Nakazato on Lost Odyssey and why Western companies can’t penetrate Japan

The name Hironobu Sakaguchi is oftentimes mentioned around here especially whenever our talks and discussions veer towards Mistwalker and Lost Odyssey. But truth be told, we can’t do without mentioning Ray Nakazato. The guy is also doing work on Lost Odyssey and is an industry veteran in his own right.

Currently the president of company Feelplus, Nakasato used to work with Microsoft and Capcom. He also had a stint in Electronic Arts (EA) so the guy pretty much know what he’s talking about. Speaking of which, he recently shared some invaluable insights with gaming site Gamasutra as to why Western companies can’t penetrate Japan.

According to him, the word successful can not be used for EA in Japan as the company is barely surviving there. Despite that, EA is the only Western company that has received a generally warm welcome among Japanese gamers. Nakasato mentioned that all of these actually started back in the 90s when most Western games were not at par with their Japanese counterparts.

“Japanese games were pretty interesting back then, while many games from overseas were seen as being bad. Now, you’ll find a lot of interesting and fun games coming from North America and Europe, but because of that experience that we have from the early 1990s, people tend to stay away from Western games,” explained Ray Nakasato.

Nakasato admitted though that times are changing and discussed how Japan is turning more to Western middleware and engines. He also shared his team’s hardships with the Lost Odyssey demo they released last year when the Unreal Engine was not yet complete. He lamented,

Back then, the Unreal Engine was still incomplete, so we had to release something on incomplete middleware. That was hard. I think that demo was actually the first thing that was released using Unreal Engine 3; it was before Gears of War! We had to do a lot of workaround for that. Now that they’ve done Gears of War, the engine itself is much more stable.”

The discussion then focused on Lost Odyssey which is already more or less 70% complete. Nakasato discussed that the video game title’s core is actually strategic and turn-based. It’s just that Mistwalker added some real-time flavor to it. He shared,

It’s not seamless – it’s adventure, then battle, then adventure, then battle. As you progress, there will be a lot of things you have to concentrate on in the battle scenes, and also you’ll need to focus on timing. It’s turn-based, strategic combat with some real-time features.

The name Hironobu Sakaguchi is oftentimes mentioned around here especially whenever our talks and discussions veer towards Mistwalker and Lost Odyssey. But truth be told, we can’t do without mentioning Ray Nakazato. The guy is also doing work on Lost Odyssey and is an industry veteran in his own right.

Currently the president of company Feelplus, Nakasato used to work with Microsoft and Capcom. He also had a stint in Electronic Arts (EA) so the guy pretty much know what he’s talking about. Speaking of which, he recently shared some invaluable insights with gaming site Gamasutra as to why Western companies can’t penetrate Japan.

According to him, the word successful can not be used for EA in Japan as the company is barely surviving there. Despite that, EA is the only Western company that has received a generally warm welcome among Japanese gamers. Nakasato mentioned that all of these actually started back in the 90s when most Western games were not at par with their Japanese counterparts.

“Japanese games were pretty interesting back then, while many games from overseas were seen as being bad. Now, you’ll find a lot of interesting and fun games coming from North America and Europe, but because of that experience that we have from the early 1990s, people tend to stay away from Western games,” explained Ray Nakasato.

Nakasato admitted though that times are changing and discussed how Japan is turning more to Western middleware and engines. He also shared his team’s hardships with the Lost Odyssey demo they released last year when the Unreal Engine was not yet complete. He lamented,

Back then, the Unreal Engine was still incomplete, so we had to release something on incomplete middleware. That was hard. I think that demo was actually the first thing that was released using Unreal Engine 3; it was before Gears of War! We had to do a lot of workaround for that. Now that they’ve done Gears of War, the engine itself is much more stable.”

The discussion then focused on Lost Odyssey which is already more or less 70% complete. Nakasato discussed that the video game title’s core is actually strategic and turn-based. It’s just that Mistwalker added some real-time flavor to it. He shared,

It’s not seamless – it’s adventure, then battle, then adventure, then battle. As you progress, there will be a lot of things you have to concentrate on in the battle scenes, and also you’ll need to focus on timing. It’s turn-based, strategic combat with some real-time features.