Japan simply isn’t enough anymore as Square Enix calls the global market a ‘critical’ priority

The industry has really changed, right? It’s no secret that major Japanese publishers – Capcom, SEGA, Square Enix, and so on – are looking pretty much westward these days, as their homeland seems to be distancing itself more and more from traditional console games (well, outside of Nintendo, at least). Whether it’s enforcing global release dates or ushering in Western marketing, the change in approach has been dramatic over the past half decade or so.

And it’s Square Enix that paints a clear picture of this new trend. At the company’s 2022 annual public presentation, President Yosuke Matsuda is doing his best to stress the importance of attracting the global market.

He writes, “Achieving significant growth in the gaming industry is now difficult for companies that primarily compete in the Japanese market, given the gray demographics.” “As such, it is critical to our business that we produce successful titles that speak to the global market, and that provide greater range in terms of both customer and sales volume.”

Matsuda continues to say that relying on the Japanese market is simply not feasible, given the scale and scope of modern big-budget game development: “The Japanese market is no longer sufficient to achieve a level of profit that would enable us to offset our development investment and make a profit, and therefore we need to approach our development efforts on the basis of Assuming that we have to succeed in the global market.”

As we mentioned in our last article about Persona chain sales dataIt is still strange to see Japanese publishers chasing Western markets after so many generations of prioritizing their homeland. We grew up waiting weeks, months, and sometimes years for select Japanese games to make it overseas – but it looks like we’re past that point now, especially when it comes to the big publishers.