Although video games do not come directly from Japan, they differ from other forms of Japanese media in that they have been able to penetrate the US market better than any other popular media from Japan. For example, while manga and anime have become part of some stores, they have their own section, while video games hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun can sit alongside all video games made in the United States or elsewhere. . worldwide. Unlike anime and manga, Japanese video games are not labeled “Japanese”. In fact, most consumers don’t even know where their games come from. While Japanese movies and music rarely make it to US shores, Japanese video games are a crucial part of that huge industry.
However it was not always so. The first video game consoles were all American, with companies like Atari and Coleco. There were Japanese video games, but they were mostly in arcades and never made it to the U.S. unless an American company brought them to the US. The gaming market crashed in 1983 and it looked like home consoles were going to be a thing of the past.
In Japan, however, the Japanese company Nintendo released its system, the Famicom (also known as the NES in the United States). Both the system and its games sold quite well and quickly found their way to the United States. The system revived the home console market in the United States basically on its own.
All the games that came out then were made by Japanese companies, as they had already been in Japan for a year. American developers also used the system for their games, as it was the only one available at the time. Everyone was making money, since the developers’ games were being sold and Nintendo was licensing them all. Other companies around the world found it difficult to join the US market, as Nintendo was dominant.
Many American consumers didn’t even question the fact that they were buying games from a company called “Nintendo.” Americans bought other electronic devices, such as cameras and televisions, that came from Japan, so it didn’t seem like much of a transition to buy electronic video games from the same country. They were simply buying Japanese video games to play on their Japanese system. In fact, no non-Japanese system has been successful in the United States, except X-Box.
However, since the early days of gaming, American games have started to gain more and more shelf space. Now the percentage is around 50-50, though that’s possibly because the Japanese game market has been in its own little decline while the US game market has been on the rise. Still, many of the great game series that people have come to love are from the days of Japan’s dominance of the American video game market. It will always hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers, even if its market share continues to decline.