Weekly Famitsu readers elect 2008’s top stories

It is that time again when I make my annual Weekly Famitsu purchase to see what happened over the previous year. I’ve always enjoyed looking at the readers’ yearly picks for top game-related news. It is usually very interesting, informative, and ultimately a pointless exercise.

According to Famitsu, this year’s poll, which asked readers to chose the most important industry news of 2008, garnered 593 valid responses from gamers, and 88 responses from game retailers. The top stories are as follows.

10. Monster Hunter Wii booth overwhelmed at Tokyo Game show. Capcom’s attempts to organize crowds at their Monster Hunter 3 display failed quickly as crazed mobs rushed the booth. (October)

9. Final Fantasy XIII announced for Xbox 360, but only in EU/US. Brilliant strategy. Release the only title with a prayer of driving Xbox sales in Japan everywhere EXCEPT Japan. (July)

8. Xbox 360 price drops to under 20,000 yen. 19,800 yen for the harddriveless “Arcade” bundle. News causes millions of Japanese gamers to suffer broken jaws due to violent yawning. (September)

7. Metal Gear Solid 4 released. It became the first PlayStation 3 title to break 500,000 copies in Japan. Ironically, 500,000 is exactly the number of pages in the game’s script. (June)

6. Nintendo gets flash-card adapters banned in Japan. Flexing their huge, corporate muscles, Nintendo sued over 54 developers and retailers to prevent them from importing or selling DS flash memory card adapters, such as the R4, due to their role in piracy. (July)

5. New “Tales of…” Xbox bound. Bandai Namco announces that Tales of Vesperia would appear on the Xbox 360, both abroad and domestically. Gamers report high interest in this game despite that the name “Vesperia” sounds like a brand of feminine hygiene product. (February)

4. 20/60GB PS3s discontinued in Japan. Eyebrows arched nationwide when Sony axed the 20 and 60 GB PS3 models to make way for the 40GB version. This move also in effect told gamers “no more PS2 compatibility for you, bitches”. (January)

3. Squeenix rolls out glut of 360 RPGs. Star Ocean 4, Infinite Undiscovery, and The Last Remnant announced. Well, I’ve heard of one of those at least. (June)

2. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G released. Selling over 2 million copies in Japan, this game has created a wave of ad-hoc MonHun games cropping up in trains, cafes and restaurants all over Japan. Subsequent explosion in killing and cooking of squirrels in parks by gangs of 11 year-olds linked to game. (March)

1. And the number one gaming news story in Japan for 2008 is…. a toss-up between Dragon Quest IX and X. While the long-awaited announcement of a release date for the NDS game DQ IX (March 28, 2009) alone would probably have gotten this story in the top 10, the further (albeit completely predictable) revelation that DQ X would be a Wii game put this one over the top. (December)

While these top stories seem to indicate an unhealthy obsession with Xbox and J-RPGs, it should be noted that less than 700 people responded to Famitsu’s survey. This is rather paltry considering that Weekly Famitsu’s circulation is something like 800,000 copies per week. In turn, Famitsu readership itself represents only a small part of Japan’s gaming population. The poll therefore may or may not have anything to do with the mindset of the average Japanese gamer. Particularly suspect is the complete lack of any “casual game” news despite the huge impact of casual games on the J-games industry. Suspect, but completely reasonable. Casual gamers, by definition, would not take the time to fill out this survey. So why did we go through this entire exercise together if we knew from the beginning that it would probably only yield insights into the mentality of rabid Xbox 360 fanboys and RPG geeks? For the journey, Grasshopper, for the journey.

[Source: Author unknown, "Yuuza to shoppu ga erabu! Juudai nyuusu (Users and shops select the top news!)." Weekly Famitsu, January 9-16, p. 12-13.]