The Yin and Yang of the Gaming Industry

Can you guess who is who?

Everyone should know the history of Nintendo and Sony. Who knows what ‘really’ happened, but whatever the reason, this spawned the biggest console to hit the market since Nintendo’s original NES. Even for the short term, Sony battled Nintendo one on one after Sega dropped out of the market, with Sony as the victor. Fast forward to now and we have a 3 way dance with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.

Sony has enough bad press going on that we won’t even include them here in this article. We will concentrate on Nintendo and Microsoft.

Microsoft

The Western Console

Microsoft entered the gaming console market in late 2001 after the unimaginative success of Sony’s first Playstation console, and even it’s successor the Playstation 2. I’m sure Microsoft figured it would be an easy market to steal from Nintendo and Sony, and you can’t deny their figures.

When analyzing the gaming community, you have to draw lines. One of these lines has to be drawn between Western gamers and Eastern gamers. With the US and Japan being two of the biggest gaming countries we will focus on them. Microsoft announced selling it’s 10th million 360 console not too long ago, and I assure you they probably sold close to 100-500 consoles in Japan. Their Japanese marketing just lacks here. . .that and their library of games.

Developers making XBox 360 games focus on what Americans want. A lot of the top selling US games barely sell 100 copies in Japan. Why? Because Japanese gamers want something differently out of their gaming experience. American gamers love the fast paced, action packed, military commando, bloody, violent, yada yada. When American gamers play a game they enjoy getting that rush of adrenaline from that particular game their playing. Some like to see violence and blood, others like to see crimes and sports. Even though Sports games sell OK over there, the top selling sports games that sell in America, probably won’t even hit the Japanese list.

Nintendo

The Eastern Console

With RPGs being big in Japan I will bring this point up. Japanese gamers love gaming, and spend a LOT of time playing them. They don’t mind spending 30+ hours leveling up a character, reading and immersing themselves into the story mapped out for them. They love the dragon-esque fantasy worlds, and will buy games that take them into these worlds for hours on end. Another big seller is Educational Games, which have just poked it’s head into the US market recently. I don’t think they will sell as good as they do there, but they will gain a big enough cult following to continue producing ’sequels’. I also believe this will do better in the US on the Wii, than the DS(again here in the US). I believe the Wii will be used for more parties than a DS would, and multiplayer is really where the Wii is it’s strongest.

Japanese gamers don’t care for the fast paced, bloody, violent games us Americans have grown to love. They like taking their time, and really getting the most out of the game. Americans want full control of their gaming experience, from the camera control to customizing what the character is wearing(with armor or accessories). Japanese gamers look at games as artwork, and the developers should be in control of what the gamer sees.

Conclusion

Now my main point here is how Nintendo and Microsoft are on total opposite ends of the gaming market. However the key similarity is in the weaknesses of each company. With the Gaming Giant Nintendo being around for years and years, it is obvious their weakness is in their lack of 3rd party support. They have a plethora of infamous game franchises that are all 1st party(Mario, Zelda, Metriod. . .), yet console after console they still don’t have many developers making games on their systems. And the ones that do, are either bombarded by 1st party game advertisement or don’t get efficient support from Nintendo when they make these games.

Then you have Microsoft. . .and their 1st party games. Flight Simulator. . .Viva Pinata. . .Are you kidding me!? I will give them Halo, and who knows, maybe Crackdown will continue to gain popularity. Will Microsoft suffer the same fate as Sega(with Sonic), and turn into a Game developer, instead of a console developer. Only time will tell. This generation will be the least ‘exclusive’ in terms of which games are made for which consoles, so this is definitely good news for Microsoft.

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