Japan gaming has been struggling to keep up with western gaming as I had mentioned in my last post. This time in a different way. Japan is not grasping the whole "social gaming" aspect that the rest of the world is doing now. A lot of people nowadays are into technology advancing and social media of some sort.
This leads to my point on "social gaming". Seth Schiesel mentions in an article on the topic that certain games are in the social gaming field. "Nintendo’s fabulously popular Wii console is Exhibit A, but is also joined in that vein by games like Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, World of Warcraft and even casual office games like Spider solitaire, Bejeweled and Peggle". He's explaining that as for Japan they created the WII which is included in the social gaming aspect. However, the other games mentioned including World of Warcraft, are not Japan gaming. All these other games are western games and it means the west is killing it in sales and has the right idea as far as social gaming goes. They are keeping up with the times.
Phil Harrison was the president of Sony's worldwide game studios and left because of disagreement with the other colleagues. “It’s a very interesting and frustrating thing for me to experience because I have been banging the drum about social gaming for a long time,” he said. “And our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan: ‘People do not play games on the same sofa together in eachother’s homes. It will never happen.’ And then out comes the Wii.” Japan downplays social gaming and says its not worth investing in but later on they release the Wii, which was a huge success in social gaming. It got people off their seats and hit a whole new age group.
Overall, western gaming is ahead of Japan once again and this time, with social gaming. As of now, it is a huge part of gaming. Most games no longer have "coop capability", and its all online multiplayer so you need to socialize with others and play. They focus less on the single player campaigns and focus on the multiplayer aspect. Some games don't even include single player story lines anymore.