OK, 20 years ago or more when NES was one of the major home arcade systems, I would hear that some or most games we got in the US had been available in Japan for a few months or even a year or so before that.
So, 20 years later I’m curious why. The answer is probably obvious and might make me go :smack:, but I’ll ask anyway. Thanks.
Well, the Japanese developed most of them, and it takes time to localize a game to the American market (translation and so on), for one thing.
Though I’m not sure if this explains everything.
I think it does. Nintendo is a Japanese company and they started there and came over here later on. It only makes sense that they would cater to that market first before coming over here. This was before video games were a multi-billion dollar industry and the Japanese are just as fanatic, maybe even more so, about their games than we are here
Before the advent of the internet, the video game market functioned quite differently than it does today. Worldwide releases were not the norm, as most countries simply weren’t aware of the what they were missing elsewhere, and as such, no strict timetable needed to be adhered to.
Of course, that doesn’t answer the basic question: why? The NES, known as the Famicom in Japan, came out two years earlier in its native country. Keep in mind Nintendo was not the (relatively) massive company it is today–it had limited resources and launching its first real game system likely stretched them to their limits. And beyond that, the Famicom (NES) was a financial risk. Only when it became a massive success did they consider bringing it to the US, but they had an entirely unique problem there:
The United States was still suffering from the video game crash of the early 80s–the market was practically dead. No retailer wanted a part of it as there was simply no money in it; consumers, having been burned by the glut of hardware and subpar games, did not want to purchase video games. So Nintendo has to figure out how to even market the system in the US.
Initially, the plan was to have Atari (since they had experience with the US market) market the system locally, but the talks fell through. Eventually, Nintendo was able to convince some east-coast retailers to market the system, under the assumption that it was a toy and not a video game system. Nintendo managed this by completely changing the system’s case from the original Japanese case to look less like a computer, and bundled in a little robot called ROB–essentially a trojan horse to get a video game system into American’s homes. The ploy worked and the NES sold like hotcakes, allowing Nintendo to eventually release the system in other US markets over the next year. The constant supply of great games ensured the system would not suffer the same fate as the others had in the years before, and the rest became history.
So in short, the main reasons for the delay were to first see whether the system was marketable in Japan, the failed distribution deal with Atari, then eventually convincing a small amount of US retailers the system was a toy and not a game console before they could expand elsewhere.
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Oh, and I forgot to mention the games, specifically. There are a few reasons why they came out later here than in Japan.
For one, by the time the NES had launched in America, there was already a back-catalog containing two years of games. Now obviously, not every game released in japan came out here, but it was in the publisher’s best interest to exhaust the previous games first, before releasing the ones they had made in the years since (particularly if they were sequels, as no one would know what they were sequels to).
Secondly, games would be held back for marketing reasons, such as shelving a game for the Christmas season or to avoid competition with other games of the same genre. And finally, as others have mentioned, translating the game could often be a process that took weeks, if not months, and the actual production of the cartridges would also take at least a month, and usually much more.
All these explanations make a lot of sense, thanks.
This still happens with Wii games. Some of them are released in Japan first, with the US and Europe getting staggered releases, sometimes a month later, sometimes even longer. They’re also region-specific, as with DVDs, to prevent the Japanese games being sold outside Japan before the official release date (although you can get round this).
Some games never see the light of day outside Japan, being considered too ‘Japanese’ for export.
Wahay! I was going to bitch about Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (sequel to runaway best-selling hit Professor Layton and the Curious Village and available in Japan since Nov of 2007), but I see that it’s now available! (in 2 days, with playable demo) 
I know, I’m excited for that. And did you know that in Japan, 4 of 'emhave actually been released already? I wish my Japanese was up to snuff.
This still happens with Japanese games, and often happens to Europe with American games.
For example Final Fantasy XII was released in March, 2006 in Japan. It finally got to Europe in February 2007.
Sometimes we get it first though in modern times, in fact, we got the SYSTEM about a month beforehand (so take THAT), and by extension we got all the release games first. If that’s cheating, I believe we actually got Super Paper Mario first. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few western games that never see the light of day over there (probably primarily in the 360/PS3 sector, though I see The Conduit has no scheduled JP release).
Interestingly enough, the Japanese video game industry has been shrinking for years. The DS and the Wii still sell well, but only “casual” games seem to sell in Japan nowadays (and even then, games like Katamari Damacy actually sell better in America than they do in Japan).
It’s gotten so bad that many Japanese game companies (Capcom in particular) have shifted their focus away from Japan and are working on games that appeal to American/European audiences.
Just a little nitpick: video games were a multi-billion dollar industry by 1980 (about) but then it crashed down to some ridiculously small number that I can’t remember.
American console games crashed in the 1983-1984 season due to a number of things, mostly the fact there were an absolute crap-ton of games for the Atari 2600 (the dominant console in this country) and most of them were irredeemable junk. E.T. (the licensed game) is commonly cited as the final nail, but the problems ran a lot deeper than just that turd.
Computer games, OTOH, did not crash to my knowledge. Neither did arcade games. But the console market was utterly gigantic prior to the Crash, after which it was pretty much gone for a while until the NES came along and revitalized things.
Nintendo learned from the crash. Mainly, they learned that they had to keep some control over what games would work on their console, and on what the content of those games were. Thus was born the 10NES lockout chip, a special chip that had to be present in any cartridge for the NES or else the console would refuse to play it. Nintendo refused to give up any information about the chip; it wouldn’t even subcontract its production. This gave Nintendo a level of control over the NES game market Atari tried and failed to maintain over the Atari 2600 market. (Atari lost out when Activision won a lawsuit that allowed it to make Atari 2600-compatible cartridges.) Nintendo lost control when Tengen, a company spun off of Atari, finagled a 10NES chip from the US Copyright Office. Nintendo was furious but, ultimately, impotent.
Secondly, Nintendo implemented a censorship regime similar to the Hays code for movies or the Comics code: A harsh self-censorship imposed to forestall government censorship. Nintendo called it the “Nintendo Seal of Quality”, and it had the effect all self-censorship has: It kept the medium from appealing to anyone older than about twelve.
The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion is a story about the censorship Nintendo imposed on game designers.
Do you have any links that explain the crash in detail?