Why do Japanese 3rd party companies always make bad decisions when it comes to biasedness against Nintendo?

[SpaceCrystal]

I thought that I would tackle on this subject when no one else would.

Most of the time, Japanese 3rd party companies always tend to either ignore certain games on Nintendo platforms because of their biasedness against them, or because of too much focus on "better graphics" in which they would only be on Xbox & PlayStation. It happens the majority of the time, & not just with Switch. It has happened to other Nintendo platforms in the past as well.

Example: Atlus with "Persona 5: The Royal". Why would you not put that game on the Switch in which that platform is very popular on your main market within your demographic? Why? People who have bought the original version on PS4 weren't going to buy the same game on the same platform just for more content while charging full price. It was a missed opportunity from Atlus. But wait, you give everyone on Switch "Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers" spin-off as well as "Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster" instead, in which they're multiplatform on PS4 as well. Okay...

They also tend to also put games on the wrong platform(s) which doesn't fit on PlayStation platforms or worse, Xbox platforms & doesn't sell well on them as a result. Examples: Bandai Namco not porting "Tales of Symphonia" to 3DS, but ports it to PS3 instead. Or not porting "Tales of Eternia" to DS.

Or how about ".hack//G.U.: Last Recode" in it's entirety?

https://gametaq.com/2020/09/03/cyberconnect2-proposed-the-idea-of-hack-g-u-last-recode-switch-to-bandai-namco-but-they-said-no/

But I don't know if you are aware of this, but .hack series have always been released exclusively for PlayStation. Of course, Last Recode was released not only on PS4, but also on Steam. So it's available on the digital distribution service on PC as well. But because of our long-standing relationship with Sony, I understand that it was difficult to release it on Switch then at the same time.

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Loyalty to Sony while being biased against Nintendo. How do you factor this in & support this, as a company?

Like, when will Japanese 3rd party companies wake up & realize that fun & decent gameplay matters to people, & not always making excuses to miss Nintendo platforms because of decent graphics, or because of loyalty to another company in general? I believe all gamers deserves an explanation.

EDIT: It seems like a lot of people aren't getting of what I'm trying to say & are just retorting saying "I'm biased & entitled", etc. I'm saying that Sony (& Microsoft at times) always gets better treatment from Japanese 3rd parties on most games than Nintendo does.

 

[NoKisum]

Maybe all the business men were burned too much on the Gamecube to Wii U to work with Nintendo in an exclusive manner again?

 

[Nightengale]

Persona Q, Q2, Octopath Traveller, Monster Hunter Rise, Stories, Ace Attorney, Dragon Quest VII 3DS, etc etc.

You can find examples for either sides of the equation.

 

[GamerJM]

It might not be business decisions, they could have some behind-the-scenes deal with Sony. It's not impossible for Persona at least, what with Sony owning Aniplex.

 

[Mechaplum]

What about titles that aren't on PS or Xbox? Is this just port begging writ large sprinkled with entitlement?

 

[SpaceCrystal]

What about titles that aren't on PS or Xbox? Is this just port begging writ large sprinkled with entitlement?

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PS & Xbox always tend to get the majority of games while Nintendo is mostly being ignored. That's where I was trying to go with this.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Explain why Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2 can't be on PC, PS4/5 and the new Xboxes

 

[Dreamboum]

Companies have good relationships with certain distributors that pays off dividends over the years. Said companies often don't have the same relationship with other distributors or don't have the backing to authorize a release to other platforms.
It's not so much biasedness than Atlus historically putting their biggest releases on Sony platforms and it paying off.

 

[Elephant]

"Biasedness"? I'll check with Oxford for that one.

I think you're reaching and claiming bias in an attempt to veil your port begging. Do you know how many Nintendo games I've wanted on the PC/Playstation? A lot! It's usually down to business deals why I can't have them, not that developers shun other platforms.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Why? People who have bought the original version on PS4 weren't going to buy the same game on the same platform just for more content while charging full price.

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Uh huh....

Persona 5 Royal Hits 'Record Sales' In the West, Says SEGA

Lookin' cool, Joker

www.pushsquare.com

Persona 5 Royal has sold 1.4 million units worldwide; Persona series total sales surpass 13 million | RPG Site

Persona 5 Scramble at 480K, Persona 4 Golden on Steam at 500K

www.rpgsite.net

Persona 5 Royal sales top 1.4 million; Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers tops 480,000

Total sales for Persona 5 Royal have surpassed 1.4 units worldwide, and total sales for Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers have surpassed 480,000 units in Japan and Asia, Atlus announced.

www.gematsu.com

 

[Nightengale]

PS & Xbox always tend to get the majority of games while Nintendo is mostly being ignored. That's where I was trying to go with this.

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Selective bias sure is a thing. It takes two to tango.

Here's mine.

Atlus's Nintendo-exclusive games: SMT4, SMT4 : Apocalypse, SMT V SMT Strange Journey, Persona Q, Persona Q2, Etrian Oddysey series.
Atlus's PlayStation-exclusive games: Persona 4, Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.

 

[asd202]

This is one biased thread

 

[Deleted member 10629]

I mean Nintendo bullied a lot of companies back in the day, I guess some people from those times are still working there and are still resentful lol

 

[Nanashrew]

Lately there's only a handful of companies as Sony's relevance in Japan has been going down. Once Sony exclusives have now gone multiplat with Sony and Nintendo.

 

[SpaceCrystal]

Uh huh....

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Ports usually sell less than the original versions of games. Persona 5: The Royal could've had a bigger audience on Switch with even more bigger sales, especially in which JRPG's are very popular on that platform.

Selective bias sure is a thing. It takes two to tango.

Here's mine.

Atlus's Nintendo-exclusive games: SMT4, SMT4 : Apocalypse, SMT V SMT Strange Journey, Persona Q, Persona Q2, Etrian Oddysey series.
Atlus's PlayStation-exclusive games: Persona 4, Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.

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But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

 

[Vault]

SMTV

 

[Schreckstoff]

they must hate money, it's the only reasonable explanation

 

[sredgrin]

The idea some of you have that these are personal biases is so fucking weird.

PS & Xbox always tend to get the majority of games while Nintendo is mostly being ignored. That's where I was trying to go with this.

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Of Japanese stuff? Xbox gets like Bandai Namco games and some big budget Square stuff. They're getting more stuff lately, but hardly some huge gap between what they get and Nintendo ends up receiving, and I'd wager more ends up on Switch overall.

 

[Ovvv]

But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

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Maybe they read all the nasty Twitter comments from people port begging P5 and are turned off from all the review bombing their other titles receive as a result?

I'm joking. They probably have their own internal reasons for why they decide to port what they do.

 

[Zalman]

Selective bias sure is a thing. It takes two to tango.

Here's mine.

Atlus's Nintendo-exclusive games: SMT4, SMT4 : Apocalypse, SMT V SMT Strange Journey, Persona Q, Persona Q2, Etrian Oddysey series.
Atlus's PlayStation-exclusive games: Persona 4, Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.

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Not that I disagree with your point, but the vast majority of the Nintendo ones you mention were targeted at a very different piece of hardware. You can't make Etrian Odyssey work on other platforms unless you rework it significantly.
When you look at the Persona games, there's really no reason why they couldn't be brought over to the Switch. Persona 5 was a PS3 game.
Reality is Atlus is an outlier in the industry that makes weird decisions with their IPs.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Selective bias sure is a thing. It takes two to tango.

Here's mine.

Atlus's Nintendo-exclusive games: SMT4, SMT4 : Apocalypse, SMT V SMT Strange Journey, Persona Q, Persona Q2, Etrian Oddysey series.
Atlus's PlayStation-exclusive games: Persona 4, Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.

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Don't forget the dancing games as Playstation exclusives

 

[Nanashrew]

Also I remember the thread regarding .hack GU. And I believe people also brought up other instances from other companies, Falcom being a major example of a particular bias. Falcom has a reputation for saying stupid crap like even throwing Xseed under the bus.

 

[Nightengale]

But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

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I would've appreciated a more well thought-out OP that also explains a history of Nintendo's strong support from 3rd-party, but doesn't count because it lacks a certain level of prestige instead of what you put out.

 

[Replicant]

It could be the fact that Nintendo for 3 consecutive generations has decided to make their hardware an entire generation behind the competition.

 

[Deleted member 31092]

I mean, apart from CC2, Bandai and Falcom [for reasons already discussed 1232 times here] how many Japanese third parties aren't fully onboard the Switch now? No one

 

[Modest_Modsoul]

Explain why Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2 can't be on PC, PS4/5 and the new Xboxes

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Obviously they're not 'biased'.

But they 'biased' because not putting Persona 5 on Switch to this day.

Oh yeah, SMTV also not 'biased' too.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Kaguya]

I think it's more that OP only notice the type of patterns he want to see, rather than biasedness against Nintendo, lol.

 

[Izanagi89]

This is a very long post about wanting P5 on Switch

 

[t26]

It is funny because it was the DS getting original Tales games while PSP getting quick and easy PS1 and PS2 ports.

plus Kero Kero RPG using Tales engine

 

[Nightengale]

Not that I disagree with your point, but the vast majority of the Nintendo ones you mention were targeted at a very different piece of hardware. You can't make Etrian Odyssey work on other platforms unless you rework it significantly.
When you look at the Persona games, there's really no reason why they couldn't be brought over to the Switch. Persona 5 was a PS3 game.
Reality is Atlus is an outlier in the industry that makes weird decisions with their IPs.

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I know, which is why I literally said "it takes two to tango"

My own list is selective bias. It's not compared in good faith.

 

[rubidium]

As for Persona isn't Sony's animation division handling all the merchandizing? Contracts exist in every corner of business..

 

[SpaceCrystal]

I would've appreciated a more well thought-out OP that also explains a history of Nintendo's strong support from 3rd-party, but doesn't count because it lacks a certain level of prestige instead of what you put out.

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Look at Zalman's post. He gets what I'm trying to say.

 

[Mobu]

Let it go, its time to accept that Sony probably has a deal to keep the most Personas on their consoles

 

[Kaguya]

But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

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Yea, they don't, it's just the main series of SMT, smh, the biased of these guys.

 

[Deleted member 51691]

Is this about Tales of Arise? Because we have to wait for its sales figures to see whether PS4/XB1/PC were the right set of platforms.

 

[Nightengale]

Look at Zalman's post. He gets what I'm trying to say.

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No, I get it.

I just disagree with the premise of biasedness. Bad decisions, sure. Biasedness? No. And I'm not interested in putting a list of who's who and what's what that came to each platform with some level of exclusivity as a reference because to be quite honest, some platform decisions are baffling, but baffling platform decisions has always been the case for niche Japanese third-party games.

 

[D.Lo]

I guess Nintendo buries their flops. For example, Wii U and Gamecube could have sold more/a lot more if Nintendo had doubled down with more aggressive, less profitable strategies, instead they basically left them to wither profitably (or at least minimise loss) while they prepared their next idea). While Sony re-invested in the mega-flop PS3, willing to lose billions to rebuild momentum.

So Sony could be seen as a better long term strategy because loyalty could be rewarded with less risk of an abandoned platform, even for Japan-first brands.

That said Playstation is now a withering brand in Japan, PS4 got everything including stuff that defied logic (it was by far the least successful platform in Japanese history to get a main Dragon Quest at launch, and Monster Hunter was a Japan-centric portable franchise, PS4 got MH as a side effect of Capcom playing for the west, or maybe/likely moneyhats as per the original leak), lived its life mostly against the flop Wii U/Xbone and will still sell less than the PS3. PS5 seems destined to do worse again.

So maybe it will finally change. Don't see anything that can stop Nintendomination for Japan for another decade.

Explain why Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2 can't be on PC, PS4/5 and the new Xboxes

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They should be, why not.

The Switch is the crushingly dominant platform in Japan where MH has been the #1 non-Nintendo series for most of the decade, so it is understandably primarily made for that market.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Ports usually sell less than the original versions of games. Persona 5: The Royal could've had a bigger audience on Switch with even more bigger sales, especially in which JRPG's are very popular on that platform.

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Doesn't seem like there's any shortage of people willing to buy Royal again, which was the whole point of my quote of you.

But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

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Ah so this is what it really comes down to.

 

[Nanashrew]

It is funny because it was the DS getting original Tales games while PSP getting quick and easy PS1 and PS2 ports.

plus Kero Kero RPG using Tales engine

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Majority of Tale's life has been Nintendo getting a version of the game, then Playstation getting the definitive version of that game. Though it didn't quite work out well for those 2... The Vita remakes are crap because they messed with a lot.

 

[clay_ghost]

Japanese company is just weird when it come to ports and exclusives. Some games are still exclusive to Vita and not port else where man. I am glad P4G have a PC port after all these years but its not even on PS4 too lol. If Hearts R is on PS4 back then, it could have sold more ww too.

 

[Hero of Legend]

Bandai Namco's handling of Tales of Graces on Wii still honestly pisses me off.

It was exclusive, yes, but released in Dec 2009 in such a broken state that the game had to be recalled and sales crashed into a brick wall from there.

A year or two later it gets an expanded PS3 port. Localization time arrives, and ONLY the PS3 version gets localized. Their defense was "oh we couldn't get the extra content into the Wii version (why?)". What stopped them from localizing the Wii version alongside and just making it cheaper to compensate? I recall Dawn of the New World on Wii (a cheap sequel/spin-off) selling on par with their primo Tales of Vesperia on 360 in the west. IIRC, Graces f cratered in the west. Also remember that Symphonia on GC is still undefeated in sales in the west.

Nintendo fans time and time again have been extremely receptive to the IP in the west. Abyss on 3DS did very well IIRC, even warranting restocks.

This whole thing was such a shit show. And a similar deal happened with Digimon World re:digitize Decode on 3DS. Fans made a petition to get it localized. Cyber Sleuth gets announced for Vita and was added to said petition. The petition gained a lot of momentum (I think especially prior to CS's reveal on Vita?). BN only localized CS on Vita in the end. That's what's called "selective hearing/reading".

When BN do great on Nintendo systems they do REALLY great. Their Encore series on Switch has been a tremendous idea and seemingly is successful if it's still on-going. All have been Switch-specific ports/revivals on classic GC/PS2-era games, with some getting day 1 Steam ports but they are clearly Switch first.

But when they do stupid stuff on Nintendo systems, they do REALLY stupid stuff as explained above. And let's not even get to Namco's side being virtually absent of large-scale games on Switch. God Eater 3 is the only exception and that was mainly by Marvelous First Studio, not internally at Bandai Namco Studios... who's been doing many Nintendo collabs (next up being New Pokemon Snap).

 

[SpaceCrystal]

D.Lo Hero of Legend Thank you!

Doesn't seem like there's any shortage of people willing to buy Royal again, which was the whole point of my quote of you.

Ah so this is what it really comes down to.

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It's not even about that. Read my edit in the OP.

 

[GhostTrick]

As for Atlus:
It has nothing to do with biasedness. Just bad decisions. Persona 5 isn't releasing on PC, yet we saw how fast Persona 4 sold there. And yet SMT 5 is Switch exclusive.

As for most publishers, Nintendo just makes too weak platforms. Sometimes it requires too much work or compromises to bring games there. It is possible, but at what cost ? Hence why MHW isnt coming to Switch, yet two exclusives MH titles are.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

OP you seem kind of biased.

 

[L Thammy]

It's worth noting that the most popular system being one thing doesn't mean that your audience is there. For example, people who are more sensitive to graphics or who actively want to avoid family friendly offerings may be more likely to stay away from Nintendo systems. Similarly, series with a lot of PlayStation history may find that they don't have a big audience when they explore Nintendo platforms because their main audience has been sticking to PlayStation.

 

[Tibarn]

Atlus does strange/bad decisions all the time, that's for sure.

Even if P5R has sold well, the game being on Switch on day one would have meant a significat increase on sales, and the game can be easily ported. Same with P4 Golden, the game has performed well on PC and would perform well on the Switch.

In the case of Persona, considering how well Xenoblade and other JRPGs perform on the Switch and that the games are not technically demaning, it doesn't make fucking sense at all.

 

[Xenosaga]

But they don't usually give Nintendo main series of Persona like they do with Sony.

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Are we ignoring them not giving mainline SMT games for Playstation like SMTIV and SMTV?

 

[Nakenorm]

But there's tons of third party exclusives on nintendo platforms?

What about titles that aren't on PS or Xbox? Is this just port begging writ large sprinkled with entitlement?

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Sounds like it at least

 

[Mechaplum]

It's worth noting that the most popular system being one thing doesn't mean that your audience is there. For example, people who are more sensitive to graphics or who actively want to avoid family friendly offerings may be more likely to stay away from Nintendo systems. Similarly, series with a lot of PlayStation history may find that they don't have a big audience when they explore Nintendo platforms because their main audience has been sticking to PlayStation.

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Pretty sure at this point there are more eroge stuff on NSW than PS4 or Xbox.

 

[Zalman]

The main takeaway is that Atlus works in mysterious ways. Both SMT5 and Persona 5 should be on everything. There's a market for them on more than one platform.