The Tokyo Games Show is, arguably, one of the videogame industry's
most unusual fixtures. The innate peculiarity of the Japanese market as
seen by western eyes aside, the mere timing of the event makes it
distinctly odd.
By the time TGS rolls around, in late September or early October, the
release schedule for Christmas has already been firmly locked into
place in the USA and Europe. By and large, E3 is the show where we find
out what'll appear in October and November. Europe's Game Convention is
where the schedule is tweaked and polished. TGS makes a running leap
off the end of the pier and misses the boat entirely.
There are a couple of key reasons for this. Firstly, the Japanese
market itself isn't remotely as Christmas-focused as the rest of the
world. The New Year celebrations do help to get the Yen pouring into
the tills, but the country's really big spending (on interactive
entertainment, at least) is reserved for Golden Week - a series of
national holidays at the beginning of May. As such, TGS is a good
opportunity to show the domestic market what's upcoming for that key
period.
Secondly, there's the simple fact that TGS is a consumer show. Given
the heavy focus on keynotes and new unveilings in western press
coverage of the event, it's easy to forget that the show's raison
d'etre is showing off upcoming games to consumers. Admittedly, once
you've made the error of being stuck in the immense crowds who descend
on Makuhari Messe for the consumer days of the show, this knowledge is
liable to be permanently stamped on your memory.
From a local perspective, then, TGS makes perfect sense. Looking at it
internationally, however, it's obviously tough for games companies and
media alike to know how to treat the event. Unlike other regional
shows, TGS is unquestionably a global event for the industry (look at
South Korea's intriguing but distinctly parochial G-Star show by
comparison). This is partially because Japanese games continue to hold
both fascination and commercial value for the global market, but also
because TGS has become another front in the ongoing console battle.
In recent years, the event has seen a rising tide both of western
media, and of western publishers and game titles. Microsoft's entry
into the console market - and its renewed assault on Japanese hearts,
minds and wallets with the Xbox 360 - is largely the root cause of
this. Combined with the prominence of European-developed titles in
Sony's line-up, it's led to the unusual situation where journalists
from Europe and the United States travel to Japan in order to see games
developed in their home countries, often presented by executives from
their home countries.
More often than not, these games aren't even that relevant to the
Japanese market - and are greeted distinctly coldly by the Japanese
media and consumers in attendance. Companies bringing titles to TGS
also walk a tightrope - do they show off titles due to launch after
Christmas, and risk being buried in the rush of new games in October?
Or do they show off their Christmas line-up, and risk the media
wondering why on earth they're looking at the same games they saw last
month, but eight time zones from home?
The oddly ill-defined nature of TGS is hugely relevant to how this
year's show will play out. Watched closely by "hardcore" gamers (an
unpleasant term I'm going to have to continue using until someone coins
a better one), there is one main thing they're looking for.
This week, once again, Sony is on trial. Whatever the firm's views on
TGS and its relevance to the western market may be, the company simply
can't afford a weak showing in Tokyo. TGS is home turf for Sony's
Japanese studios and partners, and it's from those studios that gamers
are expecting to see growing evidence of the PlayStation 3's relevance
as a gaming platform.
It's been becoming increasingly obvious over the past year that
whatever about Nintendo fans who feel deserted by the company's
strategy with the Wii, there is also a growing band of Sony consumers
who feel that the PS3 simply isn't the platform for them any more. In
conversations in recent months, I've heard the same sentiment expressed
over and over again - that the PS3 seems to be engaged in a "race to
the bottom" with the Xbox 360, pumping out action games and racing
games rather than building the strong, diverse catalogue which made the
PlayStation 2 appealing to such a wide audience.
Much of that diversity came from Sony's Japanese studios, strongly
augmented by contributions (especially in the social gaming space) from
Europe. Yet in this generation thus far, Sony's console has failed to
even deliver on key genres which were the PS2's core strength, like
J-RPGs - let alone creating a broad church of games that brought in
minorities and niches from all around the population, from the
colourful lunacy of Keita Takahashi's Katamari Damacy to the solemn
majesty of Fumito Ueda's Shadow of the Colossus. Individually, games
like those didn't sell many PlayStations. Taken as a whole, the vast
collection of niche interests and unusual tastes catered to by the PS2
secured its place as the most popular console in the history of the
business.
Nobody expects Sony to break out a whole range of software this week
and finally reclaim that strange, diverse market it has tapped for the
past decade - served by a myriad of titles, none of them blockbuster
hits but every one of them dearly loved by its own faithful. What's
being sought, however, is an inkling that they might be on the way;
that the PS3, like the PS2 and the PlayStation before it, might be the
right place to look for creativity and entertainment that's a bit off
the beaten track.
LittleBigPlanet is an excellent start, sterling proof that Sony
understands a world beyond guns and tyres. If TGS can deliver even a
handful of games that have the potential to captivate even a handful of
players apiece, stuffed somewhere into the cracks between the
inevitable soi-disant AAA titles, it will offer a solid ray of hope for
the PS3 to continue building a strong market in 2009.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is also on trial - but this is a far less
crucial trial. In fact, it's really just curiosity on the part of the
media and gamers alike. After weeks of resurgent Xbox 360 sales in
Japan, people want to know if Microsoft really can succeed in a country
which has traditionally been utterly nonplussed about the Xbox and its
successor.
Despite some deeply uninformed conventional wisdom that's passed
around the industry in recent years, Japan isn't inherently resistant
to American- or European-developed electronics or entertainment
products. Just ask Apple, whose iPods have done great business in Japan
just as they have everywhere else, and whose iPhone is making an
unexpectedly significant dent in the "closed shop" of the Japanese
mobile phone business.
The problem with the Xbox and the 360 was that they just didn't appeal
to Japanese consumers. The industrial design seemed ugly (a problem for
Europeans too, it should be noted), the game line-up was heavily
tailored for American tastes, and previous forays into Japanese
developer relationships were fleeting enough to leave consumers worried
that they could buy an Xbox for one or two games, and then watch it
gather dust.
Now, however, there's evidence that a corner could have been turned -
a vital tipping point where consumers see enough software and enough
evidence of future software development to be willing to invest in the
console hardware. Barriers remain, of course. The Xbox 360 is still
(arguably) ugly and (provably) noisy as hell, factors which don't go
down terribly well with those who live in homes with small living
spaces - a problem, it's worth pointing out again, which applies in
Europe too.
That won't be solved at TGS - but what we will get to see is whether
Japanese consumers are really taking an interest in what Microsoft is
doing. The calibre of locally developed software on display, and the
size of the queues for the Xbox 360 displays on the show floor, will
give industry analysts plenty to think about. As Sony struggles to
convince the broad market it won with PS2 that PS3 is really the right
upgrade for them, Microsoft could finally be about to become Big In
Japan - and for once, that won't involve a photoshop of a giant Xbox
looming over Mount Fuji.
(gamesindustry.biz)
Mstation Games Review
Tue, 28 Oct 2008
