14 DAY TRIAL // Making a game is a very hard endeavor these days, especially because the recession has a very big impact on small game developers. We've already seen two game studios, Factor 5 and Free Radical, being shut down because of their bad financial situation and things might get worse for independent ones.
That's why studios are beginning to focus on niche markets, making titles for genres that target certain territories. It's quite hard to make a game that appeals in all territories, because different countries have different tastes, at least according to Capcom.
The major Japanese developer recently declared, through its head of the Research and Development department, Keiji Inafune, that there were a lot of variables that game creators had to take into consideration. Although the most important one was for the game to be fun, they shouldn't forget to take into account the market they would launch it on.
“Two points here. The first is making games interesting and a lot of fun. People who make games should have this as their first objective. The second point is that if you try to please all the people all the time, then often you'll lose sight of who your target is. It's best to have a clear focus of who your target is. In doing so we often find users in, say, Asia and Europe will have different tastes, so you have to take that into account as well.”
Inafune's statement does make sense, as a lot of researchers have shown that tastes can differ quite severely between the Asian market and the North American one, for example. RPGs (Role Playing Games) for example might appeal to the Japanese public but shooters, commonly aimed at the North American or European markets, aren't really to the Asian public’s liking.
A game that will appeal to every king of gamer is extremely hard to make but it seems that Capcom's upcoming Street Fighter IV will be very well received.