Matsubara sees growth opportunities for Japan's game industry

Kenji Matsubara, president and CEO of Tecmo Koei, is all over the news today. During an interview with Kikizo, he discussed the Japanese gaming market and what can b done to salvage it.

"The Japanese video game market is pretty much the same, or is even shrinking, compared to ten years ago. But we can see a lot of growth opportunity, even within the Japanese market," he told the site. "The problem is that the tastes of Japanese gamers have changed so much compared to ten years ago. Ten years ago, Japanese RPGs were dominant, but the platform for this has changed in terms of online oriented services and performance.

"From a developer and publisher perspective, we need to reassess and cater to that, because at this moment we have not caught up to the expectation of Japanese customers, but when we do catch up, I am sure we can see the growth of the Japanese market again.

"You can see that the popularity of PS3 and 360 in Japan is very small compared to the western market; it does not mean Japanese customers do not want to spend money on new game systems, it is because they don't see titles that are appealing to them; we're struggling with high performance consoles, but by contrast, the PSP has expanded very rapidly for example."

More through the link.