It isn't much of a secret that the Japanese game industry, the once king of all things video game, has been falling on hard times. Consoles simply aren't selling in Japan anymore in lieu of mobile and social games taking the foreground. This obviously hurts their game sales but it goes beyond that as well. Console sales are through the roof in the US, with the PS4 and Xbox One having two of the best launches in console history, but Japanese games sales are only dropping. Why is this? Let's take a look at some of the primary reasons the Japanese game industry is having trouble and ways they can fix this. Note that this will take a few blogs to go through so bear with me!

1) Game Development Time is Too Long

Game development costs money. The company has to buy all the equipment needed like computers that are strong enough to deal with the high graphical abilities required by game developers, engine licenses, office supplies, the office itself and whatever else is needed for the project. On top of that, the developers need to be paid fair salaries as well. There are lots of numbers thrown around for average salaries but based on several reports on Japanese developer's average pay, it's safe to say it's around $60,000 a year when converted to US dollars. That means for each year, for a development team of around 50 people (not an uncommon number these days), that's $3,000,000 just to pay the salaries! Now, other than license costs and potentially more expensive computers, these are costs every company has to deal with. The difference is that game companies have to survive entirely off of their game releases. While big companies have many titles in the works at all times, most developers only work on one, maybe two games at a time. That's a huge risk since if that one product fails, they probably won't have the capital to back up another production cycle.

So as you can see, it benefits the developers to balance quality with a speedy development cycle and yet, Japanese developers have been spending obscenely long amounts of time to develop games in the last decade. Sure, some major titles like Super Smash Bros Wii U and 3DS had a decent turnaround of two and a half years but others have been in development for well over the norm. Final Fantasy XV is an easy target, being in active development for almost nine years but it's not the only one. The Last Guardian (eight years), Persona 5 (five years), Ni no Kuni (five years for US) and many more. Compare this to the US market where development for a major AAA title rarely progresses beyond three years and you see the enormous increase in costs.

There are other unfortunate but realistic barriers to Japanese game development that make this even more of a problem. While historically, Japan was the central hub of game development back in the 8 and 16-bit era's, Japan's market simply isn't as large as North America. This means that while selling copies in Japan is important, the only way to truly recoup those costs for larger titles is to sell well overseas in the European and North American markets. This increases the importance of hiring translators who often sell their services for quite the pretty penny. While any developer wanting to sell games in other regions will need to do this as well, it's not as important for North American developers who can make larger profits from selling only in their own region.

So what do the costs have to do with how many copies a game sells? We aren't asking why Japanese developers go bankrupt, after all, we're asking why games don't sell. Well, it's important to understand these costs to understand the mindset of Japanese publishers. While the developers will usually be concerned primarily with the quality of the game, the publisher's job is to make sure the game is going to sell and they will push developers to make choices that will make that actually happen. This is why it's extremely important for developers to pair with a good publisher that understands their product as disconnect here can turn an otherwise good product into trash very quickly and as the costs for the product go up, the publisher gets more and more nervous as a failure could end their company. They start pushing for things to be different, more mainstream, more like this and that game that sold well and suddenly, the original product is lost to become something it's not. This is just one example of how development for a game can get sidetracked by fear of cost but there are many more out there.

Marketing is also hurt by these long cycles. When a game is in development for ten years and the expected console of release changes to different generations, you can bet that the graphics of the game are going to suffer. Even if, like me, you don't let graphics decide whether or not a game will be good, the fact is that a lot of people base their entire buying decision off of how a game looks. Even if you don't know it, graphics help make up your mind about a game too, as a good first impression can set the stage for how a game is perceived by you for a long time. Perceptions are a hard thing to change.

One of the key things marketing wants to accomplish for games is to generate hype but this can be a double-edged sword. If you weren't watching E3 in 2006, it'd be hard to explain the excitement people had over watching the reveal of Final Fantasy XIII Versus. It was dark and gritty and everything we wanted from a Final Fantasy, breaking into the modern era. In 2015, it'd be easy to simply discount Final Fantasy XV, as it's now known, simply on the fact that we've been disappointed for too long. Each year brings the promise that maybe this year, the game will be released or, heck, even get a release date and each new year, we are robbed of that. The simple fact is, the hype train eventually has to come to the station or people are gonna go all Snowpiercer and start freaking out (If you haven't seen Snowpiercer yet, well... go see it.)

So how do we fix it?

Stronger planning in advance will help any development team. Obviously, ideas can generate during the process and these shouldn't be ignored but the basic format of the game should be decided well before the game is ever started in earnest. Look at Nintendo's format. While it's not perfect for everyone, they develop on a model of gameplay ideas paired with characters and story rather than having a character and story come first with gameplay ideas secondary. This allows them to maintain focus and make the game much faster while still having a high level of quality.

Publishers also need to get a tighter rein on their development teams. Allowing these eight year cycles to continue is simply not okay for the industry. If a game doesn't look close to being done after three years, seriously consider cancelling it and start up on something else. It's tough to take a loss but it's better than continuing to pour money into a pit that probably will come to nothing.

Also, look into licensing different engines that allow for quicker and easier development. Many US developers license engines such as Unreal or Unity that allow for very quick turnarounds and don't require people to learn coding unrelated to their particular role. In fact, some engines allow full game creation without any programming knowledge whatsoever and they aren't even half bad. Kingdom Hearts III recently switched away from a proprietary engine to the Unreal Engine 4 and that will no doubt help improve the design time for the game. Sure, the licensing fees will add a bit of cost to the development but it will be a lot cheaper than paying a full staff for even an extra six months.

What ideas do you have to improve game development cycles in Japan? How about what other reasons are there for Japan's struggling game industry? Maybe they're doing things right and we need to change our buying habits? Let me know in the comments.