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hogso

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Pretty much what Chindie said. Japan doesnt appear to "get it" for some reason.  I know there are weird cultural things at play, by all accounts in Japan it is considered rude to interrupt somebody if they are in the middle of something even if your question is very quick and you know they are doing nothing important.  This is why cross game invites didnt happen on PS3. It's just stuff like that which doesnt fly over here.  Better to have a western influence which Japanese users can completely ignore and carry on as they were before (or perhaps buy into it!) than have a Japanese design which limits the **** out of a system and plays directly into the hands of their rivals.  

I presume Sony like money, and if they want the PS4 to have a global audience then they really need to open it up. It was never a big deal in the PS2 days where online was largely irrelevant. Online is everything now, and Japan appears to be light years behind us in terms of ideas and services which is insane considering their infrastructure is probably the best in the world. 

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Indeed.

 

The Wii U is a good example of the disconnect between East and West, its pretty much the embodiment of Japanese culture and gaming in every facet. And similar sensibilities (coupled to the nature of a console having an online service still being fledgling at the PS3's launch) influenced Sony's offering for online with the PS3 and it never really matched up to what Western audiences growingly wanted from their console online. Even daft things like achievements aren't particularly Japanese in nature - hence the PS3 not launching with a system similar to the 360s, it was a reflection of an online... ecosystem perhaps... that Japanese developers have never really chased. Even when Sony did add in trophies they skewed it a little more to Japanese tastes making the focus more on collecting something than being given an acknowledgement of doing X in game Y and having it to show the world, which was Microsoft's focus.

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It may shock some of you to know this, but for the most part, hardware manufacturers don't give a flying **** about Japan. It's an incredibly small market, and is nowhere near as relevant to anything as it used to be

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You are massively overstating that Pete.  Japan is the third biggest economy in the world, it is home to 125,000,000 people and is a massive market for games. It's the third biggest behind North America and Europe these days, but it is still a massive market. Microsoft might have all but given up on it, but it wasn't for want of trying. To suggest that for the most part hardware manufacturers (especially Japanese companies like Sony) don't give a **** about the place is just plain wrong. 

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#1 game this week:

 

USA - Crysis 3 (360) - 195,545 sales

Europe - Metal Gear Rising  (PS3) - 78,813 sales

Japan - Metal Gear Rising (PS3) - 319,235 sales

 

 

Sorry Pete, you are wrong.  To state the industry doesn't give a **** about Japan is so wrong that it might just appoint Alex McLeish manager of Aston Villa again. 

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I'm not even sure that sales numbers in Japan is the point here. The Japanese manufacturers approached making consoles with Japanese sensibilities, hence the consoles having Japanese flavour so to speak.

Whether Japan concerns them anymore is neither here nor there (though clearly it's still a massive market).

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I appreciate that completely. The focus is clearly moving away from Japan, you would have to be blind not to notice the lack of Japanese people on stage at the PS4 conference or that Sony are following the Microsoft model with their new console instead of doing the traditional Japanese thing as we saw with the Wii U, the PS3, the PS2 (and dare I say the Sega Saturn?) because they know where their bread is buttered and that is in the west. They need to have a good online infrastructure, they need to have an architecture that western coders are familiar with rather than some arcane architecture everybody needs to learn from scratch. If people need to learn something from scratch then it might as well be Japanese guys learning X86 and catching up with the rest of the world. 

I agree it is bleeding obvious that Sony are no longer building consoles to cater to the Japanese market, but Pete specifically said that hardware manufacturers don't give a **** about Japan and that is the point I am calling him out on because he is wrong. 

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#1 game this week:

 

USA - Crysis 3 (360) - 195,545 sales

Europe - Metal Gear Rising  (PS3) - 78,813 sales

Japan - Metal Gear Rising (PS3) - 319,235 sales

 

 

Sorry Pete, you are wrong.  To state the industry doesn't give a **** about Japan is so wrong that it might just appoint Alex McLeish manager of Aston Villa again. 

 

pick a week that doesn't have a metal gear title released...

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Off topic question.

 

Does anyone ever read Metal Gear and not hear it in their head in David Hayter's husky voice? You know, all like .....Metal Geaaar

 

It's an early moment in MGS when he's being told that Metal Gear is on the island via codex when he says it, just like that. It hasn't ever left me.

Edited by hogso
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I know exactly the bit you're talking about and I didn't initially here that but now that is going to stick with me, so thanks for that.

 

I'm okay with it really, I have the codec ring as my mobile's ringtone and the '!' alert as my text message ;)

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I had the codec as my text alert for years. It was weird when I played MGS and heard it in game, I was constantly looking for my phone.

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Off Topic, but I have the Zelda "found item" noise from A Link to the Past as my text/whatsapp tone.

 

I was in the middle of a whatsapp group converstaion on Saturday whilst I was at the supermarket, and it made shopping sound **** epic.

 

Everytime I picked something up

 

"dun dun dun dunnnnnnnn"

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#1 game this week:

 

USA - Crysis 3 (360) - 195,545 sales

Europe - Metal Gear Rising  (PS3) - 78,813 sales

Japan - Metal Gear Rising (PS3) - 319,235 sales

 

 

Sorry Pete, you are wrong.  To state the industry doesn't give a **** about Japan is so wrong that it might just appoint Alex McLeish manager of Aston Villa again. 

 

pick a week that doesn't have a metal gear title released...

 

 

Why? Because it doesn't suit your argument if I chose this week?   Obviously sales will be lower on a week where a huge game isn't due out but I didn't cherry pick a week to suit mine, I just chose the most recent chart available.   The Metal Gear Rising sales are not typical of an average week, they are a clear indicator of the size of the market.  Hardware manufacturers care about Japan. 

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The Zelda "chest open" riff and FF7's victory fanfare are both excellent text message alerts.

 

I particularly like my codec ringtone though because it has the little noise of the screen pop-up just before it rings and it makes me smile everytime someone calls me.

I did my own version of Emerald Hill Zone from Sonic 2 using Propellerhead's Reason 5, I thought I did a pretty decent job considering I had to input it all with mouse and keyboard since I don't have a MIDI keyboard or controller. I used that as my ringtone for a while.

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