I finally got a chance to watch this and now I can say for sure that I think this conclusion is somewhat contrived. At the very least, I think that the perspective is just a tad limited. First...
I finally got a chance to watch this and now I can say for sure that I think this conclusion is somewhat contrived. At the very least, I think that the perspective is just a tad limited.
First off, it's inaccurate to call Recettear an RPG. Sure, there is a story and dungeons and RPG-like elements, but it's better described as a fantasy commerce simulation.
I will agree that the success of Recettear was a turning point in the west, both for the release of Japanese doujin games and, to a lesser extent, games with a Japanese aesthetic in general. But to call it the breakthrough hit that suddenly brought JRPGs into the PC limelight really does not describe how the market is today.
One thing that the presenter failed to note is that JRPGs in general were not popular at all in the west for a very long time, so publishing them was a huge risk. To this day, 'anime art' is going to turn away a large portion of the western audience. The very reason why publishers would spend that risk on console versions is simply because consoles tend to have higher concentrations of younger audiences, who are less set on their tastes. And for the games that are getting western PC releases, most of them are the high budget ones that look less like anime - so many of the games he showcased were things like Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls, or Final Fantasy.
I would argue that most of the PC ports that come to the west are games with niche audiences who buy based on the names of the creators or the series. If you look at the Steam store pages for JRPGs with an anime aesthetic, you will find them dominated by titles from Falcom, Gust, NIS, and Idea Factory. These are all publishers and developers who have very specific niche audiences, and you might be surprised to see how many of these titles only have PC releases. Falcom in particular might actually have a bigger audience on the PC in the west in spite of how they themselves began focusing on the consoles as their primary market in Japan (though this might be changing, given that NIS is delaying the PC release of Ys IX until next year).
I finally got a chance to watch this and now I can say for sure that I think this conclusion is somewhat contrived. At the very least, I think that the perspective is just a tad limited.
First off, it's inaccurate to call Recettear an RPG. Sure, there is a story and dungeons and RPG-like elements, but it's better described as a fantasy commerce simulation.
I will agree that the success of Recettear was a turning point in the west, both for the release of Japanese doujin games and, to a lesser extent, games with a Japanese aesthetic in general. But to call it the breakthrough hit that suddenly brought JRPGs into the PC limelight really does not describe how the market is today.
One thing that the presenter failed to note is that JRPGs in general were not popular at all in the west for a very long time, so publishing them was a huge risk. To this day, 'anime art' is going to turn away a large portion of the western audience. The very reason why publishers would spend that risk on console versions is simply because consoles tend to have higher concentrations of younger audiences, who are less set on their tastes. And for the games that are getting western PC releases, most of them are the high budget ones that look less like anime - so many of the games he showcased were things like Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls, or Final Fantasy.
I would argue that most of the PC ports that come to the west are games with niche audiences who buy based on the names of the creators or the series. If you look at the Steam store pages for JRPGs with an anime aesthetic, you will find them dominated by titles from Falcom, Gust, NIS, and Idea Factory. These are all publishers and developers who have very specific niche audiences, and you might be surprised to see how many of these titles only have PC releases. Falcom in particular might actually have a bigger audience on the PC in the west in spite of how they themselves began focusing on the consoles as their primary market in Japan (though this might be changing, given that NIS is delaying the PC release of Ys IX until next year).