Inafune: “Japan’s Game Industry is Finished”
It appears that this year’s Tokyo Game Show did very little to win over Capcom’s Head of Research & Development and Online Business, Keiji Inafune. During the following video, he asks the crowd in attendance what they thought of the show this year. “Be honest, ” he says. “Did it suck, or was it great (and one person from the crowd asks if they have to be honest)?
Inafune gives it a big thumbs-down.
“And so personally, when I looked around at all the TGS games on the event floor,” Inafune said, via translator, “I said ‘man, Japan is over. We’re done; our game industry is finished.’”
“But, just so you all don’t think that the game industry is finished, Capcom is doing our best. I wanted to invite you to this party and show you that there are still some kick@$$ games out there coming from Japan.”
What do you think? Do you agree with Inafune that Japan’s business is circling the drain, or do you think that perhaps he’s making a little bit too broad of a generalization about the state of things?
News Credit: Destructoid, via GoNintendo
Filed under: Other News
I don’t know. To quote Master Yoda: “Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is.”
Considering I’m not a huge fan of FPSes, Japan had better have some good games coming out. Final Fantasy 13 and Metroid: Other M are all I have to really look forward to off the top of my head, out of all games announced of all companies, everywhere.
Japan is finished because we hardcore gamers are loosing to casual-motion-family-ignorance gamers. This motion capture/natal/sensor crap is going to far. I sort of understand where Keiji Inafune is coming from.
“Did it suck?” says the man whose company has continually pumped out sequel after sequel for multiple series which, in general, have never really seemed to ever introduce anything real new or innovative or shown the proper amount of depth and creativity to get gamers to feel like the games truly are that mindblowingly fun and kick@$$.
Maybe if Heads of Research and Development would believe games truly are an artform, and focus their efforts on bettering that artform, rather than solely treating it as a business that has to churn out something quick and cheap, they wouldn’t be attending gaming events featuring a sad, depressed Head of Research and Development moping around in a sad, depressed Rockman.EXE costume.
Yes, that was sarcastically harsh, but that ancient quote of Inafune’s will always be ingrained in my head. And personally, if that’s the way he felt then, and this is what he’s saying now, he’s every bit the reason why the industry ‘is done.’ Not that the games haven’t been fun, but they aren’t refreshing enough to keep that feeling going for an extended period of time. Effort, good sir. Effort.
I must say, as much as I respect Inafune, his comments coming from TGS, including this one and his praise of Natal, make me feel like he’s perhaps a bit under pressure.
How can anyone say Japan is finished when Nintendo, a Japanese company, is fighting the growing disinterest in gaming that has been accumulating for years? As the man behind Mega Man, I know Keiji knows how to make a fun game. But all of his interest in appealing to the western audience, and making games more like movies. This is ultimately going to tank.
The growing disinterest in gaming that has been acuumulating for years…Hm. This sounds like another Video Game Crash is looming.
Too…Many….FPS’s…..Can’t…..Fe…el……Spl…..eeeeeeeee.
Urgh!…..(dies)
“The growing disinterest in gaming that has been acuumulating for years…Hm. This sounds like another Video Game Crash is looming.”
And I hope so. The current state of the videogame industry is a bad joke. Most deveoplers are just making more of the same, again and again; sequel after sequel, DLC that should have come in a game disc, but was intentionally delayed just to get another $10 from people, handhelds that are released with inferior features and no strong support (and with a price tag equivalent to that on a full featured device -PSPgo, anyone?-?); next-gen consoles that break down with anything (yeah, the 360 is king on that, but the PS3 is not much better actually).
This gen is my last in videogames, really. And Infune should not be talking about the decadence in Japanese videogames, when he’s one of the most responsible people of that.
artbiter: You realize Inafune is a big supporter of Natal, right?
Heat: Yeah, I wonder if it’s more a blanket statement than anything. Nintendo, while not everything they make is for me, still produces some top-notch stuff, in my opinion. Konami doesn’t seem to be doing so bad, either.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
i honestly think we need either ZX3 or a series for the elf wars more then anything right now
Another contributing factor might be that it’s much harder for new IPs to get anywhere near enough attention nowadays as well. This is especially bad if said new IP is coming from a new company with hardly any links to the big-name companies.
In an age where all most people care about are well-established IPs that secured their position in the past like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Mario, or recieved ridiculously huge support and advertising budgets like Pokemon and Halo (and the mentality that anything remotely similar, even if they were created before the mentioned games, is immediately considered something akin to an inferior rip-off and cast in a negative light), I can’t honestly say that I didn’t see this coming.
Just more evidence to me that Inafune has a much different direction these days than working on MegaMan. It’s a pretty pompous thing to say, but it fits him perfectly with the way he’s collaborating with Western developers and the type of games Capcom’s making.
So good for him and Capcom, bad for MegaMan fans. Least we still got Inticreates.
Japan THINKS it’s finished because its RPG games are constantly dwarfed in comparison to the big WRPGs. (Bioshock? Love it! Aetlier Iris? What’s that?) They just have to adapt.
I don’t know. I’ve been seeing some things that are convincing me the Age of Hardcore Gamer is dying out. Nowadays, the only way you can be a “Hardcore Gamer” is if you’re an “Old School Hardcore Gamer.” The number of new games that can be considered “Hardcore Games” are dwindling. Sure, it’s not gone yet. But think about games now. Which ones would you consider hardcore gamer games? Once, you could name every game you see advertised and say it was meant for us, the hardcore gamers. But games like Wii Fit, Guitar Hero/Rockband, Flipnote Studio, Puzzle games in general, and the like, are dominating, but I would never consider them hardcore games. And it’s not to say that any of those games are bad. They’re just not what made us gamers before, and they don’t do it now.
As a hopeless fanboy, I look forward to when we get over this hump and games that make us feel like we did when we first started playing games return. I just can’t figure out when that is.
I believe he made the comment because cames from japan usually all follow the same trend. If not for months then for years. Innovation is usually a signature thats key with japan but you can’t say that about the japanese game market. Especially for the showing at TGS. Nintendo doesn’t attend TGS so I can’t really comment on them. But for what was there(everybody else), you can say its just more of the same. I mean there can be 50 different jrpgs coming out but they’ll be turn based moste likely with some slight variation to diffrentiate from the rest. But at the core its all just the same.
Zach/G-Beast: When will you people learn, we’re never going to get a game about the Elf Wars?
(The more we deny it, the more likely it is to happen.)
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
LOL, Capcom has a hype man! I have some mixed feelings on this subject … I can agree with almost everything people have said on this post already.
I hope this isn’t the end though. This is starting to look like hip-hop actually. A bunch of crap with a few gems spaced apart. Ugh.
The Game Industry today is no where near finished. However, it is much less efficient than it used to be. People are quick to run out of unique ideas and are quick to copy others. That’s why many games these days resemble something outdated, overused, or unliked. This is why Final Fantasy Dissidia suprised me. It’s the most unique game i’ve seen this year.
Besides that, MegaMan is timeless and CAPCOM seems to have found a Gameplay System that works and has worked for over 2 decades now. That shouldn’t change anytime soon. It’s one of the few “Outdated” exceptions.
- Perhaps he’s right. What’s the point after all? Realist gaming VS arcade gaming (read: Rockman 9)?
This is a little upsetting indeed. O well, Since Keiji Inafune was kicking with Bungie lately. . maybe there’s still hope for the Japanese gaming industry? or just Capcom instead.
Heatman:As the man behind Mega Man, I know Keiji knows how to make a fun game.
Excuse me? Inafune has never been responsible for doing the game design on the Megaman games, his job was doing character design and graphics.
@ Bob: He was hired as a character designer, but that doesn’t mean it’s all he did, given how small game dev teams were then. He definitely had his hands in planning and programming as well, until becoming a producer in the mid to late 90s. He’s not called the father of Mega Man simply for drawing him.
@Heatman: People call him the father because of ignorance. If you read the interviews with him, he always talk about doing the character design and graphic stuff. I’ve never seen him talking about doing the gameplay design or programming. Also, if you look at the staff credits, he is always credited as character designer, he was only credited for doing some planning for Megaman 3 and 4, but that’s it , and i’m pretty sure that he has no idea how to program.
@ Bob: And I *have* seen him talk about doing planning and programming. So, I dunno what else to tell you. He wouldn’t be as high up in Capcom as he is now if all he did was draw.
@LBD: You do know that he has to support Natal, Motion Capture, and Wii Motion for money, right?
He doesn’t like the fact that the gaming industry is turning into motion gaming. He stated that on some blog that the market wants motion so we have to support it.