I remember going onto the Humble Store in the past year and seeing that Square Enix games were on sale. From past experience I knew that the sale would only include their Western titles such as Tomb Raider, Life is Strange and Deus Ex. A few days later, I saw that Square Enix Japan had decided to join the sale. However, whereas Square Enix’s Western titles were as much as 85% off, their Japanese games were limited to 50% off or less. This made me think about how Japanese publishers price their games during sales compared to Western publishers.
The first thing I want to address is the possible misconception that this article is about self-entitlement. I could easily imagine someone reading the first paragraph and thinking “This guy just wants cheap games!” However, as I’ve mentioned before, I primarily play Japanese games and my only platform for video games these days is the PC. It wasn’t too long ago when very few Japanese games came out for PC and I wish to see them succeed on the PC platform.
As of this article, there are about 40,000 games on Steam and that does not include the games of many other PC digital distribution services such as GOG.com, Origin, Epic Games Store etc. That is a lot of competition for your time and money! In such a competitive environment, an easy way to drive up game sales is to do a discount. This brings attention to the title and allows people, who might have thought the regular price too high, to buy the game.
I used to use SteamSpy to view how many units each game sold on Steam but, ever since Steam changed their privacy settings, SteamSpy is now unable to provide accurate information for game sales. Instead, I would like to point to an article from 2018 when an exploit in the Steam API allowed people to, temporarily, calculate accurate game sales figures. While the article shows that there have been many successful Japanese games on PC, it also shows that their sales figures still pale compared to Western titles on Steam.
There is much to take into account here. For one, these articles are from 2018 and allow for sales figures to have changed (for one, Monster Hunter World has blown past the sales figures of Dark Souls III in that article). It is also worth noting that Western games have been sold on Steam longer than Japanese games and much of the PC market has been built around Western games. However, with little to no other information, these figures are all I can rely on.
What I do know for sure is that there is a problem when the 2013 Tomb Raider game is 85% off while Final Fantasy VII (a 1997 game released on Steam in 2013 as well) remains only 50% off in every sale. Many other Japanese publishers are also sparing in their sales (XSEED Games and NIS America are two other publishers that spring to mind) but other Japanese publishers price their games competitively and are rewarded for it. Sega recently ran a sale on Steam in which they discounted their Yakuza games heavily. The response was that the Yakuza Bundle (Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2) fought their way to the number 1 spot on the Steam sales chart (which is based on revenue, not on sales figures).
Ultimately, I want to see more Japanese games ported and released on PC. However, to grow the market (along with good ports and high-quality games), prices must be discounted in order to drive sales and compete with other titles. Let me know if you’ve noticed this trend as well, what your thoughts are on it and if Japanese game sales prices are the same or different on consoles!
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.