Me and Duckroll were lamenting about Shadow Hearts 3 and its weak everything and it got me thinking about what's going to happen to rpgs.
See when the PS2 came out we hit the usually early drought of rpgs as developing an rpg from scratch tends to take companies about 2 full years. So flash forward about two years (or three in the US) and we start getting a flood of high quality rpgs. Suddenly every two months there's some big rpg coming from one of the studios. This continues for about 2 years and everyone is happy...until we hit about 12 months ago.
The market is crashing. In the US non-SquareEnix rpgs sell under 60k basically so the majority of the money that funds future rpg projects come from the sales in Japan. But in the last year or so rpg sales are starting to go really really sour in Japan. If you released a rpg in Japan and it wasn't total crap like Idea Factory games, you could usually count on about 100k sales. If it was part of a long running series you used to be able to count on 130-200k sales. If the game scored really well in the magazines and was hyped you could have 300k+ sales. Hell even Xenosaga did about 450k in Japan. But suddenly in todays market if you make an rpg there's a 90% chance it won't hit 100k even if it's a named series. In fact, rpg sales are circulating more and more around the 50-60k mark which really just doesn't bring in the money. Even Grandia III which is part of a named series and had tons of SquareEnix market only sold 122k on the first weekend and most likely won't ever get above 200k in Japan.
This is bad
See what rpg players have started noticing (and US gamers are about to start noticing) is that this drop in sales is having a huge effect on the budgets publishers are willing to give the development team. When publishers realized their games were only going to sell between 50-100k total they started getting real tight on the money for rpg projects. And we're seeing it in games. All the rpgs coming out feel cheap, they feel like they are lacking in length, dungeons, cutscenes, etc... lots of recycling is being done and most rpgs are starting to just not feel very satisfying because they really do feel rushed and incomplete. Even with series that are doing well such as the Nippon Ichi SRPGs...anyone has played Phantom/Makai Kingdom can tell that the game was done on a much lower budget than their previous titles. All the budgets are going down and rpg quality is taking a huge hit along with it. Most of us thought that with 2005's summer lineup of rpgs like Shadow Hearts 3, Grandia 3, Tales of Legendia, that PS2 was going out with a bang of top-notch rpgs like the PS1 did. But see in the PS1 days, rpg sales were thriving so rpgs were just getting bigger and better....So instead the final year of the PS2 is getting a collection of disappointing low-budget games that just don't live up to what the system was getting in its mid-life.
Ok, then what about the future?
Well this is where everything gets kinda wierd, tricky, and creepy. Basically if the software sales keep going down in Japan, next-gen rpgs are likely to be selling around the 50-70k total mark. But at the same time development costs are going to go up at least somewhat for the next-generation consoles. Also low-budget rpgs at the end of the PS2's life were made possibly by companies relying on engines built earlier in the generation when sales were healthy. But you can't really use these PS2 engines on the PS3/X360. So in order to make your big rpg from scratch it's going to take a sizeable entry budget...even if you're licensing something like the Unreal Engine. Well the money just isn't there. With no assured sales in the west and no assurance of sales in the east, how many publishers besides SquareEnix/Namco are going to really put down that huge sum of starting cash to make an rpg? To fund two years of development for a game that won't even make its money back?
To a degree I would almost think that rpgs are approaching a disappearance along the lines of PC point n' click adventure games. But that doesn't work! Why not? Well the entire gaming market of Japan is based around rpgs. Ask any Japanese person their favorite game genre and 99% of the answers will be the rpg category. Rpgs disappearing in Japan would be like all FPS disappearing in the US except for one or two big companies who can publish them. So then what happens? To a degree the anime industry in Japan was also spiraling downwards like this, but then the US companies stepped in a started co-funding projects due to the popularity of anime in the US. Suddenly the Japanese studios were having the money they needed and the quality of animation jumped back up to its prime. But in the game market were not going to see US companies starting to co-fund Japanese rpg teams because rpgs don't sell in the US. Unlike other genre the Japanese rpg genre is not something that you can just flip a switch and make it appeal to western audiences. So what happens? Could the Japanese government step in and start funding rpg companies? That seems almost too bizarre to actually happen; but hell if they stop making rpgs and there's an increase of suicides in the workplace, maybe it would be worth it for the government to step in a fund stuff. I mean the businessman needs his level grinding when he gets home or else.
All humor and weirdness aside, the rpg genre does seem like it's on a frightening path to extinction. There will always be a few companies that figure out how to make great games while minimizing spending such as the Megaten team or Nippon-Ichi. But quite frankly while it's great having those fantastic games, as an avid rpg gamer I miss my epic 50-60 hour long high-budget adventures with gorgeous graphics, varied locations, tons of original enemies and dungeons, and lots of plot and character development...but besides the occasional FF game from SE...will we ever see another one of these games once we hit next-gen? Who will payroll these epic great rpgs that cost 20 million+? I really don't want my rpg future to be filled with letdown after letdown after letdown. Besides Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 2, 2005 in Japan has been a complete disaster in the rpg genre and the info from Famitsu on Legendia doesn't sound like it's going to get any better any time soon.
At this point I will just cling to the hope that FFXII will be the epic amazing rpg we've been waiting to end the generation on. If it fails...well I think I may be turning in my jacket finding a new hobby :\
See when the PS2 came out we hit the usually early drought of rpgs as developing an rpg from scratch tends to take companies about 2 full years. So flash forward about two years (or three in the US) and we start getting a flood of high quality rpgs. Suddenly every two months there's some big rpg coming from one of the studios. This continues for about 2 years and everyone is happy...until we hit about 12 months ago.
The market is crashing. In the US non-SquareEnix rpgs sell under 60k basically so the majority of the money that funds future rpg projects come from the sales in Japan. But in the last year or so rpg sales are starting to go really really sour in Japan. If you released a rpg in Japan and it wasn't total crap like Idea Factory games, you could usually count on about 100k sales. If it was part of a long running series you used to be able to count on 130-200k sales. If the game scored really well in the magazines and was hyped you could have 300k+ sales. Hell even Xenosaga did about 450k in Japan. But suddenly in todays market if you make an rpg there's a 90% chance it won't hit 100k even if it's a named series. In fact, rpg sales are circulating more and more around the 50-60k mark which really just doesn't bring in the money. Even Grandia III which is part of a named series and had tons of SquareEnix market only sold 122k on the first weekend and most likely won't ever get above 200k in Japan.
This is bad
See what rpg players have started noticing (and US gamers are about to start noticing) is that this drop in sales is having a huge effect on the budgets publishers are willing to give the development team. When publishers realized their games were only going to sell between 50-100k total they started getting real tight on the money for rpg projects. And we're seeing it in games. All the rpgs coming out feel cheap, they feel like they are lacking in length, dungeons, cutscenes, etc... lots of recycling is being done and most rpgs are starting to just not feel very satisfying because they really do feel rushed and incomplete. Even with series that are doing well such as the Nippon Ichi SRPGs...anyone has played Phantom/Makai Kingdom can tell that the game was done on a much lower budget than their previous titles. All the budgets are going down and rpg quality is taking a huge hit along with it. Most of us thought that with 2005's summer lineup of rpgs like Shadow Hearts 3, Grandia 3, Tales of Legendia, that PS2 was going out with a bang of top-notch rpgs like the PS1 did. But see in the PS1 days, rpg sales were thriving so rpgs were just getting bigger and better....So instead the final year of the PS2 is getting a collection of disappointing low-budget games that just don't live up to what the system was getting in its mid-life.
Ok, then what about the future?
Well this is where everything gets kinda wierd, tricky, and creepy. Basically if the software sales keep going down in Japan, next-gen rpgs are likely to be selling around the 50-70k total mark. But at the same time development costs are going to go up at least somewhat for the next-generation consoles. Also low-budget rpgs at the end of the PS2's life were made possibly by companies relying on engines built earlier in the generation when sales were healthy. But you can't really use these PS2 engines on the PS3/X360. So in order to make your big rpg from scratch it's going to take a sizeable entry budget...even if you're licensing something like the Unreal Engine. Well the money just isn't there. With no assured sales in the west and no assurance of sales in the east, how many publishers besides SquareEnix/Namco are going to really put down that huge sum of starting cash to make an rpg? To fund two years of development for a game that won't even make its money back?
To a degree I would almost think that rpgs are approaching a disappearance along the lines of PC point n' click adventure games. But that doesn't work! Why not? Well the entire gaming market of Japan is based around rpgs. Ask any Japanese person their favorite game genre and 99% of the answers will be the rpg category. Rpgs disappearing in Japan would be like all FPS disappearing in the US except for one or two big companies who can publish them. So then what happens? To a degree the anime industry in Japan was also spiraling downwards like this, but then the US companies stepped in a started co-funding projects due to the popularity of anime in the US. Suddenly the Japanese studios were having the money they needed and the quality of animation jumped back up to its prime. But in the game market were not going to see US companies starting to co-fund Japanese rpg teams because rpgs don't sell in the US. Unlike other genre the Japanese rpg genre is not something that you can just flip a switch and make it appeal to western audiences. So what happens? Could the Japanese government step in and start funding rpg companies? That seems almost too bizarre to actually happen; but hell if they stop making rpgs and there's an increase of suicides in the workplace, maybe it would be worth it for the government to step in a fund stuff. I mean the businessman needs his level grinding when he gets home or else.
All humor and weirdness aside, the rpg genre does seem like it's on a frightening path to extinction. There will always be a few companies that figure out how to make great games while minimizing spending such as the Megaten team or Nippon-Ichi. But quite frankly while it's great having those fantastic games, as an avid rpg gamer I miss my epic 50-60 hour long high-budget adventures with gorgeous graphics, varied locations, tons of original enemies and dungeons, and lots of plot and character development...but besides the occasional FF game from SE...will we ever see another one of these games once we hit next-gen? Who will payroll these epic great rpgs that cost 20 million+? I really don't want my rpg future to be filled with letdown after letdown after letdown. Besides Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 2, 2005 in Japan has been a complete disaster in the rpg genre and the info from Famitsu on Legendia doesn't sound like it's going to get any better any time soon.
At this point I will just cling to the hope that FFXII will be the epic amazing rpg we've been waiting to end the generation on. If it fails...well I think I may be turning in my jacket finding a new hobby :\
