Media: Japanese indie developers no longer want to work with Sony. They prefer to make games for Nintendo

Two weeks ago, for the first time in 33 years, all 30 places in the Japanese bestseller chart were occupied by games for one console. It became the Nintendo Switch. The Gaming Bolt portal has found out why this console has become more attractive to local developers and why they are no longer eager to cooperate with Sony.

How were things in the Japanese console market before Switch?

• Despite the fact that games for Nintendo consoles have traditionally sold well in Japan, the lion’s share of sales has always gone to projects for Sony consoles. In this regard, the first two PlayStation were especially lucky, which became hits in the country.
• Gaming Bolt attributes this to the fact that, if not all, then many games developed in Japan were released under the leadership of Sony. The fact is that local developers liked to make RPGs, adventure games and visual novels. But such projects could only pull PlayStation consoles (Xbox was not popular in Japan until the release of the Xbox Series X | S). Sony and Nintendo also attracted different audiences;
• For example, although the Nintendo Wii sold a much larger circulation in Japan than the PS3 released at the same time (over 4 million copies versus 1.5 million copies in the first year), its audience was not interested in RPG or adventure games. The Wii’s predecessor, the Nintendo DS, was extremely successful and gamers were willing to buy almost any game for it. However, the console had weak hardware.
• Nintendo tried to fix the situation with the 3DS. According to Gaming Bolt, she would have succeeded if not for the PS Vita. Games made for PS3 and PS4 could be streamed to it, and it was also backward compatible with PSP. As a result, Sony was able to form a single ecosystem convenient for developers.
• Nintendo Wii U has completely failed in sales — for the entire time of its existence, only 13.56 million consoles have been sold in the world. This made the PS4 the “default” console for Japanese developers.

What’s going on now?

• The release of the Nintendo Switch was a watershed moment for the console gaming industry in Japan. The console came out quite powerful for local developers. It also interested gamers who liked Japanese games.
• At the same time, Sony began to rapidly lose ground due to the pro-American policy. Back in 2016, the company moved its headquarters to California, and in 2020 – excluded the “land of the rising sun” from the marketing plan to promote the PS5, focusing on the United States and other Western countries.
• In addition, Sony has almost stopped supporting Japanese teams. For example, she disbanded most of Japan Studio. According to Gaming Bolt, the company began to pay attention only to AAA-level blockbusters. For comparison: the Japanese PS4-exclusive indie project 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim can hardly be found in the PS Store. The same cannot be said about the big-budget franchises Final Fantasy and Resident Evil.
• In turn, Nintendo, on the contrary, is ready to release both cheap and expensive games on Switch — as long as users like them. Therefore, she regularly holds Nintendo Direct, which are dedicated to indie titles.
• This led to Sony and Nintendo forming two different console markets in Japan. In part, companies have copied each other’s behavior in the past. Sony, once open to developers, began to apply strict standards. And Nintendo, which used to carefully select games for publication, began to treat developers of all levels easier.
• This approach of both companies has already affected the sales of not only games, but also the consoles themselves. According to the rating resource VGChartz, from January to July 2021, 2.48 million copies of the Switch were sold in Japan and four times less than the PS5 — 614.19 thousand copies;
• As Gaming Bolt points out, the Japanese gaming industry has now rallied around Switch. But according to the portal’s forecast, this does not mean a collapse for Sony — gamers will continue to buy its consoles at least for the sake of exclusives.