Legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto recently sat down with 4Gamer and openly discussed the state of the Japanese video game market. He sparked some controversy by saying that Japanese gamers can’t overcome the level of difficulty found in western action games and therefore they no longer want to play them. Miyamoto said American gamers throughly enjoy the challenge found throughout western action based titles, but the Japanese quite simply do not.
“I’ve been making action games for some 30 years, and I’ve been thinking about the difference evident in how their popularity has been gradually declining in Japan whilst in America it has been maintained. The issue is that Japanese who cannot overcome the level of difficulty in an action game no longer want to play them. This perception then spreads to all games as a whole, and people avoid them because they see them as difficult.”
“In the case of America, there are a lot more people who enjoy a challenge and will stick with it for you and try to overcome the initial hurdle. Yes, it’s action games which really demand a certain level of skill. Right, some players just enjoy playing, some prefer to finish it, and some prefer greater challenge. People looking for a challenge will dismiss an easily cleared game as “easy.” But by making things too difficult, the people who just want to play get driven off. I always wanted to accommodate both types.”
Thanks, StarTeamFight
FIRST!!!
damn it
Congratulations! Nice effort!
I did my best
Miyamoto Says Japanese Gamers Are Quitters And Don’t Enjoy Hard Games”
“Grabs popcorn dis gona by gudddddd” :P
First
That explains the difficulty difference in Dynamite Headdy.
Hmmm…..
To be fair, Japanese gamers are great with MMO RPGs.
Mmo RPG for me are the same around the world.
Hopefully he will also make more games that caters to the western market.
That’s funny, because usually Americans rage quit on Japanese games.
Lol, so true.
American kids usually rage quit in every game they’re loosing. Not only japanese. Then they send messages that you’re fag or something and they will show you next time you play. They make excuse for their loose that they didn’t really played in last match but when you send them game invite they’re too scared to play again. :)
That’s hilarious
I must be Japanese then. I always quit when there is a really hard level.
Thanks for making my games suck. Asshole.
Lol faggot
OH THE IRONY
I love the “lost in translation” aspect of this article…’O’
Well that was completely unnecessary.
So in 1988 Japan got named more challenge driven and got Mario 2(The Lost Levels) and America got a Doki-Doki Panic knock off. Now, we get New Kaizo Mario Bros., and Japan gets the crappy game knock offs. How interesting.(Not that Japan has gotten a crappy game knock off to my knowledge. I was just making a point)
We also didn’t get some Final Fantasy games because they were to hard :P
This is not true. Actually western gamers dont enjoy difficulty, thats why they play usually games with linear gameplay and everything obvious, like shoot, kill and done, go play multiplayer. I myself enjoy playing easy games. It’s okay to be stuck somewhere, but don’t wanna be stuck in some place constantly…
People have difficulty in their lifes already in real world. thats why games like animal crossing become so popular.. where you can just relax.. and games should be about that. still easiest game is not easier than most difficult psychologic movies
….no i think people like easy games, or games to be easy so they can feel satisfied with themselves, because they’re bad at video games.
But i’ll tell you now, the feeling of getting to a bonfire or beating a boss in Dark Souls? Unparalleled.
Most american gamers are that bright either. They bash each other, rage quite, flip out, and over all spoiled brats. Japanese gamers aren’t too bad they don’t bash each other. They get a little cocky in arcades but over all they aren’t like american gamers. they like jrpg, fighters, puzzles, platformers, adventure, and racing
That’s because their culture is different.
A key aspect of Japanese culture is that most people are very enclosed, they don’t boast, or get loud, or aggressive.
…I wonder if its fanboy free
While I agree with you, some Americans aren’t that way. The calm ones are the minority.. Some games make me really pissed, though.
when i was little i had the worst temper problems, like if i died on dk 64 i would….. harm it hahahahah. like once i threw it at the wall then started hitting it, threw it at more walls some more and then to top it off i threw dk64 on top of my roof hahahahahah!!!!!! it started to rain like a few hours later, and im like oooohhh shit dk64 is on the roof!!!!!! so i climbed out my window and grabbed it…… after all that it still worked and recently died from a battery crash. thats because i used to ask the games question and randomly save it like crazy. this for example( dk your stupid press save. ok.) did that like 100 times some days and because of that my fucking game died!!!!!! its funny isnt it the least harmful thing i did to it is the one that killed it, i guess it just committed suicide and didnt want to remember the pain it went through. that is children actually playing games with some difficulty when they were little, not all this shitty cod crap which young kids shouldnt be playing anyway. its funny because none of my other 64 games i threw against the wall or anything, even some of the harder ones……. its probably because of some of those fucking mini games, like the stupid beaver ones!!!!!
OMG!! YOU CRAZY MAN!!!! lol
LOL, I know what you mean. The first time you try to get the crown, where you gotta beat the damn beavers on the pillar REALLY pissed me off. Yeah and agreed. We 90’s gamers gotta unite!
Ouch! I’d hate to see what you’d do to your wife & kids if they pissed you off. O.e
Yeah agreed, take for instance Pikmin 3. It should have some good strategy elements in it. Planning ahead is rather fun in my opinion. I don’t think difficulty matters in a game as long as it’s fun. I don’t want some game holding my hand, though.
like all of nintendo games made by them now days????
Yeah, and I guess this is why. We need to protest!
it is a pain what nintendo is becoming. what i hope happens is that the wii u lasts tell 2015 or 2016 with a lot of great games like dreamcast then nintendo can hopefully learn from their mistakes. sometimes it takes a failure to learn your lesson.
bu-bu- but mario 2 u said it was to hard for us americans!
……what?
This is the same country that makes Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, TouHou and bullet hell games, fighting games, and JRPG’s….
I swear the issue here is that core gamers in Japan and the West are practically the same, but the issue is that casuals in the west are split between iphone users and COD/FIFA players, but in Japan it’s Mario and Animal Crossing players.
Maybe this is why Nintendo’s game design and target for their games has been a little off over the years (looking at you Skyward Sword)
This doesn’t explain why Mario Party 2’s Roller Coaster Mode in the Hard level is so goddamn difficult.
…..mario party? Seriously?
Yup. That’s the reason why Mario Party 1 won’t come to Wii Virtual Console. When the game first came out, there was a minigame that caused kids hands to get blisters. Nintendo got sued and they never put it on Virtual Console.
Their hands got blisters because N64 controller had a shitty analog stick, not because it was hard.
I’m on level/world 6 on the hard level. Or maybe level 7. It’s not that hard, I ended up getting replacement thumb sticks though. They make it feel more comfortable, but still cause blisters when doing it for along time…
I’d really have thought it was the opposite.
As many western games practically play themselves these days.
How so?
COD that should be all I have to say, but there’s more. Most games tell you what to do, and all you do is shoot reload and walk around. No thought goes into playing most FPS.
In the picture Mario represents Miyamoto. Meanwhile, the Fuzzies possibly represent the rage of the Japanese gamers towards this statement.
Sick burn Miyamoto….
Could’ve fooled me with how many hard games come out of Japan.
well i think his point is that japnese gamers have soften over the years whereas the western crowd remains more hardcore playing more intense games. And hard to meet the needs of both crowds at the same time..
It’s not hard at all.
You just dont do it.
Casual gamers play very specific games, easy to play, and easy to learn.
Core gamers will play anything, but most rules follow that it has a more in depth game mechanics, takes more of your time, and has a difficulty progression or is difficult from the get go.
Both cannot exist in the same space. Some games can compromise and find an inbetween, but it’s normally at the expense of the core gamer, one reason why i think The Last of Us is overrated is it becomes too simple and basic in order to welcome casual players, making a game too casual and simple wont turn off a core player completely, but making a casual game more core will turn off a casual player immediately because “i dont get it! It’s too hard! Im bored!”.
Unfortunately, in particular with Mario and Zelda, they chose to side with the casual gamer….
That’s why every post Mario Galaxy game has been “fine” but never amazing, and every post Twilight Princess Zelda game has held your hand like a mother fucker and been so stripped down its a joke.
Agreed with you until the last of us part, play it on survivor mode, that is when the game is most fun, if you like a challenge, seriously its so much better played that way!! i hate when people complain a game is too easy, and yet they were playing the game in most cases on easy or normal, play your games on hard or the highest difficulty if your not satisfied with the level of challenge, i know last of us, and bioshock infinite, are perfect examples of this, played on normal they are easy, but i see why they did this, its the base line experience, and so is designed to not be too demanding for most gamers, but when you play said games on hard, survival mode in the case of the last of us, and 1999 mode in bioshock the game considerably ramps up in the challenge department, and is a better experience for experienced core gamers!!
But Nintendo games typically don’t have difficulty settings, this has always been one of my frustrations with their games, having the master quest for zelda helped, but they stopped doing this, or made it pointless, skyward sword for me was way to easy, and felt so dumb down, twilight princess for me, was light years better then skyward sword, if they could have patched the motion plus controls from skyward sword into twilight princess, i think twilight princess would have been even more better then it already was compared to skyward sword!
Fi was the most annoying nintendo character they have ever created, seriously she loved stating the obvious, and practically ruined all the puzzles, by not even giving you a chance to solve them, and instead just out right telling you what to do straight away in most cases, and her god awful script, or dialogue, i know she was a a.i of sorts, but come off it, navi or midna had so much more character, and held your hand less then fi did, skyward sword for me, was a massive disappointment!
Its the same with the metroid prime trilogy, for me, the prime trilogy is in my top ten of greatest games of all time, and prime 1 was perfect, it had the best game play, immersion, music, and difficulty balance, prime 2 was also great, and in some cases felt more harder then prime 1, and i loved both!! prime 3 on the other hand, although a great game, it just felt like it was dumb down, and made more accessible, which like i said is fine, but at least give us the core gamers the option play the games in a hard mode!!!! which is substantially more challenging!
For me, ocarina of time was the pinnacle of zelda, but since then the franchise has been more and more made easier, twilight princess was fine, even though a tad easy for me, but that game would have been perfect if it had a master quest mode, which substantially made it more harder! skyward sword was a joke,too easy, the puzzles were laughable, maybe its also because over the years i have become more experienced, and even more better at games, but lately nintendo games just feel too easy!
Atlest skyward sword did have a hero mode which essentially was master quest mode, and which redeemed it in my eyes a bit, but still the core game was too easy, the puzzles and dungeons were too simple for me!
the new 2d marios are way too easy! ninja gaiden black and ninja gaiden sigma 1 on max difficulty were some of the best experiences i have ever had with regards to challenging and rewarding game play!
After i mastered the gaiden games, the buzz you get from totally owning the enemies on max difficulty is like nothing i have i ever experienced, only maybe in dark souls and demon souls, but again , the gaiden games were also dumb down to attract casual gamers, ninja gaiden 3 and razors edge, were terrible for fans of the series, when compared to ninja gaiden black, or ninja gaiden sigma 1, (a remake of black) and ninja gaiden sigma 2, which both sigma games were easier then the original games,but both had difficulty settings to ramp up, and so were fine!
Nintendo needs difficulty settings or modes for their games!!!
And please bring back master quest for zelda, and make sure it is a much bigger challenge then the vanilla version!
This is propaganda at it’s finest.
I hope Super Mario 3D World is hard. I don’t wanna breeze through it like 3D Land.
It won’t.
If it’s just as easy I won’t buy.
I’ll actually just see what happens.
Although playing with friends in these mario games is fun, the level of difficulty is not…
The NSBM series are so easy I just get bored after 2 times or so…
And that’s basically because of the bosses, make them harder High Command…
Make them Metroid Hard, same goes to Zelda…
I don’t like completing a temple in around 1 hour only to face a boss that doesn’t give you a challenge…
Beating all 3 Prime games on hypermode was some of the best challenge i’ve ever had.
Agreed, too bad they lowered it on the Trilogy version…
Echoes is my favourite game of all times partially because of the difficulty…
I was talking about the Trilogy version. Even if the difficulty WAS lowered a bit for Prime 2, Emperor Ing was still insanely hard on Hypermode. Same goes for Mogenar and Dark Samus in Prime 3 on Hypermode.
Hmmm well still it’s a shame…
I hope Retro Studios returns to Metroid some day and that the music has the same style as the Prime games…
I don’t like orchestral music in Metroid…
Pfft. Yeah right.
nvm.
mario games always tend to be a bit easy, but after that you have all those special levels that are made specifically for more hardcore gamers:)
Americans never give up…….unless its on online multiplayer on COD.
Then they cry because they get owned…
I used to knife only and these retards couldn’t even kill me 5 to 1…
Then they either banned me or threatened to ban me…
Americans are crybabies…
LOL! Commander isn’t pitiful how they bitch about such trivial things? I’m the minority of calm American gamers it seems. I destroyed people in BFBC and would get cursed out or bitched at.
Good, american gamers should be more like you…
I don’t see what the big deal is about getting destroyed by someone. I love a good challenge. Going up against highly skilled players encourages you to step up your game, and it’s incredibly satisfying when you win your first match. Same goes for single-player modes.
the whole cod community is like that….. everywhere. dont blame this on the americans themselves!!!!!
It’s not just CoD, it’s every game I play online on the PC…
Supposedly Super Mario Bros. Lost Levels was only a Japanese release for a long time because it was seen as too hard for Americans. Mega Man 2 only had one difficulty setting in Japan and an easier mode was added for the U.S. version because Americans allegedly couldn’t handle the difficulty. So… does this mean things have gone backwards since the NES?
So in other words, all territories are bad at gaming…
No wonder I never encounter good players anywhere…
Well almost…
Well let’s face it Commander, I don’t think the country we are from determines how good the gamers are. Each country has their own good gamers and their horrible ones. Either way, I’m READY for Pikmin 3, how about yourself?
They are all horrible…
Like in Starcraft 2 I play like a crazy person and then they say things like:
“You won, even with your fail tactitc you won because nobody in the entire world has had any practice against your gameplay”
Isn’t that the purpose of strategy? to OUTSMART your opponent?…
Retarded fools…
Yes ofcourse, Pikmin 3 all the way!
All I can say is, Retro Studios, DON’T FAIL ME NOW!!!!!!!!! DKCTF better be challenging. I hope the rumor is true that it’s even harder than DKCR was.
Yess I hope so too…
from what i’ve played its a bit more harder
As long as it’s not easier than DKCR, then I’m ok.
DKCR wasnt even hard though i hope DKCTF becomes a hard game aswell
Play it in mirror mode.
You played and finished Mirror Mode?!! I unlocked it but I never played it after seeing how hard it’s gonna be. Also I was already pissed after failing so many times trying to finish 9-1!
I haven’t finished every level yet, only at 186% so far. Plus i’m playing the 3DS version so I had to beat the extra levels too. All I have left to do are the temple levels and bosses for worlds 4 – 8 and the and the final Golden Temple level.
Oh I played the Wii version. Good luck! That game is crazy hard especially if your trying to get all the puzzle pieces!
I already got them all ;)
WHAT?!! IT’S POSSIBLE?!!!
i used to go back and foward in Super Mario World (well in this game as well) all the time so it kind of felt like going backwards didnt make it harder just a little more funnier
You also had only one hit till you died and no Diddy to assist you.
yes the same game
Isn’t it the other way around? Also sickr the title is a little bit off. He didn’t say that they’re quitters.
They just make outrageous titles like this to get more views.
Well, I’m American and quit at some RPGs and JRPGs so… I guess it goes both ways.
FUZZZZZZY~
lol the country that gives us games like Touhou, is filled with gamers who suck at games? BS. There’s a reason that in the past when games were brought over from Japan they had to tone down the difficulty.
a few reactions from actual japanese gamers:
“Yes, yes. It’s all the fault of the Japanese.”
“The reason they declined was because of idiots like this blaming everything on their customers.”
“It’s because they only know how to make games for children now.”
“Nintendo, the reason you’ve declined is because of your endless remakes, that’s all.”
“Certainly, you need perseverance to play on the Wii U. Holding that horribly heavy pad was just too much for me.”
“Japanese just get bored of them more easily.
“I seem to recall a lot of western games used to be very difficult. Then they got dumbed down and sold more as a result. Really I think the Japanese games aren’t selling because of a lack of ideas though.”
“Wait, if what he is saying about Japanese being quitters is true how come Monster Hunter is so popular still? Don’t overseas players moan about it being too difficult?”
“I don’t get him at all. He’s blaming the fact their action games sell like hot cakes in America but not in Japan on the Japanese? Blaming your customers is hardly a good business strategy…”
Who cares, I want hard core games
SMT. If they say that Japanese gamers are quitters, All the SMT games would have been easy.
How does this work when 99% of American games can be completed without much challenge at all.
Monster Hunter ???
I want harder games….NSMBU the last few worlds were pretty much perfect. Skyward sword for example was way, way too easy. The bosses were creative, yes, but very easy too. Opponents need to be creative and challenging! ZombiU (I want a sequel btw, is there a petition somewhere out there?) for example got it right in terms of difficulty: A normal mode which can be pretty damn hard, a mode for beginners and a very hard mode. Thats pretty much perfect.
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This statement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on Miyamoto’s part. They gave the western world a completely different Super Mario Bros 2 because they thought that the real version would be too hard for us (we later got the real version though in Super Mario Bros All-stars as The Lost Levels) but now it seems that he is flip-floping on his thinking….. I wish Miyamoto would make up his mind. He’s been saying some off the wall stuff here lately like “new characters aren’t what makes a new franchise”….
Shigeru…please go home…you’re drunk.
I didn’t see that Miyamoto used the word “quitters.” He just said that Japanese gamers are more put off by Western games, he believes it is because they are too challenging and Japanese gamers like simpler experiences. I don’t see the problem here. This is being blown WAYYY out of proportion. 💋
Even though Nintendo flip flops alot on said statements.I agree with you that a mountain is being made out of a mole hill. Nintendo walks a fine line to cater to the many spectrum of gamers.We should just be happy they care
No. People like hard games. They don’t like punishing games. Go watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU
Ive finished Dark Souls without dying after my 8th restart with the same char. Miyamoto is right.
this is earlier the thing americans would do they rageqquit after everything JK only dudebros do thatwtf MIyamoto:O
These comments are in poor taste miyamoto! From what he says gamers shouldn’t be allowed to choose the games they desire to play, but instead should just trudge through anything that a developer throws at them?! No. I would rather choose how to spend my time gaming and if I choose easier games that’s my choice and you have no right to degrade my choices!
That’s hard to believe. As smart as Japanese people are at making games and stuff like that, you’d think that a little challenge in a video game would be something they’d love and easily be able to figure out. Maybe that stereotype of Asians being really smart with electronics is just a myth?
I think he means the opposite. cause western games have become too easy. hell xenoblade was one of the more hard rpgs I’ve ever played.
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This is hands-down the most misleading article title I’ve ever seen…
You’ve got it the other way around Miyamoto good sir.
this is insanely backwards
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Somehow I think this is the other way round. American gamers are notorious for being worse than the whinging poms.
Now that I’ve broken cover, G’day all.
Shame on you MyNintendoNews. You should know better than to title such a story with such a trollish title. Quitters? Really? SMH…..
That is quite Un-Miyamoto to say somthing like this… Oh wait…
you get the article from Sankaku Complex, which translates the original japanese one, right? I’ve heard some negativeness about that site, especially their sensationalist titles
Here’s the japanese article on 4chan:
http://www.4gamer.net/games/168/G016837/20130712087/
Anyone understand Japanese translate please
They said the opposite about releasing Japans Super Mario 2 (lost levels in the US). It seems that we Americans have overcome out inability to play a hard game. Thanks for pointing that out. Good Grief!