CP2077 even won GOTY in IGN Japan. And yes, Pc and Xbox aren’t that common, but PS4 is extremely widespread. It was definitely a success in Japan as well.
And both Edgerunners and Vinland Saga launched with a Japanese Dub on Japanese platforms. They might’ve bet more on the oversea market to get the budget back, but they were still made as products to be watched in Japan, unlike Batman, My Last Day or other “borderline” cases.
Ps4 adoption in japan is lower than the vita(around the time where marketing was relevant) vita is at 6m sales, ps4 is at 9m now, but at the time of marketing, was about the same.
Let alone, the experience of 2077 on the base ps4/xbox to be abysmal. The practical size of the userbase that would be even able to play the game is extremely low.
Theres a HUGE reason why the head of playstation decisions is from the American branch and not the japanese one.
That’s because Japan is pretty much the only country where the Vita sold well. More than a third of its sales are in Japan.
And they even mention in that article that despite the launch issues on ps4, the game was well-received.
Plus it doesn’t even really matter since Edgerunners has been announced 5/6 months before the game was even released, so the actual reception in Japan was probably not a factor in distribution.
Its not a factor… because it wasnt the target audience. It has dubs because thats what they have access to on hand and that some people would enjoy it in japanese. But the target audience was definitely western.
But that other stuff didn’t get dubbed. Dubbing is a choice, and not a cheap one, especially in Japan. They even got KENN and Aoi Yuuki for the lead roles, it wasn’t some second-thought dub “just because”.
The MAL definition has been tested for years and has proven to be pretty effective (most other sites have a similar one afaik), the biggest detractors are the ones who think stuff like ATLA or RWBY (main series) should be considered anime just because of the style, but they’re generally ignored in database matters.
having a dub is just a choice, like having any american cartoon having a japanese dub is a choice (e.g if you’ve ever heard japanese dub of spongebob or king of the hill for example). It’s a choice that trigger made because they were targetting people who watch anime, but not necessarily for japanese people. as the end target regardless was westerners.
Studio Trigger has history of targeting the western audience for its random projects. Take for example Little witch academia main and side projects were all kickstarters(over japanese alternatives). One of the side projects was a VR game, something a lot of Japanese people do not have their hands on.
KENN is barely known outside Japan because his most famous anime work was on Yugioh GX (which everyone watched dubbed) and the rest of his fame was mostly live-action musical performances. He’s not a seiyuu you pick if you want to appeal to westerners.
And yes, they do stuff on Kickstarter because it’s more known in the rest of the world, but that doesn’t mean they’re only targeting the rest of the world. They just wanted as much budget as possible.
LWA having a VR game is also barely relevant since even Kaiji has a VR game and the amount of people who know Kaiji outside of Japan is probably less than the Japanese people with an Xbox.
The Kaiji VR game had a switch port, as well as has a mobile port, both which would have much larger japanese audiences, something the LWA vr game lacks.
But, as you said, those were ports. The game was made to be a PSVR exclusive, and was funded according to that. I don’t think they’d do that if they didn’t know it was worth even without the ports.
Anyway, I wanted some clear stats for Edgerunners so I dug up Netflix. This is its third week, and at the bottom you can see only 7 countries had it in the top 10 for 3 weeks, most of them being asian. It went pretty damn well there too.
CP2077 even won GOTY in IGN Japan. And yes, Pc and Xbox aren’t that common, but PS4 is extremely widespread. It was definitely a success in Japan as well.
And both Edgerunners and Vinland Saga launched with a Japanese Dub on Japanese platforms. They might’ve bet more on the oversea market to get the budget back, but they were still made as products to be watched in Japan, unlike Batman, My Last Day or other “borderline” cases.
Ps4 adoption in japan is lower than the vita(around the time where marketing was relevant) vita is at 6m sales, ps4 is at 9m now, but at the time of marketing, was about the same.
Let alone, the experience of 2077 on the base ps4/xbox to be abysmal. The practical size of the userbase that would be even able to play the game is extremely low.
Theres a HUGE reason why the head of playstation decisions is from the American branch and not the japanese one.
That’s because Japan is pretty much the only country where the Vita sold well. More than a third of its sales are in Japan.
And they even mention in that article that despite the launch issues on ps4, the game was well-received.
Plus it doesn’t even really matter since Edgerunners has been announced 5/6 months before the game was even released, so the actual reception in Japan was probably not a factor in distribution.
Its not a factor… because it wasnt the target audience. It has dubs because thats what they have access to on hand and that some people would enjoy it in japanese. But the target audience was definitely western.
But that other stuff didn’t get dubbed. Dubbing is a choice, and not a cheap one, especially in Japan. They even got KENN and Aoi Yuuki for the lead roles, it wasn’t some second-thought dub “just because”.
The MAL definition has been tested for years and has proven to be pretty effective (most other sites have a similar one afaik), the biggest detractors are the ones who think stuff like ATLA or RWBY (main series) should be considered anime just because of the style, but they’re generally ignored in database matters.
having a dub is just a choice, like having any american cartoon having a japanese dub is a choice (e.g if you’ve ever heard japanese dub of spongebob or king of the hill for example). It’s a choice that trigger made because they were targetting people who watch anime, but not necessarily for japanese people. as the end target regardless was westerners.
Studio Trigger has history of targeting the western audience for its random projects. Take for example Little witch academia main and side projects were all kickstarters(over japanese alternatives). One of the side projects was a VR game, something a lot of Japanese people do not have their hands on.
KENN is barely known outside Japan because his most famous anime work was on Yugioh GX (which everyone watched dubbed) and the rest of his fame was mostly live-action musical performances. He’s not a seiyuu you pick if you want to appeal to westerners.
And yes, they do stuff on Kickstarter because it’s more known in the rest of the world, but that doesn’t mean they’re only targeting the rest of the world. They just wanted as much budget as possible.
LWA having a VR game is also barely relevant since even Kaiji has a VR game and the amount of people who know Kaiji outside of Japan is probably less than the Japanese people with an Xbox.
The Kaiji VR game had a switch port, as well as has a mobile port, both which would have much larger japanese audiences, something the LWA vr game lacks.
But, as you said, those were ports. The game was made to be a PSVR exclusive, and was funded according to that. I don’t think they’d do that if they didn’t know it was worth even without the ports.
Anyway, I wanted some clear stats for Edgerunners so I dug up Netflix. This is its third week, and at the bottom you can see only 7 countries had it in the top 10 for 3 weeks, most of them being asian. It went pretty damn well there too.