Sony Decides VTubers May Be the Best Way to Save PS5 in Japan

It's a shame to see Sony lose so much market share in their home country. Honestly I don't really see them as a Japaneses company now more a western one. I mean look at all their big budget games they certainly don't appeal to Japanese audiences like they do western players.

If Sony wants to try to have a more significant presence in Japan...it will have to have exclusives that interest the Japanese.

Obviously, the future portable console is a good thing!! But it won't be enough when on the other side there's a console with exclusive Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon games.

They need to invest...and I'm not just talking about Japan. Steam and Nintendo, in the medium/long term, will become bigger threats to the Playstation.

This is very good, maybe even excellent.

Money well spent 😎

Make Fuwamoco the official PS5 vtubers and all will be made right

@INeedGoodGraphics So...they lowered the price of the PS5, I believe it was Nishino's decision.

The question is: How far will this desire to be relevant in Japan again go? Will they be willing to acquire Japanese studios/studios that make games for a Japanese audience?

In my mind, and this is just my opinion...considering that games are so expensive to make in the USA and that Playstation needs more games/studios...this investment makes sense.

@INeedGoodGraphics Maybe PlayStation could build up a studio in Japan which focuses on artistic Japanese games, similar to Ico, Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian. I liked those games.

Vtubers is the current trend since they have big and diehard fanbase. Sony doesn't need to pay a lot for these Vtubers.

@INeedGoodGraphics The problems with Japan are very complicated from shrinking market to weak Yen. For Sony, they can't rely much with Japan market anymore. Hence why they focus on bigger market like China, Korea, Asia, and the usual US and EU.

@TrollOfWar The thing is, creating a studio from scratch these days is complex... the time it takes to create something. It might be cheaper, but at the same time it takes a long time and its success is uncertain. I feel that Playstation will have to invest in something already established and/or bet, for example, on the growth of Team Asobi (two teams, for example).

I'm old, and had to google Vtuber.
I think I lost a bunch of brain cells, watching a clip...

@Fizza I personally just want the Playstation to have a balanced game catalog.

I'd like to see RPGs/JRPGs...
I'd like to see a more arcade-style racing game (like Motostorm).
I'd like to see more games like Astro Bot...
I don't want Playstation to completely abandon realistic games either...because that's also part of its identity.

I'm going to say it again they should have stuck with Kato Konatsu her photo shoot last year got a lot of buzz and the video of hey simply buying a PS5 got over a 1M views.... just saying.

I think Sony need to do the following to get some market share back on Japan.

1, Acquire a big Japanese dev/publisher.
2, Use that developer to create JRPG's with a decent budget.
3, Bring out a native handheld.
4, Develop or Co develop anime games based off the current biggest anime shows, and make them exclusive.
5, Go all out on getting any new gacha games to release on Playstation day one, and even get them as console exclusives if possible.
6, Create more strong partnerships with third parties like they have with Konami.

I wonder to what extent them moving their HQ from Japan to California has made a difference?

@UltimateOtaku91 I mean the had Japan studio and closed them down. It felt like they didn’t give a crap about Japan for a good period of time which of course isn’t true but how it looked by their actions.

@datamonkey Less than Nintendo merging their handheld and console operations into one instead of having separate machines. The Switch changed everything in Japan. one machine, more sales, every Nintendo game is on one machine. Everyone wins apart from Sony (Microsoft in Japan are a rounding error)

Let's be clear, Nintendo's handhelds were outselling Sony in Japan well before Sony reorganised their operations ( Sony's wider Japanese operations went through huge restructuring some years ago, which may or may not be part of PlayStation's HQ moving to the US). We should assume Switch sells more units from being portable in Japan than as a tv console.

@datamonkey That'll be the Japan studio making games the Japanese buyers weren't exactly buying in droves? Japan Studio's success dropped off hugely after ps2 and the studio went through several internal reboots. The only really successful Japan Studio games were the ones they produced for outside developers. There is a reason they expanded the Astro Bot team and removed everything else (external producing for Japan is now handled by Xdev, who were already doing Europe and the US)

@Reyzore if only they had some kind of "Japanese Studio" that could make games like that... seems bizarre to me that they never thought of this 🤣

Nothing wrong with teaming up with vtubers, they have big fan bases and they're pretty recognizable.

Hell even Kojima put a vtuber in Death Stranding 2 lol.

@somnambulance

Surely it can’t help them that Capcom and Square are starting to give more support to other platforms at this point. Requiem and Pragmata launching day and date on Switch in particular probably hurts Sony.

Requiem sold 4x more copies on PS5 than Switch 2 in Japan. 38k on Switch 2 doesn't seem that much for a 4.5m install base. It's half the number of Switch 2's sold that week. I don't think it's a big issue for Sony.

Switch 2 getting more big budget and technical games is more down to having a decent hardware spec this time. It's more than good enough to handle these games in portable mode. I think it's fine, some games will just sell more on one or the other but they aren't necessarily fighting over each others meal. DQ VII remastered is pretty much split between the two but other games will sell more on PS5 and others more on Sw2.

I think there is room for market expansion rather than Nintendo necessarily biting too much into Sony's sales.

@Exerion76 i could see why youmger people might like it but its very cringey to me.

Hmm. It's a tough nut to crack. Personally, I think PS5's problem in Japan is very simple: the game catalogue. There are very few games on PS5 that appeal to Japanese gamers and that you can't play anywhere else... it's the polar opposite to the situation Nintendo's in.

I know I already said it, but I think a gacha type game like Genshin from Sony would do really well in countries like Japan, Korea & China. If it took off it would make more than any of Sony's first party games easily imo.

Just make sure it's cute, has lots of costumes and all that gacha stuff and your golden.