Videogames can receive two different kinds of praises. Either monetary or cultural. Hopefully both. Japanese videogames have for three decades now received all the cultural recognition possible for most of their games. From the best awards to the best grades, to being considered “classics”. But none of it matters if sales don’t keep up with the recognition.
You’ve often heard it said: quality ensures success. And success is followed by wide adoption. Well, it seems that for our industry, this is no longer the case. Publishers with great franchises are astonished when their games do not meet the forecasted sales target, even when they receive critical acclaim and top Metacritic scores. There is no way to be sure that sales will reflect the quality. Critical acclaim simply does not translate into commercial success.
An amazing niche concept can often remain niche even though everyone who has played it agrees it is one of the best games ever made. This unfortunately is the case for too many Japanese titles. This is also why spending more than two years making a game is extremely unprofitable, since the amount of time you spend developing that game is not directly associated with the amount of sales.
Very few gamers dispute the fact that Japanese games are superior in almost every aspect to all other games, yet American and European videogame companies have completely surpassed them financially. And without financial success, no matter how good a product or service is, the company won’t be able to continue making it for much longer.
I would like to submit the following analogy: A company like Starbucks is often despised and snubbed because of the quality of its coffee that pales in comparison to the one of small and specialized coffee shops selling premium quality coffee. Starbucks is well aware of this and yet disregards the issue because, at the end of every fiscal year, they are the ones laughing at the small, specialized shops and their meager revenues. These high-quality shops are the ones at risk of going bankrupt. Replace Starbucks with Western publishers and small specialized coffee shops with Japanese publishers and you have the current console videogame industry situation.
Western publishers have the right mindset about this, and we should emulate them in this matter. They do not want any prizes, awards, or critical acclaim. In fact, they do not even care about negative PR. The only thing they care about is profits.