Tencent & Netease say Japan doesn't produce enough hit games and are thinking of pulling their investments

Remember_Spinal

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23 Jun 2022
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Ringo Starr Advertising GIF
 

Zzero

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9 Jan 2023
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They only really started buying Japanese studios in 2021 and 2, what did they expect in two years?
 

Neversummer

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27 Jun 2023
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Good thing I clicked on the tweet because I was about to ask, WTF are "hut" games? lol
Maybe live service platform type games which is kinda true. Outside street fighter & monster hunter there’s not any major japanese live service. Sega failed, Square Enix failed, Bandai failed most live service are western, european or korea/china
 
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Evilnemesis8

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19 Dec 2023
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Wonder how that game performs. Is 1 million good for vision of mana

Trials of Mana Remake reached 1 million copies sold on Feb 2021 in 10 months(release date of April 2020).
Visions also looking to open at a lower number than Trials of Mana in Japan based on pre-orders, although we'll know the actual numbers next Thursday.
At the same time, social metrics before the launch is looking to be weaker on Steam as well.
Will keep an eye on CCU during the weekend as it progresses but it looks to be less than Trials here too.

Basically all early signs point to Visions of Mana opening decently worse than Trials of Mana even though it is almost certainly a more expensive project(a remake vs the best a Mana game has ever looked in terms of presentation with seemingly more open environments).

No matter how you slice it, a regression like this is not good at all.


But really, I'm fairly sure that it's not really about the studio itself.
With giants like NetEase and Tencent, concentrating on their strength(GaaS, etc...) might feel like the best move for them and studios like this might just be a casually to shed some cost.


Edit:

Seeing reactions to the story in English, I can add one thing that is in the Japanese version of the same story: NetEase has been cutting staff at Ouka for a while, since this spring at least.
 
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Gods&Monsters

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21 Jun 2022
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Visions of Mana had a big spot on the Xbox Developer Direct (the only 3rd party there) so I didn't buy it and deleted it from my mind.

The game looked good but it was tainted with Game Pass fodder. Blame Xbox for killing Ouka 🤷‍♂️
 

anonpuffs

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29 Nov 2022
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Visions of Mana had a big spot on the Xbox Developer Direct (the only 3rd party there) so I didn't buy it and deleted it from my mind.

The game looked good but it was tainted with Game Pass fodder. Blame Xbox for killing Ouka 🤷‍♂️
it wasn't on game pass though, and it looked decent. that's why i was looking at buying it
 

quest4441

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27 Feb 2024
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Yeah gonna sit this one out, Let the xbox brethren carry this one. Will buy this after it is patched, it has stutter on PC.