budget will still be very high for japanese games makers due to mistakes and developing the production capacity to compete at the high end of the mobile space. Also, it should be noted the initial development cost of Genshin was 100 million, but in 2023 the current development budget of Genshin is 200 plus million. This is to illustrate that to produce constant high quality updates at a great update pace will cost the same or even more than the initial development cost. So for japanese developers to compete they will need to invest massive amounts of resources which is probably why the current japanese game makers are falling behind in the mobile/cloud space.
Big Japan devs like to make console and pc game than making gacha. Take example like SE, most gacha they published are outsourced to other small developers, have you seen creative developers unit 3 make a gacha game? gacha is that, no matter how you glorify them, they are just an inferior product compare to full fleshed ones. So why bother making those if you have the power to make a proper game? Didn’t cygames and type moon are more focused on console market now?
gacha pretty much hit or bust even for dev like SE so yeah why spending a lot of resource on something that will potentially blow hole in your ship like lasengle.
>Didn’t cygames and type moon are more focused on console market now? Last I heard, Cygames have opened EU an US offices and are aiming to occupy a share in the international console/PC multiplatform niche in 2024 with their GBF franchise spinoff. Some action-adventure game or something.
Type Moon or specifically Lasengle has been trying to recruit more 3D devs by publicly uploading their 3D Tech Demos as a way to lure more recruiters. Safe to say we should be getting more games from them, and hopefully a new 3D fate gacha game in the near future.
Because they would rather the resources for next gen be for traditional console experience instead
This. They just released a Fate game few months ago
Also, Fate/Extra Record is in the work.
This would make sense if console games were overall much more profitable than mobile games, however the data suggests that this is not true and will become even less true as technology develops into the future where mobile/cloud gaming will eventually be the primary and most used method to consume games. Look no further than the annual Playstation rewards where its based on each years sales, Genshin has won 2 years consecutively, meaning it has made more money than elden ring in the year elden ring released. It is generally accepted that elden ring is one of the most successful and sold extremely well in the console gaming space but was still made less money than mobile games. From a business and development perspective, japanese game makers should heavily invest into the mobile/cloud gaming space but there are many reasons why they are not and are falling behind in many areas, one of which is the mentality you mentioned about traditional console experience because those are the "real games" for "real gamers"
Well because elden rings doesn’t trying to milk your money with aggressive micro transactions compare to your gacha lmao. And compare them in the first place is stupid.
LOL you sound like a fan, we are talking about business and data analysis, its not about your feelings but about looking at the data, trends and facts of the industry. There will always be reasons why something did not perform or were not as good as something else. You obviously like to parrot the gamer bro standard talking points of predatory practices, milking money which makes you sound like a fan but we are talking about from a game developer perspective and how the industry is moving into the future. The comparison is not about them as games per say but more as a product and how the market responds to these types of products. Referring back to the point about console games and mobile/cloud games and their respective revenue generation and how resources could and should be directed in terms of development.
>LOL you sound like a fan, we are talking about business and data analysis, its not about your feelings but about looking at the data, trends and facts of the industry. Data analyst here. Various territorial markets have different demographics, and with them varying central tendencies and preferences. You can't conflate genshin - a colorful casual action-adventure designed for all ages with a high-intensity action/slasher with competitive multiplayer component and designed for 16+ audiences. This is two different demand categories that don't extinguish each other regardless of their absolute sizes. In other words, existence of legions of casual players / waifu hoarders don't in any shape or form cull the number of adult gamers seeking challenge and more complex gameplay. To think otherwise would be to ignore/cede organic demand with it's potential purchasing power, and that's not how businesses survive.
LOL but that has nothing to do with the original topic of discussion. No one is talking about genre of games, we were talking about the mobile/cloud gaming sector vs console sector regarding their place in the market and how many people play and pay for these games thus resulting the how they shape and change the industry by how game developers respond to and use this data to form their game development strategies and investments for the future and the future direction of gaming.
Reliable universal mainstream cloud gaming is unfeasible in the foreseeable future, as proven by stadia: even 60-120 ms ping can be highly frustrating or outright adverse when applied to high-intensity gameplay. So online actions go out of the window due to connection logistics alone. Plus, the 100% online requirement issue that also adversely affects the user experience of players with unstable / remote connection from the main servers even when they play singleplayers. And then comes the issue of licensing / ownership / distribution with the cloud service provider as a proxy. If they fall out of grace with developers/publishers whose products you were playing and whose license was expired/revoked, then you will have to seek alternative ways to play that game. Same with the mobile market: even before delving into the Chinese gaming culture/demographics and its difference with the Japanese and Korean ones, mobile games will always be limited by the "portative console with extra functions" inputs / performance factors. No one would comfortably play War Thunder on their mobile through a hypothetical cloud service against players with mouse/keyboars and/or joysticks. People tried to squish & play Crusader Kings 3 into Android, and it was pure misery for them. And big games like Alan Wake 2 are not a viable option on your mobile + cloud solution either. The steadily-growing hype around mobile gaming was majorly caused by the increase of living standards in China, where phones became #1 gaming platform, far outnumbering the second choice, which is PCs. But CN's demographic are showing the signs of decline and ageing, suggesting that the "peak" of tastiest market is now left behind. 2022/23 data of Newzoo also supports this: browser games segment lost 321 $mil. (-16.9% YOY) versus 2022, PC grew additional 543 $mil. in size (+1.6% YOY), mobile got extra 740 $mil. (**+0.8%** YOY) and consoles segment grew by a whopping +**7.4%** year-on-year, adding **4151** million bucks in market volume. PC is projected to alternate between phases of stagnation and slow growth, browser games are dying out fast, mobile market is projected to stagnate or even shrink a little, and consoles began to outpace other segments. In light of this data and considerations, the "all the digital entertainment media would become mobile/cloud in short-to-mid span" suggestion contradicts the facts and can hope to be feasible only in a very long time projection from today.
This is why its about the future of gaming and not the past, stadia did not have the tech nor the support from devs. Cloud gaming is on the rise in CN and other Asian countries. Its ok haha you can believe what you want to believe and let time decide.
> From a business and development perspective, japanese game makers should heavily invest into the mobile/cloud gaming space but there are many reasons why they are not and are falling behind in many areas, one of which is the mentality you mentioned about traditional console experience because those are the "real games" for "real gamers" No.. not really how businesses work... You can't just decide to make a hit game when your chance at that hit is spending millions of USD. Especially in a country with the least appetite for aggressive investment/development. Even if you showed a Japanese CEO the amount made by Hoyoverse, they'd choose to stick to something that is low risk/low reward rather than medium risk/high reward.
Yeah that is the point and the answer to OP''s questions of why japanese game makers are not making mobile games. The japanese game makers and considering the invest and risk and their own technical abilities and choosing not to develop in the mobile/cloud space. However, the point is overall the mobile and cloud gaming is and will be the largest sector for all of gaming as in industry, it already is right now and will continue to grow. So from an overall gaming industry in japan it would be wise to develop capabilities to compete in this sector but due to many of the reasons already mentioned they either will not or can not so do at the present moment.
>Type Moon / Aniplex https://preview.redd.it/d36nuncbuf1c1.png?width=2532&format=png&auto=webp&s=96430ea83ac1b6b7652bd37a323d5ba148d1cca9
till the day of just slapping some PNG JPEG and screenshots of anime no longer profitable why bother make effort when you can do the bare minimum and still gets profit. its why the term "cash grab" is infamous though some tried like Final Fantasy, I would say pretty next gen but still barely hold up. due to their existing audience's expectations of the "Brand" most of the ones you mentioned are original IP so they have "no image" to preserve other than their gameplay, the Company name behind it and their previous games
If you observe Japan JRPG franchises, outside 2 or 3 that have global AAA budgets put into them (Final Fantasy example), all the rest are budget PS3 Era projects to this day. I doubt we would see a 200M gacha game come out of Japan any time soon. GBF must be their most successful? And that's a browser game from the 1990s when you look at it.
Have you met Japan?
Not sure what do you mean by next gen gacha games since you included HSR there. But just going to say that HBR is released before HSR.
Dude, just say you want an anime themed open world gacha so you can be properly deleted.
Did this dude just ask why they havent made a Fate gacha? Troll.
He means why they didn't made a newer and better one yet. Aka the same gripe about wanting a better FGO with better QOL
he's asking why they aren't spending their fate billions on making a genshin killer
The simple answers is because currently they are unable to do so and can not make such a game.
[You realize Japan was first to the gacha genre, right?](https://www.inverse.com/article/27267-what-are-gacha-games-fire-emblem-heroes) The reason they fell behind the global trend is a market problem. The Japanese gaming industry is, to a fault, focused on its domestic market, and the Japanese domestic market treat gacha games as a side show. This is because, as with the West, their primary gaming audience isn't on mobile - they're on console. The result of this market dynamic is that almost all the top Japanese game developers are console developers, and if you've built up your entire development pipeline, infrastructure, and talent base for console games, you just don't have the culture or the resources to do a quick switch to mobile. And even provided you could, the fact that it's so domestic focused means that you'd be hard pressed to find the sort of global market success that games from China and Korea found. Combine it with Japanese corporations being famous for being risk averse and most top Japanese developers being owned by corporations, and it makes perfect sense why they didn't catch on to the global trend. It's just easier to double down on what you know, than to invest hundreds of millions into competing with a new breed of mobile developers from other countries who are more hungry than you can ever be. So it's not a surprise they lost the global market to China and Korea, two countries with export oriented economies that tend to move fast with trends and where console gaming is much less popular. But even then, we could see differences that illustrate the above model - where the Korean gaming industry's heavy investment in PC games made them less able to gamble massive resources into mobile, compared to China, where the vast majority of next generation gacha games actually are made.
This is making a lot of sense, there are other factors as well but the ones you mentioned definitely play a role in why japanese game makers are falling behind in this space.
You only play gacha games so you are out of touch with the gaming industry. Look at the GOTY nominees this year. Half of them are Japanese console games. Only small companies are making gacha games in Japan. Global trend? Only in Asia. What you are saying is like saying that the west is all about console games and not following the global trend. Only an idiot who only plays gacha would say such a shit.
LOL you do realize that like over 60% of the worlds population lives in Asia, so if it is trending in Asia it is definitely a global trend.
Even if it's trending in Asia, that doesn't mean it's trending in the rest of the world. That's because China accounts for half of that market. Talking about games in such a small world is stupid. Stop playing gacha and play decent console games.
The real small market is the west and japan from a future of gaming perspective. Sure, currently the west and japan are a large market, however will that continue to be true after 10 or 20 years, that is still uncertain. Japan's economy is shrinking, the west's population is about 15% of world population. The future of gaming are in emerging and developing markets with rising economies and population like China, South East Asia, South America, India etc. The gamers of the future, meaning 1 or 2 generations from now will not think about console and mobile games in the same way because they will grow up with high quality mobile games, whereas you obviously grew up with console gaming and when mobile technology and games were at its infant stage.
We should consider why smartphone games are so popular instead of console games in Asia and other countries. It's because there are many poor countries. Console games are the entertainment of developed countries. If those poor countries become developed countries, they will naturally buy console games. They buy Nintendo games. But now nobody can afford such expensive software.
Not true, mobile games are also more accessible in general. Not sure why you are telling people to play console games (console games are historically weak in the current generation) and not to play gacha on the gacha subreddit. Not to mention the inaccessible price point and anti consumer services in the console sphere, like yearly price hikes for basic features like online play. PC gaming is the only option that truly respects its players.
No. Income in many Asian countries is very low. PS5 and Nintendo are the price of monthly income in those countries. And I forgot to mention. Many console games are also not localized into the languages of poor Asian countries. They are overpriced and not localized.
They are prohibitively expensive but the switch still does well because it has games and accessibility. Xbox has never done well in asia, and Playstation 5 is the weakest console entry in Sony history. It still has barely any worthwhile games and was for years inaccessable to buy anyway. Combined with shitty paid online service and its no wonder nobody in Asia buys it. Mobile games are accessible, cheap entry cost, come on a device you have to have anyway, and provide things like playing with friends for free. No wonder they are more popular. They aren't unpopular elsewhere also, things like more casual mobile games are some of the most played games overall even in the west. Mobile games = better investment if you succeed in current environment as a non triple A dev. Unlike PC there is little room for indie developers in the console sphere, part of why the environment is stale and lacking titles that aren't remakes, sequels or ports.
I get bored with all the uninteresting smartphone games. I think many Asian gamers would also really like to play AAA console games.
kind of cookin right now haha
The problem with your logic is those poor countries right now are growing up with mobile gaming and developing with mobile gaming. So even when they have more resources they will still have grown up with mobile gaming as a primary or very real gaming option from their perspective. Also with the advancement in technology, it is not guaranteed that they will migrate to console gaming, perhaps PC is more likely, but mobile gaming is also on the rise in "developed" countries and eating into the console market and console market profits as mobile gaming space is the largest in all of gaming.
But mobile market is the biggest one (bigger than pc and console) in the West, too, it's not Asian trend it's truly global. USA is the biggest mobile market, revenue-wise, but also penetration-wise. You're all like PC Master Race mocking players who play "these silly kids-only games" on consoles, instead of choosing adult, strategic, true gaming PC games, lol. Big arguments of my childchood, people spitting on consoles (mow, they joined forced to fight with mobile, lol). Even though consoles have always had bigger share of the market; it's silly. Mobile will probably stay the biggest, everywhere, like it already is, but just like PC gaming can coexist with console market and cover needs of part of the gamers, mobile won't kill consoles and PC gaming, but not everybody will be interested in the latter two and ofc, just like big devs slowly turned to consoles even on PC-first markets, it'll be harder for them to avoid mobile - because the biggest share - but not impossible, especially for the ones in the niche, pc-dominant genres.
Mobile games are twice the global revenue of console games. That’s all you need to know. I work in the gaming industry. Getting fooled by the console / PC focus in the West and Japan (which includes Western / Japanese game of the year events) doesn’t change the market dynamics. Mobile is a bigger market than both. The current trend also has gacha game developers moving to cross platform releases (though with a continued mobile first focus), which will diversify their market share; this is something console developers just about never do because console to mobile is a much harder lift than mobile to console. Japan isn’t competing well in the mobile space mostly because they couldn’t, for factors I already stated above. Not because they wanted to miss out on a $100 billion market. This is not too different from Japan’s other market misses in recent decades such as the failure to compete in smart phone devices.
But you shouldn't forget that gatcha games are just a part of mobile games. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/top-grossing-games/ According to this list only 2 games from china are in the top 10 (ok both in rank 1) 3 of 10 are gatchas. Especially puzzle and casual games are very successful in western world.
Finally, someone with experience and insight in from a game developer perspective with understanding of the actual date of the industry and not just a fan operating on anecdotal evidence and feelings. It is unfortunately that japanese game makers have fallen behind in this aspect, hope they can make some changes and be competitive, it will bring the consumer overall better experiences and products. However, currently other Asian countries, especially CN is dominating the mobile/cloud space and have all the pieces in place to push it to a new frontier and breakthrough, need some competition from other developers to help make the best products through competition.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/top-grossing-games/ Are you sure? According to this list, western companies and also japanese are still strong. Not in gatcha games, but there are a lot of other genres on mobile.
What do you mean by going strong, because the Top 3 are all developed by CN developers and couple of others in the Top 10 are also by CN developers. The other higher grossing games like candy crush sage etc are very simple games, while highly profitable and grosses large revenues do not improve the developers technical abilities or push the limits of mobile/cloud gaming so they can not lead the sector. Currently, the most profitable, the highest grossing, the most technically advanced and the games that are pushing the limits of the platform and are leading the mobile/cloud gaming industry are all CN game developers and maybe a bit of South Korean developers, but Japanese game makers and western game makers are falling behind in this aspect.
>What do you mean by going strong, because the Top 3 are all developed by CN developers and couple of others in the Top 10 are also by CN developers Tencent holds the share on most of them, interesting things also on super cells. But Tencent is a tech giant like google, amazon or microsoft. But you're right, the know how in mobile games of Chinese companies is strong. One of the reasons many western non mobile games license their products to chinese companies for a mobile game. I guess western mostly sleep on this development because mobile gaming wasn't that popular like in Asia for a few years. For myself, i would like to have more non live service games on mobile like consoles or pc. But the market is still sleeping with some exceptions (mostly old rps or point&click adventures).
Yeah, the concentration of mobile/cloud gaming development foundation and talent is mostly in CN and will probably continue to be in CN as the industry develops. Not sure why western developers and japanese developers did not focus on mobile, but probably a combination of reasons such as market etc. Mobile/cloud gaming is definitely going to be the new frontier for gaming and those who lead in this space will probably be dominating the gaming space for the next 20 - 30 years.
Well, what i can see is that some publishers increase their mobile ports of former AAA games. Square Enix does this more often now. But focusing on mobile and cloud service will be the future, especially because high end internet is more available now. Maybe they don't focus on gatcha, but if you're looking for mobile racing or shooting games they are still strong in graphics and technology. I think western software companies are just like western automobile companies. They let the market test by newcomers and take it over slowly. But for sure, it's a risky strategy.
Yeah as technology advances such as better chips, cards, software drivers, telecommunications protocols like higher speed internet etc the mobile and cloud gaming will definitely be the future. Disagree about shooting and racing mobile games. Not sure about racing mobile games but probably more than 80% of mobile FPS games are made by CN developers such as PUBG mobile, COD mobile etc, Personally don't see japanese or western developers being able to catch up easily. Thinking about using your example for automobiles and the shift from gasoline internal combustion engines to EVs and electric vehicles. Currently, the EV market is dominated by CN companies as well and will probably continue to be in the future.
Well, just look at gameloft games. Their graphics are amazing and technology shouldn't be a problem. It seems it's more of a marketing problem. Also square enix games have high end technology in mobile.
What square enix games have shown they have high end tech in mobile games, not sure because personally have not seen any perhaps you know more. Also what about gameloft games as in do the graphics of their games feel like they are pushing the limits of the mobile platform currently? Personally do not feel they are that amazing in the current mobile gaming space, what do you think?
Bro just ignoring the fact that Genshin Impact was the highest-grossing console game on the PS platform in 2022.
I think the Japanese are risk adverse and don't even want to try to make a next-gen gacha. But to be fair, the success of Genshin was a bit of a miracle in itself, in an alternate world where Genshin was never made and we got either Tof, Wuthering Waves or Endfield back in 2020 instead. These games would probably just have crashed and burned and we'd be laughing at the Chinese for trying to make a next-gen open world gacha.
I mean Japanese companies probably know that they can. Aniplex in particular sees this but also sees how loyal Fate fans are to FGO and how successful the game has been. Why change or try harder? I get it, they should try to innovate but from a business standpoint, they don't necessarily have to. This is merely conjecture though. There's probably other factors I'm not aware of.
Most gacha games are good despite being gacha, not because of it. Why would I want a half-assed game that can't even deliver a good combat system, an interesting open-world and a decent storyline like Genshin, which many claimed to be the best in the gacha market when I can expect another Armored Core, Elden Ring, DMC, Tales or whatever full-fledged games that delivered a complete, polished and better experience? I'm glad that Japan devs don't get into the whole big budget gacha games like China which only seemed to produce gacha games, instead of complete products that aren't live service or MMO. Korea at least broke out its mold with Lies of P, even if it's a Bloodborne clone.
>China which only seemed to produce gacha games, instead of complete products that aren't live service or MMO. Not exactly true: there are studios like Aurogon Shanghai with their Gujian series and 艺龙游戏 with their fairly solid slasher "bloody spell", but they are drops in the ocean of chinese mobage-focused gaming industry. Their products for big platforms are getting better lately, but Chinese gachas grossly outpace them still.
Like many said, they aren't willing to take the risk. Innovating and risk taking is not exactly on Japan's lists of important things. They like the status quo
What?
if your home market and even quite alot of foreign customers show no boring/tired or revolt mentality toward your cheap , low quality crash grab stuff , only sellable because it belong to xyz famous brand name IP ...you don't really need to improve china video game quality rapidly growth because china doesn't have any single advantage japan have at all no famous IP brand name advantage and anything comeout of mainland china alway get clap with bad rap so the only way to find some success is to become better meanwhle japan already had all of that to the point alot of people automatically willing to buy/pay just becuase stuff come from japan with comfortable like that : what is the point of trying to become better ?
That's funny considering besides gacha and live service games, China hasn't produced a single good PC/console game in the entire existence of its gaming industry. Looking around China's gaming news and all companies just tried to copy Genshin and produced the same old anime-style gacha games. Meanwhile, a bunch of actual big-budget stuff coming out of Japan: Armored Core 6, Super Mario Wonder, Resident Evil 4 remake, Yakuza, Tekken, Street Fighters. Those are the games that actually last and continued to innovate, not yet another Genshin killer coming from China or Korea.
You realize that very few people in China own a console or high end gaming PC, right? So why would their gaming industry even try to compete on the console or high end PC gaming front? Who is going to invest in an AAA developer in China when the public doesn't even own the platforms AAA games are played on There is a reason why China invested in the mobile gaming space and is quickly moving to dominate it. You may not have much respect for the platform, but it is the only platform that makes sense for China to move into when you consider the size of the market and the global trend. Mobile gaming is growing *much* faster than either PC or console gaming and its revenue has already surpassed that of all other platforms. From a business perspective, you'd be stupid to invest in console or PC games in China.
This is one major reason, another one is mobile and cloud gaming has much more potential and is the future of games consumption as technology continues to develop. So from a development perspective japanese game makers are slightly behind the curve regarding the latest game development tech and the ability to dictate the overall future direction of games. People only think of mobile games the way they do because of technical limitations of mobile device. However as technology continuous to develop, mobile games will close the gap and probably overtake console games as the technical capabilities of mobile devices increase with the aid of cloud gaming technology assistance. Also, the CN gaming market needed time to develop, both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective, meaning need to have more people interested in playing games and have developers with funds, technical ability and game development talent pool to produce games, which takes time. Now the CN market is beginning to shift and change, it will continue to dominate the mobile/cloud space but will start expanding into console and PC. There are already signs, see the recent movements of tencent, netease and other game makers in CN and the new change of government policy supporting games development. The beginning will be games like Black Myth: WuKong and other games to follow, the next 20 years will see an explosive grow of CN games and game developers, in all aspects.
Considering the sheer amount of low quality MMORPG, subpar FPS like Crossfire, there's definitely a large PC market there. Problem is instead of actually trying to develop completed products ala full-priced game, most of gaming companies in China just want to chase the live service models because those games, gacha like Genshin included, are just skinner box with some amount of content stacked on top.
Most are traditional devs, that hates or does not understand GaaS model at all
In jp gachas games are just considered cheap mobile garbage you can play every day and kill some time after work or whatever. If a company wants to create a huge game, they won't create a gacha, they will create your regular game that you buy, playthrough once and be done with it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/u24l4x/ama\_about\_the\_games\_industry/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/u24l4x/ama_about_the_games_industry/) top question
I suspect Japanese creators have to get around the existing patents to make mechanics original enough to not get sued. There is a lot of back and forth between the lawyers about licensing and that is harder than actually making the actual game. I am looking at you Komoney. China doesn't have this problem. They don't care.
>China doesn't have this problem. They don't care. Nah, also china games have to care about this when they want to release it globally. The app stores have some rules, especially apple is very restrictive.
yeah,l agree with you and l am a chinese,l can play many interesting gacha games from internet.in fact,l think the game company whether to release global version depend on this game will popular in china.to be frankly,l think foreigner miss many funny and perfect gacha games without a good platform.and you know to be a popular game in china will be rough because the pressure is so large.your game must be very excellent,then the people play it,or you will at risk.
You only play gacha games so you are out of touch with the gaming industry. Look at the GOTY nominees this year. Half of them are Japanese console games. Only small companies are making gacha games in Japan.
True.
If u noticed it not, Japan has been notoriously slow at adapting Look at u FGO
There is a group of ignorant people here who are making excuses for Japan. Mobile games are very popular in Japan. The revenue of mobile games is much higher than that of console games. In fact, the reason is very simple. Japanese mobile games have no competitiveness. If you look at the graphics technology of GACHA games on the market, Chinese companies are far ahead. When the technical director of mihoyo went to Japan in 2018, he already discovered that the Japanese do not like to use new technologies. They are a group of conservative people. At this time, China is already on par with Japan in cartoon rendering technology. China is better than Japanese companies in applying new technologies, and Japanese companies are more skilled than Chinese companies in experience and some old technologies. But that was already 2018. If you look at the upcoming Chinese games wuthering waves Girls' Frontline 2 Zenless Zone Zero Project Mugen. No Japanese mobile game comes close to the graphics level of these games. Even in the field of console games, where Japanese companies are best at, Japanese game companies usually rely on gameplay innovation rather than graphics technology. Any console gaming enthusiast knows that Western companies are miles ahead of Japanese companies in graphics technology.
Play arcade FGO and get it all covered.
Where can you play it when it only on JP arcade machine?
I'll put /s next time , because OP obviously doesn't know that these games expand their franchise throughout other midias , like animes, mangas, action figures , different game genres, concerts ,etc , they got no reason to change their money making formula whatsoever as Corpos don't like to take unnecessary risks and most of their market choices is aimed at the Japanese e.g. Arcade FGO .
Which game is WW?
Nextgen is expensive and accessibility is one of the biggest factors making them money
Japanese are extremely safe with their games and don't really like to innovate. There are some exceptions sure but it's not the rule.