How successful have Japanese games on PC been? Is continuous support likely?

[Sankara]

I guess it all started little by little with some small Japanese games getting released on Steam in the early 2010's and then with Dark Souls getting a shoddy, but fixeable PC port and a little bit later, Valkyria Chronicles from SEGA, that resulted in the now pretty massive release of PC ports of Japanese games that we would have thought unthinkable 10 years ago. Now we have tons of mid-tier and high-tier Japanese publishers releasing their products on PC with all the Final Fantasies, Dark Souls and Sekiro, Chrono Trigger, Valkyria Chronicles 4, all the Legends of Tales games, the Danganropa games, Dragon Quest XI, Octopath Traveler, Yakuza games, Bayonetta & Vanquish, Killer7, Okami HD, Ni No Kuni 1 & 2, and now the Digimon Cybersleuth games, and on and on and on. Hell, even tri-ace has been putting out Star Ocean 4 and Resonance of Fate, their first ever PC ports! I guess I am incredibly happy that we have so many excellent and classic Japanese games on PC that I couldn't have ever dreamed of 10 years ago.

So with this very "revolutionary" support of a platform that they have been historically ignored for decades, what are the results? Obviously Japanese publishers keep releasing PC ports of their games, so I imagine everything is going pretty well sales-wise.

But I also wonder, do you think this support is sustainable and show no signs of change any time soon? Will Japanese publishers continue to support the PC platform in the future? Honestly, it shows no sign of change, but I also wonder if the change in the marketplace and if digital platforms get overwhelmed by releases such as on Steam, if sales will be impacted to deter ports in the future.

 

[TheMoon]

Depends on the publisher? That's the only answer, really.

 

[Squidofman]

You're talking about games made by Japanese developers, but nearly all of them are being released by a publisher with global offices (esp Sega, Square Enix). So if they're selling well for minimal effort, then of course the NA and EU branches are going to keep handling it, no?

 

[LewieP]

Yeah these types of games continue to sell well, and will continue to be released.

The biggest holdout is Atlus. The Persona games would sell very well on Steam, and I'm baffled by their continuing refusal to release them on Steam.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

As long as Capcom and From are still putting their games on PC i couldn't care less about other japanese games and devs.

 

[Lashley]

They sell well, and yes.

 

[Issen]

Outside of a few games that had immense success, I'd say support on PC for japanese franchises is about average. Good enough to continue releasing the games since the porting cost of a game developed using modern techniques is very, very low.

A significant majority of the support fpr japanese games continues to be on Playstation (or PS/Switch for multiplats that release also on Switch) and the polish and post-launch support of many releases will reflect it, but the situation on PC is firmly "alright" and I'd say it's unlikely to get worse. If anything, as more developers modernize their engines and development environments, the situation should improve even if the market remained more or less constant.

 

[skeezx]

The biggest holdout is Atlus. The Persona games would sell very well on Steam, and I'm baffled by their continuing refusal to release them on Steam.

Click to shrink...

probably be another 5 years til you see true parity between japanese/western pc support. lot of japanese publishers still won't be arsed beyond their bread and butter (ps4/switch for now) for multiple reasons. which is why i'm kind of shocked DQXI made its way to steam so quickly

 

[LewieP]

probably be another 5 years til you see true parity between japanese/western pc support. lot of japanese publishers still won't be arsed beyond their bread and butter (ps4/switch for now) for multiple reasons. which is why i'm still kind of shocked DQXI made its way to steam

Click to shrink...

I think S-E have better data for PC sales since they are fairly international, and games like Deus Ex, Just Cause and Tomb Raider are obviously big sellers on PC, whereas publishers that focus mostly/only on the Japanese market are more likely to have PC as a blind spot.

 

[entremet]

Yeah these types of games continue to sell well, and will continue to be released.

The biggest holdout is Atlus. The Persona games would sell very well on Steam, and I'm baffled by their continuing refusal to release them on Steam.

Click to shrink...

Atlus is a rare bird as we've noticed lol.

 

[flyingman]

probably be another 5 years til you see true parity between japanese/western pc support. lot of japanese publishers still won't be arsed beyond their bread and butter (ps4/switch for now) for multiple reasons. which is why i'm kind of shocked DQXI made its way to steam so quickly

Click to shrink...

you probably will never see true parity on pc support considering not even nintendo even playstation get same kind of support.

 

[packy17]

PC has the second-largest userbase for MHW, so yeah, people are buying the games. It's pretty evident that Capcom didn't expect this since they still can't get up to date with content parity, but at least they'll be a bit faster with the new expansion.

I believe Sega has also mentioned that they've been impressed with Yakuza sales as well.

 

[skeezx]

you probably will never see true parity on pc support considering not even nintendo even playstation get same kind of support.

Click to shrink...

of course it'll never be 1:1. but any western multiplat release, PC is ditto for Day 1 (barring a few falling within vague timed exclusive terms)

we're mostly there with japanese published games. but kinda not

 

[GalvoAg]

I don't know but now I will only play Yakuza on PC, I hope those keep coming.

 

[Herbz]

Seems successful. At least better than before.
Back in the old days, selling japanese games on PC was too scary for the Japanese publishers because their games would highly likely bomb too much.

We are in the golden pc gaming age, and the pc platform is still growing bigger.

 

[BigDes]

Steam has slowly become one of the best platforms for jrpgs in particular and Japanese games in general.

There are still some holdouts but I think it is fair to say that for the most part Japanese developer indifference to the pc is largely gone.

 

[BasilZero]

Steam has slowly become one of the best platforms for jrpgs in particular and Japanese games in general.

There are still some holdouts but I think it is fair to say that for the most part Japanese developer indifference to the pc is largely gone.

Click to shrink...

This especially

I have more japanese games on steam than all my consoles I have had in the past 25 years combined so that's saying something 😂

 

[Duxxy3]

Even with Japanese games being more console focused, I've bought more Japanese games for PC in the past two years than I've bought on console. So I certainly hope they continue to support PC and expand.

 

[Delusibeta]

The big thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the rest of Asia is very PC-centric, and so (assuming localisation is also done) porting to PC is the easiest way to access this audience. That's probably the biggest single contributing factor in the continued PC support from Japanese developers.

 

[Patapuf]

The big thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the rest of Asia is very PC-centric, and so (assuming localisation is also done) porting to PC is the easiest way to access this audience. That's probably the biggest single contributing factor in the continued PC support from Japanese developers.

Click to shrink...

I was just going to type this.

Unless the rest of Asia falls in love with consoles, the current level of support is likely to continue.

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

The big thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the rest of Asia is very PC-centric, and so (assuming localisation is also done) porting to PC is the easiest way to access this audience. That's probably the biggest single contributing factor in the continued PC support from Japanese developers.

Click to shrink...

Exactly. The reason MHW sold so good on PC was mostly China.

Some other games, when Steamspy was still open to the public and had reliable data showed, that for some franchises the Chinese market had the biggest ownership base. The first two Atelier titles with regional pricing e.g. or even XSeed Games like Senran Kagura. Even before Nier Automata was officially released in Asia on Steam 1 year later, 8% of owners were Chinese so they bought the game from CDkeys etc.

 

[ArjanN]

Seems very succesful. Not every visual novel or niche fighting game etc is going to do Monster Hunter World or Dark Souls numbers obviously, but given the current and (likely) next-gen architecture, a PC port is (relatively) easy and basically leaving money on the table if you don't.

It's pretty telling almost every Japanese dev/publisher got on the Steam train last gen.

 

[PC-tan]

Their games do sell well enough to justify to porting cost.

Depending on the game, how low it goes on sale for (also how often) and what other platforms it's also being released it you will get different sales figures. The really popular titles like Dark Souls (Fromsoft titles) and Monster Hunter World are some of the most successful Japanese titles on PC (on Steam) that have sold over 3 million copies. You had other games like Nier A that has sold over a million copies on PC, Valkyria Chronicles that has sold over 900k copies.

The lowest number of copies a big name JRPG that is only available on PC and PS4 might sell on PC is something like 100k, other wise on average it's closer to 300k-500k. FF titles fall under the 300k-500k category.

One of the "bigger" devs/publishers that has always stood out to me in KT, their games are niche and can be a mixed bag (port wise but have gotten better over the years, sort of) and they seem to sell under 100k (since their Nobunaga also count and some of those are Japanese language only) ? Nioh is by far their best selling title on Steam (Nioh 2 is just a timed exclusive?) and has sold at least 500k copies. Pretty much all of KT titles get a PC port and a lot of the time they will announce it along side the initial Japanese announcement.


One of the publishers that I thought was maybe moving away from PC was NISA and that's because their PC titles don't sell gangbusters like other games and because of how successful they have been on the N/S. Their have been a number of titles that they releases for PS4 and N/S but not for PC, but very recently they did announce some games also coming to PC as well, so looks like they are still interested.

XSEED is one of those publishers that seems to go out of it's way to publish more niche and older titles (mainly Falcom stuff) despite them not always selling over 10k at the least?


Both SEGA and Capcom have stated that sell on PC have been great and that they plan to include PC as part of their plans going forward. SEGA has even expand and potentially might add more of it's title to Gamepass (Yakuza?).

You also have Japanese indie titles, some of which are self published or are handled by a number of companies, one of the being ones being Playism. Japan indie titles can get noticed since their is an option within Steam to filter out games that's don't support your native language (so if your language is set to Japanese you very likely will notice these games)



China is also a factor, didn't SE go out of their way to add Chinese support for the PC release of Octopath Traveler and also updated the N/S version as well? You have some companies like IFFY that always have Chinese support in their games. (In NA OT dropped off the top sellers list more quickly compared to the world wide list)




For those wondering Japanese Steam users make up about 1.1% of Steam.

 

[Sankara]

The big thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the rest of Asia is very PC-centric, and so (assuming localisation is also done) porting to PC is the easiest way to access this audience. That's probably the biggest single contributing factor in the continued PC support from Japanese developers.

Click to shrink...

I hadn't thought about this, that's very true.

Yeah these types of games continue to sell well, and will continue to be released.

The biggest holdout is Atlus. The Persona games would sell very well on Steam, and I'm baffled by their continuing refusal to release them on Steam.

Click to shrink...

Atlus is so conservative and old-fashioned. Just look at how they barred people from even taking any screenshots or videos of Persona 5 on PS4.

 

[fiendcode]

Generally it seems like upfront sales are mediocre (especially at $50-60) but as price moves down catalog legs are fantastic, probably better than the consoles for the most part. PC is basically a must for JP games targeting a global market.

 

[SmokedSalmon]

I've really been impressed with Bandai Namco's PC releases.

I've only been focused mostly on PC for about over a year, but the PC market seems to be just like any other gaming market. People really appreciate it when things come the machine they use.

I would really love to know the specifics of how PC sales support global releases, but I don't know how to track down that information.

It seems like some developers are still a little resistant to PC though, some people have mentioned Atlus. I think SE is still a bit resistant too. I would love to play KH3 on my PC, not to mention the upcoming FF7 Remake.

I guess I'm really interested in the general structure of individual companies and what makes some more willing to try PC than others.

 

[BasilZero]

I've really been impressed with Bandai Namco's PC releases.

I've only been focused mostly on PC for about over a year, but the PC market seems to be just like any other gaming market. People really appreciate it when things come the machine they use.

I would really love to know the specifics of how PC sales support global releases, but I don't know how to track down that information.

It seems like some developers are still a little resistant to PC though, some people have mentioned Atlus. I think SE is still a bit resistant too. I would love to play KH3 on my PC, not to mention the upcoming FF7 Remake.

I guess I'm really interested in the general structure of individual companies and what makes some more willing to try PC than others.

Click to shrink...

SE is a mixed bag.

They release DQXI and announced FFVIII Remastered and Trials of Mana remake alongside the console versions.

But they do delayed releases on everything else that is Japanese made specifically Final Fantasy related.

 

[PC-tan]

I've really been impressed with Bandai Namco's PC releases.



I would really love to know the specifics of how PC sales support global releases, but I don't know how to track down that information.

It seems like some developers are still a little resistant to PC though, some people have mentioned Atlus. I think SE is still a bit resistant too. I would love to play KH3 on my PC, not to mention the upcoming FF7 Remake.

Click to shrink...

Bandai does do a decent job overall with it's PC ports now. And they don't really platform exclusive games that's often now so most stuff comes to PC.

One of the things about Bandai though is a big portion of their catalogue is licenced content (games based off anime series) and two of the series that's (until very recently) did not make their way onto PC were Digimon and Gundam stuff.


In regards to FFVIIR that's is pretty much coming to PC about 1 year after the PS4 release, it's what SE does with all their FF games now (they even did it with Dissidia NT, FFXII, and World of Final Fantasy)



The willingness depends on the company, take SEGA as an example their EU branch is mostly PC oriented (and even in the past console stuff was handled by other companies from what I recall like Deep Silver? Or at least the ATLUS and this is after SEGA acquired ATLUS) seeing how they are in charge of SEGA's western IPs/studios. Since they like PC one of SEGA EUs goals has been to put more of SEGA's Japanese IPs on PC and it's been working pretty well (I think Puyo Puyo has been one of the few IPs that has not caught on very well on PC though).

Capcom is one of the earliest Japanese publishers to start using Steam and that's has to do with how one of the top people at the western Capcom branch was pushing for Capcom to get back into releasing on PC (and in the long run it did pay off).


In general the cost of making a PC port is not that expensive compared to what some of these companies make out of them (these ports are not always handed by the original devs themselves). This part is important, if you look at Falcom they have a long history with PC but because of their structure and how limited their budget is they can not afford to port their games to PC and there for have to rely on other companies like XSEED and Nisa to make PC ports of their games.

Who is going to make the PC port has to come into consideration, do the original devs do it, or do they hire another company to take care of that for them? SEGA EU uses other companies to make PC ports, as do SE, Capcom and Bandai. (Western companies still do this as well)

Spike Chunsoft opened up a western branch not that long ago and pretty much all of their games are getting PC ports, so having a western branch really helps (but is not required since I don't think ASW had a western branch until recently and they were able to get PC ports of stuff they published, RIP PQube/Aksys and NISA losing two of their main source of income). It can be a bit confusing since in the past Spike Chunsoft has shown an interest in publishing their own games on Steam/the west and they hired other companies to port their games to PC ( Danganronpa 1 and 2 ended up selling very well and sold something like 200k copies each?).



Video games sales in Japan are not what they use to be and you have to expand to the rest of the world to make a lot of money (the mobile market in Japan is big and stuff like FGO and GBF make a poop amount of money)


We don't talk about it much but Japanese Steam users do feel neglected, because some of these games are not available to buy in Japan or have Japanese language options, DQXI is not available in Japan on PC (which is pretty ridiculous actually), then you had Catherine where SEGA accident put the price for the game at ¥9999 despite it only being Japanese dubbed and not having UI be in Japanese. So there does seem to be some licensing issues? And other stuff that some Japanese companies don't want to deal with?

SE is a mixed bag.

They release DQXI and announced FFVIII Remastered and Trials of Mana remake alongside the console versions.

Click to shrink...

I'm happy about the way they handle DQXI and released it along side the PS4 version and on top of that SE even said they knew the Nier A port was bad and we're going to do a better job with DQXI (which they did).

Kind of sucks how the PC version won't get the DQXI S edition content though

 

[BasilZero]

Bandai does do a decent job overall with it's PC ports now. And they don't really platform exclusive games that's often now so most stuff comes to PC.

One of the things about Bandai though is a big portion of their catalogue is licenced content (games based off anime series) and two of the series that's (until very recently) did not make their way onto PC were Digimon and Gundam stuff.


In regards to FFVIIR that's is pretty much coming to PC about 1 year after the PS4 release, it's what SE does with all their FF games now (they even did it with Dissidia NT, FFXII, and World of Final Fantasy)



The willingness depends on the company, take SEGA as an example their EU branch is mostly PC oriented (and even in the past console stuff was handled by other companies from what I recall like Deep Silver? Or at least the ATLUS and this is after SEGA acquired ATLUS) seeing how they are in charge of SEGA's western IPs/studios. Since they like PC one of SEGA EUs goals has been to put more of SEGA's Japanese IPs on PC and it's been working pretty well (I think Puyo Puyo has been one of the few IPs that has not caught on very well on PC though).

Capcom is one of the earliest Japanese publishers to start using Steam and that's has to do with how one of the top people at the western Capcom branch was pushing for Capcom to get back into releasing on PC (and in the long run it did pay off).


In general the cost of making a PC port is not that expensive compared to what some of these companies make out of them (these ports are not always handed by the original devs themselves). This part is important, if you look at Falcom they have a long history with PC but because of their structure and how limited their budget is they can not afford to port their games to PC and there for have to rely on other companies like XSEED and Nisa to make PC ports of their games.

Who is going to make the PC port has to come into consideration, do the original devs do it, or do they hire another company to take care of that for them? SEGA EU uses other companies to make PC ports, as do SE, Capcom and Bandai. (Western companies still do this as well)

Spike Chunsoft opened up a western branch not that long ago and pretty much all of their games are getting PC ports, so having a western branch really helps (but is not required since I don't think ASW had a western branch until recently and they were able to get PC ports of stuff they published, RIP PQube/Aksys and NISA losing two of their main source of income). It can be a bit confusing since in the past Spike Chunsoft has shown an interest in publishing their own games on Steam/the west and they hired other companies to port their games to PC ( Danganronpa 1 and 2 ended up selling very well and sold something like 200k copies each?).




I'm happy about the way they handle DQXI and released it along side the PS4 version and on top of that SE even said they knew the Nier A port was bad and we're going to do a better job with DQXI (which they did).

Kind of sucks how the PC version won't get the DQXI S edition content though

Click to shrink...

Hopefully we'll see more ports of the older games.

Still waiting for FF1, FF2 and FFTactics.

Also I'm really really really waiting for older DQ games like V and VIII (both which are my fav ;p).

 

[SmokedSalmon]

Bandai does do a decent job overall with it's PC ports now. And they don't really platform exclusive games that's often now so most stuff comes to PC.

One of the things about Bandai though is a big portion of their catalogue is licenced content (games based off anime series) and two of the series that's (until very recently) did not make their way onto PC were Digimon and Gundam stuff.


In regards to FFVIIR that's is pretty much coming to PC about 1 year after the PS4 release, it's what SE does with all their FF games now (they even did it with Dissidia NT, FFXII, and World of Final Fantasy)



The willingness depends on the company, take SEGA as an example their EU branch is mostly PC oriented (and even in the past console stuff was handled by other companies from what I recall like Deep Silver? Or at least the ATLUS and this is after SEGA acquired ATLUS) seeing how they are in charge of SEGA's western IPs/studios. Since they like PC one of SEGA EUs goals has been to put more of SEGA's Japanese IPs on PC and it's been working pretty well (I think Puyo Puyo has been one of the few IPs that has not caught on very well on PC though).

Capcom is one of the earliest Japanese publishers to start using Steam and that's has to do with how one of the top people at the western Capcom branch was pushing for Capcom to get back into releasing on PC (and in the long run it did pay off).


In general the cost of making a PC port is not that expensive compared to what some of these companies make out of them (these ports are not always handed by the original devs themselves). This part is important, if you look at Falcom they have a long history with PC but because of their structure and how limited their budget is they can not afford to port their games to PC and there for have to rely on other companies like XSEED and Nisa to make PC ports of their games.

Who is going to make the PC port has to come into consideration, do the original devs do it, or do they hire another company to take care of that for them? SEGA EU uses other companies to make PC ports, as do SE, Capcom and Bandai. (Western companies still do this as well)

Spike Chunsoft opened up a western branch not that long ago and pretty much all of their games are getting PC ports, so having a western branch really helps (but is not required since I don't think ASW had a western branch until recently and they were able to get PC ports of stuff they published, RIP PQube/Aksys and NISA losing two of their main source of income). It can be a bit confusing since in the past Spike Chunsoft has shown an interest in publishing their own games on Steam/the west and they hired other companies to port their games to PC ( Danganronpa 1 and 2 ended up selling very well and sold something like 200k copies each?).



Video games sales in Japan are not what they use to be and you have to expand to the rest of the world to make a lot of money (the mobile market in Japan is big and stuff like FGO and GBF make a poop amount of money)


We don't talk about it much but Japanese Steam users do feel neglected, because some of these games are not available to buy in Japan or have Japanese language options, DQXI is not available in Japan on PC (which is pretty ridiculous actually), then you had Catherine where SEGA accident put the price for the game at ¥9999 despite it only being Japanese dubbed and not having UI be in Japanese. So there does seem to be some licensing issues? And other stuff that some Japanese companies don't want to deal with?



I'm happy about the way they handle DQXI and released it along side the PS4 version and on top of that SE even said they knew the Nier A port was bad and we're going to do a better job with DQXI (which they did).

Kind of sucks how the PC version won't get the DQXI S edition content though

Click to shrink...

Lots of really interesting information here. Thank you!

 

[PC-tan]

Hopefully we'll see more ports of the older games.

Still waiting for FF1, FF2 and FFTactics.

Also I'm really really really waiting for older DQ games like V and VIII (both which are my fav ;p).

Click to shrink...

Hopefully they do release those DQ games but if they did right now they would be the mobile version, our best best would be for a remake or something, SE has hinted at remaking DQIII in the style of DQXI and hopefully by that time all 3 versions release at the same time instead of what happened with DQXI and resulted in exclusive content for DQXI S. There very likely will still be exclusive content since SE wants people to double dip on DQ (and they very well know that people will)

 

[fiendcode]

I still think it's weird both Dragon Quest Builders games skipped PC. Like what?

 

[SteveWinwood]

valve did a presentation about about different payment options and how the Japanese love just buying games using money at 7/11s

it blew my mind how many prefer that avenue

makes it that much easier for pc users in japan

 

[BasilZero]

I still think it's weird both Dragon Quest Builders games skipped PC. Like what?

Click to shrink...

yeah this pissed me off.

I did get DQ Builders 1 on PS4 for like $20

Gonna get the 2nd one too in the future but hopefully both will come to PC.

 

[Sankara]

SE is a mixed bag.

They release DQXI and announced FFVIII Remastered and Trials of Mana remake alongside the console versions.

But they do delayed releases on everything else that is Japanese made specifically Final Fantasy related.

Click to shrink...

I honestly love what Square Enix has been doing. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The way they handled the Chrono Trigger release also shows that they'll make up for their mistakes.

 

[BasilZero]

I honestly love what Square Enix has been doing. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The way they handled the Chrono Trigger release also shows that they'll make up for their mistakes.

Click to shrink...

Yep, no doubt about that.

Because of the fact that they decided to push fixes - is the reason why I bought it as soon as the fixes came out.

 

[crazillo]

I think it's a good trend and will be continued, as the success speaks for itself, driven by wider availability to new audiences and especially the Chinese market. We are seeing the combination of a lot more PS4/Switch and PC versions from Japanese devs in general, even if they sometimes might be delayed or ported later, and much fewer titles only hitting one platform.

I have also been saying that the trend of more Japanese games on PC would be a good way for Xbox Game Pass on PC to get some more Japanese content that probably wouldn't hit the console.