What's gaming culture like in non English countries? What's popular? Is there any genres or games more popular than in the Anglo sphere?

[Sheentak]

Of course being an English forum we tend to see what's popular in gaming in the English speaking world. But I've always enjoyed seeing how games are popular in other cultures. Some games such as fifa and cod seem to be universally popular but what interests me is how in some countries niche games or less popular games can be incredibly popular.

For example how kof and snk games are more popular than street fighter in Latin America.
How huge sega was in Brazil.
How anime games are major buisness in France.
How popular simulator games are in Germany.
How Internet games in Cuba work(really cool YouTube episode on this by cloth map)

Basically use this thread to tell me about the gaming of your country and if there's any surprises or cool stuff.

 

[Patitoloco]

It's mostly the exact same in Spain. The only real difference is that point and click adventures and sim games are bigger on Europe.

Also, Xbox is basically non existent. I only know two other guys that had an Xbox except me.

 

[Hayama Akito]

I'm from Chile.

I think most people in latin america will tell you that the biggest difference between here and the US is that SNK was the fucking king in the nineties, not only KOF but Neo Geo in general. The US has always been Capcomland for our eyes, here in 1998/9 KOF98 was the absolute god of fighting games and honestly Alpha 3 was more like a console experience. There's this "dark age of fighting games" in the US gaming history when here people was mad crazy with KOF2002. Also the Power Instinct series by Atlus were kinda popular here too, and as far as I know in the US it's a pretty obscure series.

 

[dstarMDA]

I would love for some of the Germans here to explain Farming Simulator to us haha.

I'm from Chile.

I think most people in latin america will tell you that the biggest difference between here and the US is that SNK was the fucking king in the nineties, not only KOF but Neo Geo in general. The US has always been Capcomland for our eyes, here in 1998/9 KOF98 was the absolute god of fighting games and honestly Alpha 3 was more like a console experience. There's this "dark age of fighting games" in the US gaming history when here people was mad crazy with KOF2002. Also the Power Instinct series by Atlus were kinda popular here too, and as far as I know in the US it's a pretty obscure series.

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Do you think there is any particular reason that Neo Geo performed so well in your country? For example, it was way more expensive than other consoles in Europe and stayed a very niche product, maybe in Chile the others were overpriced comparatively?

 

[AFI-kun]

Right now, in the Philippines, mobile MOBAs and battle royales are pretty much everywhere and have been incredibly popular for the past 2 or 3 years. People often laugh at mobile entries in popular properties but those things are HUGE in markets like ours. They even managed to debunk the whole thing about mobile gamers only wanting casual experiences because MOBAs and battle royales are some of the most mechanically difficult games you can play.

 

[SigSig]

Germany is Soccer and simulators, but most importantly: Soccer Simulators.

 

[Com_Raven]

Here in Germany, we love strategy games (especially real-time strategy and city-building), simulators and MMOs (as a former boss once put it- "Germany has yet to see a MMORPG it did not like").

Obviously people also play all the popular genres and franchises just as anywhere else, but I think the love of sims and certain strategy genres is quite different from many other markets, especially the US.

 

[Sheentak]

Really enjoying these responses.

 

[Hayama Akito]

Do you think there is any particular reason that Neo Geo performed so well in your country? For example, it was way more expensive than other consoles in Europe and stayed a very niche product, maybe in Chile the others were overpriced comparatively?

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I think Arcade culture in latin america was bigger than the US because people didn't have money for consoles, so it was a much cheaper experience to play some games with your few pennies in a game center or just a pub or a minimarket (even a laundry! I heard a lot of stories about that lol). Neo Geo was the most cheaper option for new games compared to CPS2 that was much more expensive, in fact people here still plays Street Fighter II' Champion Edition and not Super Street Fighter II Turbo because the game was extremely expensive when it was released.

There's this myth on internet that latin america loves Neo Geo 100% because of piracy and that's not true, Neo Geo was already the king of arcade machines in 1993 when bootlegged cartridge didn't exist.

And no, NO ONE had a AES, that was just impossible.

 

[Samiya]

PCs are still pretty big if you're serious at all about playing games in Nordic Europe. Strategy games and simulations are sometimes more attractive and engaging to other people than the next Call of Duty, at least to those who play games regularly.

Console-wise, Playstation dominates much more, Xbox is much more of an American console.

But in general we get so much American culture shoved down our throats that our consumer habits ultimately have to conform to a lot of US-produced culture (this goes for film and TV as well).

 

[Kain]

Spain is Sonyland. Nintendo is strong though. lol Xbox

 

[Hayama Akito]

Console-wise, Playstation dominates much more, Xbox is much more of an American console.

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The OG Xbox was like that in latin america too, but I think americans already know that, it's pretty well known than Xbox was 100% a US experience even with piracy. Xbox 360 changed that here though.

 

[Pingal Pratyush]

In India, the country is flooded with PUBGM players and Tencent has capitalized on the market well. Tournaments every now and then, leagues, and there are a lot of streamers. Some streamers have over 200K concurrent viewers at any given time. The current userbase of gamers skipped the PC and console generation. Mobile is their first platform for gaming. The market is huge, great potential.

 

[dstarMDA]

I think Arcade culture in latin america was bigger than the US because people didn't have money for consoles, so it was a much cheaper experience to play some games with your few pennies in a game center or just a pub or a minimarket (even a laundry! I heard a lot of stories about that lol). Neo Geo was the most cheaper option for new games compared to CPS2 that was much more expensive, in fact people here still plays Street Fighter II' Champion Edition and not Super Street Fighter II Turbo because the game was extremely expensive when it was released.

There's this myth on internet that latin america loves Neo Geo 100% because of piracy and that's not true, Neo Geo was already the king of arcade machines in 1993 when bootlegged cartridge didn't exist.

And no, NO ONE had a AES, that was just impossible.

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Ok that makes sense! Thanks.

 

[Xiaomi]

Taiwan here, almost everything is mobile or free to play. We have consoles and switch is relatively popular but by and large people don't like to buy gaming setups, nor are traditional AAA games that big of a deal.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

Italy is PlayStation-land when it comes to home consoles. People refer to videogames or consoles as "playstations", that's how massive the brand is. It's all because PS1 was the first truly mainstream console, with titles like Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot that just ignited a new passion in people. Xbox never really made a huge splash at first, but X360 was actually really big, to this day you easily find even mainstream shops selling X360 stuff. I'd still argue the PS3 probably did better here, as Italy loves their traditions - even PES was still selling big time when in other countries it started falling behind, for example, because "PES on the PlayStation" is just one of those long-time traditions that people have a hard time putting behind them. The handheld sphere is different though. PSP had its share and Vita existed, but Nintendo dominates there. Home consoles never did too well (Wii aside), but shops and general media have always been full of their stuff, from the Game Boy onwards. DS, 3DS, Switch - you can't really circumvent them.

When it comes to game preferences, it's about the same as other countries I reckon. Sports that aren't as popular here like rugby or baseball don't get much sales, but FIFA is big because of the country's huge interest in football, racing games do insanely well, specially F1 and MotoGP because of the country's rich history in them (Ferrari and Valentino Rossi are like national religions, lol). Other than that, the big games like Fortnite, Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty are the heavy-hitters here too. Sony's cinematic games sell like hotcakes here, too. Halo and the likes have a huge following. Not that unique of a place, all in all.

 

[Chaystic]

Xbox is a non factor in Switzerland, don't think I ever met a person that had one.

People here love Fifa alot.

 

[Deleted member 37928]

In Sweden we have good internet capabilities and the worlds biggest LAN event (DreamHack) is held here so online games are very popular; mainly CS, Fortnite and various MOBA's.

 

[Karlinel]

It's mostly the exact same in Spain. The only real difference is that point and click adventures and sim games are bigger on Europe.

Also, Xbox is basically non existent. I only know two other guys that had an Xbox except me.

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Funny thing is, I sold mine (well, besides tech issues) because I knew no one with one to play with. Mindshare and all that.

 

[MrChillaxx]

Italy = Football games, Racing (car/bikes) games, Dragonball games. Then the common popular games like Cod etc.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

Italy here.

It's all about COD and FIFA every year year, racing games and Pokemon.

The PC audience exists but it is mostly playing Blizzard titles and League of Legends.

 

[atlans89]

MOBA dominate in Vietnam, and it's used to be MMO. Console game has some life, but most of the time it's all about AAA. Very low appreciation toward niche genre here.

 

[Rommaz]

English is the "official" language here in zambia but is not the most spoken; anyway here are some trends and notes:
- Piracy is still rampant. Most people play games via piracy on shitty laptops or hacked PS3s, PS4s and Xbox 360s and it's considered normal.
- FIFA and Mortal Kombat are the biggest games historically. MK scene is actually very good, we have the best players in central/southern Africa here and arguably the best in africa in general.
- Playstation is the common console choice followed by xbox. Nintendo barely exists to most people here.
- Apex legends has gotten massive among the core gaming community here. Currently probably the most played game amongst core gamers, so much so that many barely play anything else anymore.

 

[Akai]

How popular simulator games are in Germany.

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This is something that I'd actually like to know, as well, because none of my friends actually do play these games and I have yet to meet people who actually do. No doubt that these games are actually quite big over here, because they pull pretty good numbers on YouTube/Twitch, though.

Germany is largely a Playstation and PC country. In addition to whatever else is currently popular, I'd say that games like FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer, Age of Empires, (World of) Warcraft, Starcraft and similiar games have a bigger than usual followage. Not sure if Minecraft is still big over here, but it definitely was a few years ago. Now there's a lot less talk about it, it seems.

Edit: Forgot Counter Strike. Always had a crazy followage in Germany and was quite controversial.

 

[texhnolyze]

Right now, in the Philippines, mobile MOBAs and battle royales are pretty much everywhere and have been incredibly popular for the past 2 or 3 years. People often laugh at mobile entries in popular properties but those things are HUGE in markets like ours. They even managed to debunk the whole thing about mobile gamers only wanting casual experiences because MOBAs and battle royales are some of the most mechanically difficult games you can play.

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MOBA dominate in Vietnam, and it's used to be MMO. Console game has some life, but most of the time it's all about AAA. Very low appreciation toward niche genre here.

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Yeah, SEA market is mostly dominant with the same things since forever.

In 2000s to early 2010s, it was MMOs and multiplayer games. Nowadays, it's mostly MOBA and mobile games in general.

 

[random88]

In Serbia, it's all about football, NBA, Counter Strike and mobas. If you are playing anything else, you are a nerd.
And Fortnite among kids, but that's true everywhere in the world.

 

[Raiden]

Belgium feels the same as other English markets, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Fifa and the Switch are major here. Xbox not so much.

 

[NHarmonic.]

Chile here.

Sony and Nintendo lead, and the most popular games are FIFA games, GTAV, and mortal kombat.

 

[Deleted member 51539]

Drew Scalon from Giant Bomb and that one blinking guy meme fame made a great series of videos about gaming in Brazil.

 

[Kyubajin]

Like many have stated before, Spain is Sonyland to the bone. FIFA, CoD and Pokémon are massive and sometimes the only thing casual gamers play/buy. GTA, RDR, Assassin's Creed, etc have also become very popular franchises.

 

[Menchin]

Here in Eastern Europe, we are born with Heroes of Might and Magic III discs in our mouths

 

[ChrisEnri]

In Mexico, it's Xbox land, Nintendo is seen as a luxury brand by some.

Gears of War is/was very big too, first person shooters and soccer games are big.

Mexican gamers usually dislike Spain's Spanish dubs, when they see a game supports Spanish the first question is always that, Mexican or Spaniard Spanish lol.

Other than that, it really isn't that different from the US, well, RPGs aren't that big here due to the lack of Spanish translations.

 

[Rotkehle]

Germany:

- PC always was very strong
- Playstation beats Xbox 7:1 I think
- Simulations and strategy games are very popular (Farming Simulator... etc.)
- FIFA is very important

The rest is very similar with the US-market.

 

[Rosebud]

Brazil here. Most popular games are the same (Fortnite, Minecraft, COD, FIFA, CS...).

Piracy now is controlled, but I never met anyone who owned a original PS1/2 or DS/3DS game.

Console warring is much worse than anything on this site.

 

[Patitoloco]

Mexican gamers usually dislike Spain's Spanish dubs, when they see a game supports Spanish the first question is always that, Mexican or Spaniard Spanish lol.

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Funnily enough, it's the exact situation in Spain, a Mexican/Latin American/neutral Spanish translation is horrible for us, and luckily publishers have enough sense to not even dare to come with dubs from there, because they would be EATEN ALIVE.

 

[Vulcano's Assistant]

Brazil here. Most popular games are the same (Fortnite, Minecraft, COD, FIFA, CS...).

Piracy now is controlled, but I never met anyone who owned a original PS1/2 or DS/3DS game.

Console warring is much worse than anything on this site.

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Lived in Venezuela thru the 90s and 00s, I'm yet to see in person an original PS1 game.

 

[SPRidley]

It's mostly the exact same in Spain. The only real difference is that point and click adventures and sim games are bigger on Europe.

Also, Xbox is basically non existent. I only know two other guys that had an Xbox except me.

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Anime games also sell much better population wise in Spain, France and Italy than in the rest of the english speaking countries, because of its long history of japanese animation airing in those countries non stop since the 70s and just being another nerd thing in the pile of nerd things instead of groups of nerds saying is more disguting than their own nerd thing.

And lets not forget about fifa being always a top seller in europe.

Nintendo loved to bring the weird stuff to europe thanks to Shibata testing europe finally like a wirthwile market for then while NoA was excluding those games left and right at the time.

Funnily enough, it's the exact situation in Spain, a Mexican/Latin American/neutral Spanish translation is horrible for us, and luckily publishers have enough sense to not even dare to come with dubs from there, because they would be EATEN ALIVE.

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Except that Halo 2 crap they tried to fit through a hole like if this was disney in the depressing 80s.
Microsoft deserved all the shit they got for that.

 

[Berto]

Portugal is Sonyland, PC is also strong. FIFA is the king.

 

[Luke88]

Italy is PlayStation-land when it comes to home consoles. People refer to videogames or consoles as "playstations", that's how massive the brand is. It's all because PS1 was the first truly mainstream console, with titles like Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot that just ignited a new passion in people. Xbox never really made a huge splash at first, but X360 was actually really big, to this day you easily find even mainstream shops selling X360 stuff. I'd still argue the PS3 probably did better here, as Italy loves their traditions - even PES was still selling big time when in other countries it started falling behind, for example, because "PES on the PlayStation" is just one of those long-time traditions that people have a hard time putting behind them. The handheld sphere is different though. PSP had its share and Vita existed, but Nintendo dominates there. Home consoles never did too well (Wii aside), but shops and general media have always been full of their stuff, from the Game Boy onwards. DS, 3DS, Switch - you can't really circumvent them.

When it comes to game preferences, it's about the same as other countries I reckon. Sports that aren't as popular here like rugby or baseball don't get much sales, but FIFA is big because of the country's huge interest in football, racing games do insanely well, specially F1 and MotoGP because of the country's rich history in them (Ferrari and Valentino Rossi are like national religions, lol). Other than that, the big games like Fortnite, Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty are the heavy-hitters here too. Sony's cinematic games sell like hotcakes here, too. Halo and the likes have a huge following. Not that unique of a place, all in all.

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Good summary. Italy also has a somewhat big following for Pokémon and Dark Souls compared to other european countries, mainly thanks to online communities and personalities. I always struggle to gauge Mario's popularity because there's plenty of merch (1-Up T-shirts by milions and children car sunblinds for some reason) but I don't really know whether it performs in a specific way with games.

 

[Rosenkrantz]

Russia.

PC-centric. Multiplayer is a big deal. FIFA is probably the most popular franchise. Nintendo might as well be dead (they're in a better place than a few years ago tho). Strong "no Russian no buy" sentiment when it comes down to dub and subtitles.

 

[Deleted member 29682]

Here in Eastern Europe, we are born with Heroes ofMight and Magic III discs in our mouths

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Sounds like a magical place.

 

[Megabreath]

UK here, I would say that Playstation and Xbox are very equal in terms of popularity, people mainly play FIFA and COD. Switch is also becoming popular here.

Back in the 90's Sega was very popular, until the PS1 and the rampant piracy on that system.

 

[Dimajjio]

Berto And do the Portuguese people get as annoyed as the Spaniards when they have to play a Brazilian Portuguese dub? Or is Portuguese quite a rare thing in games and most play in English?

 

[Deleted member 29682]

UK here, I would say that Playstation and Xbox are very equal in terms of popularity, people mainly play FIFA and COD. Switch is also becoming popular here.

Back in the 90's Sega was very popular, until the PS1 and the rampant piracy on that system.

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I'm pretty confident you can include the UK in the anglosphere, no matter how much Glasgow may convince you otherwise.

 

[Strax]

Iceland here

Championship Manager was the biggest game here until the PS2 came out.
Xbox and Sega are/were non-factor
The biggest arenas would be rented 2-3 times a year for Quake and Counter Strike tournaments in the early 2000s
Now we mostly follow what's big in the US + FIFA

 

[Hayama Akito]

I never met anyone who owned a original PS1/2 or DS/3DS game.

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Lived in Venezuela thru the 90s and 00s, I'm yet to see in person an original PS1 game.

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Here in Chile was kinda the same: PS1 piracy was rampant, total domination, and probably the number one reason why everybody jumped the boat from Nintendo, BUT here we had original games at first and at the end: in 1995/6 I saw a lot of original games, but everything disappeared in 1997. Then, for some weird reasons, Sony released "officially" the PSOne in Chile in 2003 (yeah, 2003, believe) and we received a lot of "Greatest Hits" games on very, veeeery cheap prices (some of them were like 4 US dollars, my sealed copy of Omega Boost cost 3.000 chilean pesos) like Unjammer Lammy or Syphon Filter. It was nice.

I have a big PS1 collection now but of course that was way past that era and thanks to importing and buying a lot of shit in Japan. It was like "I loved PlayStation so much, I need to redeem myself now" lol.

On the other half original DS/3DS games were pretty normal here, even with flashcards and all that stuff, mostly because Nintendo has this religious cult in Chile since the nineties even if you don't have too much money.

 

[Fritz]

Germany:

- PC always was very strong
- Playstation beats Xbox 7:1 I think
- Simulations and strategy games are very popular (Farming Simulator... etc.)
- FIFA is very important

The rest is very similar with the US-market.

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plus the love/nostalgia for Point'n'Click seems relatively strong

 

[ChrisEnri]

Funnily enough, it's the exact situation in Spain, a Mexican/Latin American/neutral Spanish translation is horrible for us, and luckily publishers have enough sense to not even dare to come with dubs from there, because they would be EATEN ALIVE.

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This is why Microsoft is so big here, they always use Mexican Spanish, they do regional pricing to help gamers, etc. In recent years Nintendo and Sony are making more efforts (Nintendo more than Sony oddly enough) but none has come close to MS.

 

[Deleted member 37233]

As others already said, Germany loves Simulation, Point&Click, Strategy, MMORPGs. PC is strong here, as is Playstation and Nintendo, the latter regained market share through Switch, but handhelds were always present.

 

[Qurupeke]

As far as consoles are concerned, Greece is Sony. They're actually the only ones out of the big 3, if I'm not mistaken, that translate a lot of their games to Greek and the last few years they even have a Greek dub to games like God of War or Death Stranding. And in general their games seem to be popular, but not as popular as something like PES that I'd say is probably the king of console games here.

Nintendo seems to be really niche, and mostly aimed at kids or families. Stuff like Pokemon, while I'm sure it's still quite big, doesn't feel as big as it used to be, with the exception of Pokemon Go which was a massive hit here too. Not sure about Xbox but it's probably tied with Nintendo, at best. I'm not sure about Xbox as I really don't know anyone that owns one this gen and it's probably on a much worse spot than the previous generation here, but it likely is an option for people that can't afford a PS4. Nintendo seems basically the main difference compared to other European markets, and their space in stores is usually the smallest of the three.

PC is really big too, probably quite bigger than consoles. With people under 18, it seemed more common though it was mostly for games that weren't demanding like League of Legends, and you could play on a laptop or an old PC. Piracy is a thing and I assume that a lot of people prefer to build a decent PC rather than buy a console in order to play games, and it feels like people that buy games on release date are more common on consoles, though that might be anecdotal.

The bigger games in general seem to be mostly the stuff you'd see in an Internet Cafe like Fortnite, League of Legends, PES, Call of Duty. I don't really think there's anything atypical.