Well, at least they didn't forget the PC with Nobunaga's Ambition:
http://operationrainfall.com/2013/05/15/nobunaga%27s-ambition-30th-anniv-game-set/

Does it make me weird if I´m unable to find that weird? :P

I believe VPN is your friend when living a country with weird region restrictions.

DD does not simply mean "Here, we have this, just take it, it doesn't cost us anything to distribute it." As some people have stated above, DD companies do not want to negotiate with Japan branches of western publishers. Why don't they? Well, maybe they do have a good reason not too. And it's a lot more complicated than this. In this business analysts have to reach a certain standard on their research in order for a company to bother selling a game to a market that is not even interested in it. If analysts don't predict the game will sell the minimum x amount of copies, publishers won't bother. The same reason why many sequels of video games are cancelled.

Maybe I got confused and it was some other game, but I had a hole the daily deals that day and when I checked it was from an Indie IIRC. Anyway, I was reminded of a lot of similar posts by you about this same topic, but reading about it and seeing it in person has a different impact of course. Seeing the PC games shelf set up separate from the other games, surrounded by TV series DVDs, and in the one place of the whole shop that was not visible from the entrance rubbed me the wrong way. I was similarly annoyed with steam because while I did expect it from Japanese devs, seeing western AAA games missing as well was unexpected. Having 4 out of 5 games of my wishlist locked in Japan during the steam sale is not helping, either.

Anyway, I do agree in that sentence I quoted from you, everything points to that. What I don't get is why. Why is EA japan not on steam, besides the "We like to be assholes" company policy? Do they make so much more money from console versions, despite the licensing fee on them? Is it piracy? Or just a self fulfilled profecy?

While I generally agree with that feeling, I can't help but think I'd rather have the games released on GOG but restricted in Japan than not at all. Selfish, as it would not be fun for the folks here, but hey, at least a GOG version is cool to get a pirate installer of. Normally I wouldn't pirate a GOG game, but if they're refusing to sell it to me, I wouldn't think twice about it. But I digress.
Whoa, another Basque in GOG forums? Am I not the lone representative anymore?

Yay! We gotta celebrate. Want a Deus Ex copy?

And no need to convince me about prices there. I may not be living there ATM, but I'm quite used to it. Those Dragon Ball episodes were still extraordinarely expensive, though. Not that I regret buying them, mind you. Totally worth it.
Maybe they have a good reason, but I'd like to hear it. And until I do, I still think that allowing someone to buy a game digitally somewhere is plain better than not. Even if you only sell 1 copy, after taxes, currency conversion fees, and branch % or whatever, you still have some money. Which is always better than no money. I don't see the similarity to game sequels, which cost actual money to make and can have very reasonable arguments to not get made.

I'm not sure how taxes work in Japan, but I'm fairly certain big publishers have to pay Steam royalties to sell their game, so not sure how much money you can make if you sell a game, if at all. As long as we don't have the actual numbers, there's no point in questioning this. They won't give you and answer anyway. And as far as I'm concerned, if I was in Japan/lived in Japan and knew Japanese, consoles RPGs all the way!

I could see steam asking for money to be in the front page or stuff like that. However, they are already doing that everywhere else in the world, and that leaves a hole on the page when you see it from Japan. I do not see valve going "yeah, if you want to see the game in Japan, gimme X$$". Then again, we don't really know, but not blocking the sale is stupid by my book. If there are procedural reasons that cause it to be blocked, then the procedures are also stupid.

Yep, the Japanese economy depends on supporting their locals and the mentality there is quite nationalistic anyway, if we people here in Germany would act like this, we's be called out Nazis instantaniously, but our economy and culture is long lost anyway so who cares.

The comment about Japan being a very different market is kinda correct for PC games. But not for the reasons stated. It has long been an established pattern to sell PC games without Japanese localisation, and with just the manual translated into Japanese. Many PC gamers here are quite happy to play in English and, as with all things PC, some will just mod the language files and provide their own translation if demand is high enough.

As for the question as to why there is little to no negotiation with Japanese companies, it's simple. Language barrier. This is why some Japanese indie games are only available on Steam in Japan, or not available in Japan via the big DD sites at all. The sites won't communicate with developers in Japanese -- even those known to have Japanese speaking staff. And companies capable of doing it (such as the localiser of the product), often won't bother either unless pressured into doing so.

Why don't Japanese devs who can speak English attempt to get on Steam more often? Several reasons. The main being (based on comments of those who were there) that when Valve attended bit Summit they did little to ease concerns. Valve showed little interest in actually selling their products in Japan. Came off as inflexible on their cut, which many devs would have to share with a localisation company. Regional restrictions were a huge turn off. In addition to that, the way they are usually treated by the Steam community on Greenlight. Racist remarks, death threats, and so on.

Then even when prepared to go through all that and they get to the contract stage, Valve only send out contracts in English. Valve, a company worth billions, with Japanese speaking staff on the pay roll, can't even spend time and money drawing up contract in Japanese (or any other language I bet). This is unheard of in any other market. A contract in the local language is always drawn up (and these will always contain a clause stating that the original language document is the one to be used in the case of legal dispute). Both are then provided to the other party. Treasure got no Japanese contract. This is why their release on Steam was delayed. They had to pay for a credited translation themselves or attempt to understand the English one without aid. Valve did not help.

This also answers why EA Japan have no deal on Steam. Valve never approached them and they never felt capable of approaching Valve. Now Origin has taken off, it seems they have little need to bother with Steam. It also doesn't help that Valve can pretty much kill a release on Steam in Japan by demanding a CERO rating. Why is this a problem? CERO ratings are very expensive. Prohibitively so. If you're an indie dev, or have a small budget game and Valve say we need a CERO rating; that's it. Game is restricted as the cost would never be recuperated. Now here's the kicker -- which I already mentioned earlier -- CERO ratings are not mandatory for PC games. There is zero need to have a PC game submitted. And Valve know this. So why do they keep demanding CERO ratings from those incapable of paying for them!?

As for the comment about the difference in CERO rating being due to supporting the local economy, nope. The same happens to games released by Japanese publishers that were developed overseas. And if they really wanted to support locals, they'd cut costs so it was no longer CHEAPER to import than to buy local releases.

That's I like too in High Seas Trader, not to focus on a region, but to travel all around the world.

That's great! Thanks!

Well, another game (and series because if UW2 is interesting, I will have to play the first one too) in the backlog and wishlist ;-)


Closer to the topic, I think too it's a sad situation concerning japanese games and gamers, and even if it does concern 'only' video games, it is very questionable if we include video games in cultural content (and we should do, I believe).

Not sure how lost the economy is. Germany is among the strongest in Europe. The culture however is pretty much dead. Too many wars in too little of a time affected this.
Steam community sucks. Honestly, I really hate Valve and that puppet faggot called Gabe Newell. The dude's an arrogant bastard.
As for the games in general, I don't really see the problem to just sticking with importing. If anything, this is like a trade. The moderately big western community that wants to play all kinds of JRPGs exclusive to Japan had to import them for years. So people from Japan who want to play who knows what western game on PC can easily import it. Many stores that focus only on importing made quite some money because of this. Like PlayAsia.

We pay all national income for paying of the interest of our debts and the national debts grow every year anyway and the interest of course too, it's a very vicious circle created by the reparations after those wars.
Strange thing is, that although this is the case, we still pay the biggest amounts for international charitiy (on the national level). Hell, we even paid billions on development aid to China until recently...

Regarding culture:
I do my part for keeping German martial arts and folk music alive, the stuff the Nazis had no time for because of their wars and now the modern Germans have no time for because of 40-60h underpaid work per week.

I'm sad to hear that. Sounds like Romania's case after World War 2, but at least you did't have a huge part of your treasury "confiscated" by your former allies. I won't give names, but I'll just say the economic situation and theater in Europe is crap.

Well only by our former foes, but afterwards there is no big difference anyway as it seems, my singing teacher was Romanian and he told me some strange stories that reminded me of Poland in many ways.