To what extent can beautiful packaging camouflage a defective product? And even the other way around, how can poor packaging affect an excellent product? It is one of the great questions and, at the same time, one of the great concerns of graphic design and advertising.
One of those questions that a multinational as large as Sony also plans on since every month it analyzes a thousand and one cases of sales performance. One of the most striking cases can be found in one of Fumito Ueada’s great masterpieces, ‘ ICO ‘.
In a recent interview, Sony Japan’s Yasuhide Kobayashi said they were convinced that the low sales of Ueda’s debut feature on PS2 in western markets was due to its poor cover design.
A design that seems to have been purposely retouched to fit what they consider to be “western tastes” and that, let me use the rude expression, they were embarrassed. More than anything because the Western cover refers to one of those cheap games that have a photoshop montage as a welcome. Judge for yourself in the images and you will be with me that the Japanese version is infinitely better than the westernized one.
And it is that good taste should not understand territorial barriers or PAL or NTSC systems.
Although in his talk Kobayashi saved the best pearl for last. A comment that many of you will surely disagree with. In his opinion, the Western market (we enter there since it quotes Europe and the United States) has a different concept than the Japanese of the new. In Japan they look for the real novelty and try to create something radically new in each game, almost creating new genres, while for example in Europe we prefer to play the same thing over and over again with small alterations, although he says it in a more way wild.
“A new game in the US or Europe should be something similar to something that has been done before, because for them it is easier to understand it that way. But we don’t like that, combining two titles into one for example. The definition of “new game” is different there than in Japan. For us Japanese, new game means almost a new genre. That is what we call a new game. “
Here, I suppose Mr. Kobayashi was happy with his dissertation. Although he has a lot of joke that he talks like that about the Japanese market and that when he has to talk about the Western one he almost compares us with primates. You may be supported by some market research or ugly sales data but it sounds a bit beast.
Of course, if in Europe we are the kings of video game monotony. We have franchises that are already in the thirteenth installment , giant robot games that do the same version after version, and one-on-one combat games that have not renewed the formula since 1995. Yes, all that is Western, of course it is. .
By the way, this last paragraph has been just as advantageous as Kobayashi’s statements. Ultimately, what matters is that the game is good, it does not matter if it establishes a new genre or is a mix of two that exist. Not?
Via | Joystiq
