By Nelson Schneider - 04/23/17 at 04:09 PM CT
At the beginning of the year, I took a look at what Japanese gamers are playing, since they obviously aren’t getting all of the Western releases that we are in North America. Ironically, Japanese publishers have started pushing multi-platform releases more and more onto PC via Steam. This trend of Japanese publishers releasing games on PC is a fairly new phenomenon, despite a handful of abortive efforts dating all the way back to the 5th Generation, where certain ‘Final Fantasy’ titles received PC versions.
Clearly releasing “Final Fantasy 7” on Windows didn’t do a lot for Squaresoft back in the day, as they quickly chilled on the concept, only revitalizing the practice within the last few years, offering ported PC versions of most of their old games as well as multi-platform releases for a number of new ones, such as “NieR Automata.”
Square Enix is not the only Japanese publisher increasingly releasing multi-platform games and including PC as one of those platforms. What is interesting is that these games are selling quite well on Steam, which encourages more of the same. Yet many of these Steam releases are still subject to the region-locking whims traditionally exercised by Japanese publishers, so they’re only being marketed to the West. Indeed, Japanese Steam users can’t buy a number of ‘Final Fantasy’ ports or any title in Namco Bandai’s ‘Tales of’ series, as they are region locked out of Japan. Using this tool makes it quite easy to check exactly what is available where, and some Japanese publishers are dropping the ball when it comes to introducing a new avenue for sales to their own people.
It makes sense that Japanese publishers would look to sell their games on multiple platforms whenever possible, thanks in large part to their home demographic splintering-off a huge portion of the market for mobile apps. If a given gaming platform (e.g., a console or a handheld) can’t single-handedly move as many units as it used to, but adding an additional, near-identical platform (e.g., PC or another console) can make-up the deficit – and then some – publishers are obligated to follow the money. Yet they are still making no effort to push Steam as an equal when compared side-by-side to the region-dominating PlayStation 4. Perhaps it’s the language barrier. Perhaps these publishers don’t want to fully embrace a foreign digital market, but would prefer to do like EA and Ubisoft and make their own. Either way, they’re doing their customers a disservice and missing a great opportunity. Japanese publishers shouldn’t limit themselves to snagging bonus sales from Western Steam users alone.
