Posted February 17, 2014
GOG's made some pretty big strides in their offerings as of late, and for the most part, the library is filling out nicely. The one place where the store is sorely lacking right now, though, is in its selection of Japanese games.
Right now, GOG has a few. There's Deadly Premonition, La Mulana, Guilty Gear XX #Reload, and Street Fighter Alpha 2. GGXX#R is a woefully outdated version of that game and SFA2 is a bad port, so they're barely worth mentioning. Maybe there are a few others I forgot, but the lineup is, quite frankly, pathetic.
Where's Capcom, beyond that shoddy SFA2 port? Where's Devil May Cry 4, Resident Evil 5, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Dead Rising 2, and the upcoming Strider?
Where's Sega? Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Jet Set Radio HD, and Binary Domain would be fantastic to have DRM-free... not to mention all the strategy games currently under Sega's banner, like Company of Heroes and the Total War series.
Where's Konami? I would kill for a DRM-free copy of Metal Gear Rising, and I'm sure some poor soul might want to slog through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
And what about all the more niche titles, like the Falcom games published by XSEED (Ys, Trails in the Sky), the just-announced Killer is Dead port, or the soon-to-be-released PC port of Treasure's Ikaruga?
These games would lend a heaping of variety to GOG's lineup. The character action and JRPG genres are non-existent (Silver, Anachronox, Septerra Core really don't scratch that itch), and even some of the over-represented genres on GOG, like platformers, would benefit from a bit of Japanese panache. That, and most of these games are ideal fodder for those who have their gaming PC hooked up to their TV for "comfy couch" gaming. There simply aren't enough of those in the store right now. Japanese publishers are really starting to double down on PC releases for both their new games and re-releases of older titles, and getting them on-board could only be a good thing for GOG going forward.
I realize it's easy for some to dismiss this as "GOG losing their focus on old games," but the simple fact of the matter is that the site is diversifying its offerings. Getting Japanese publishers on-board could bring some old games onto the service (namely, some of Sega, Falcom, and Capcom's back catalogs), but it'd bring a lot of modern classics into the fold, as well. For fans of those genres that Japan specializes in, DRM-free releases would be a massive boon for the store.
So, why do we see so few Japanese games on GOG? Is it a lack of interest on GOG's part? Is it the language barrier (which Treasure previously cited as a difficulty when working with Valve to get Ikaruga on Steam)? Is it a hesitance on the publishers' part to put out DRM-free versions of their games? And, more importantly, what can we do about it?
Right now, GOG has a few. There's Deadly Premonition, La Mulana, Guilty Gear XX #Reload, and Street Fighter Alpha 2. GGXX#R is a woefully outdated version of that game and SFA2 is a bad port, so they're barely worth mentioning. Maybe there are a few others I forgot, but the lineup is, quite frankly, pathetic.
Where's Capcom, beyond that shoddy SFA2 port? Where's Devil May Cry 4, Resident Evil 5, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Dead Rising 2, and the upcoming Strider?
Where's Sega? Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Jet Set Radio HD, and Binary Domain would be fantastic to have DRM-free... not to mention all the strategy games currently under Sega's banner, like Company of Heroes and the Total War series.
Where's Konami? I would kill for a DRM-free copy of Metal Gear Rising, and I'm sure some poor soul might want to slog through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
And what about all the more niche titles, like the Falcom games published by XSEED (Ys, Trails in the Sky), the just-announced Killer is Dead port, or the soon-to-be-released PC port of Treasure's Ikaruga?
These games would lend a heaping of variety to GOG's lineup. The character action and JRPG genres are non-existent (Silver, Anachronox, Septerra Core really don't scratch that itch), and even some of the over-represented genres on GOG, like platformers, would benefit from a bit of Japanese panache. That, and most of these games are ideal fodder for those who have their gaming PC hooked up to their TV for "comfy couch" gaming. There simply aren't enough of those in the store right now. Japanese publishers are really starting to double down on PC releases for both their new games and re-releases of older titles, and getting them on-board could only be a good thing for GOG going forward.
I realize it's easy for some to dismiss this as "GOG losing their focus on old games," but the simple fact of the matter is that the site is diversifying its offerings. Getting Japanese publishers on-board could bring some old games onto the service (namely, some of Sega, Falcom, and Capcom's back catalogs), but it'd bring a lot of modern classics into the fold, as well. For fans of those genres that Japan specializes in, DRM-free releases would be a massive boon for the store.
So, why do we see so few Japanese games on GOG? Is it a lack of interest on GOG's part? Is it the language barrier (which Treasure previously cited as a difficulty when working with Valve to get Ikaruga on Steam)? Is it a hesitance on the publishers' part to put out DRM-free versions of their games? And, more importantly, what can we do about it?
Post edited February 17, 2014 by Chacranajxy
