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BoxOfDemons t1_j1l3cek wrote

Reply to comment by Bradfromihob in Why Call of Duty game matters to the FTC in Microsoft-Activision deal by Sorin61

Looking at what sales numbers I can find, even back 20-25 years ago the US was selling almost as many FF games as Japan, and today some games sell more here than Japan depending on the title. Then for nearly every game that has world-wide sales listed as well, it is 3-4x the total Japan sales. Even if a game sold 1/4 as well in the English market than the Japanese market, that's enough profit to pay for a translation. Translations are a fraction of the total game production costs. Japanese gamers per capita love Square Enix WAY more than Americans, but America has a massive population advantage.

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Bradfromihob t1_j1l4b67 wrote

Who gets the game first, who plays the games longer. Statistically its Japan. Why do games come to the us? We have 3x as many citizens, and don’t limit things like games. The facts are that these games are funded and popularized by Japan first then come to the US months or years later. They would never be just released here first cause chances are they wouldn’t be as popular. Singular sales numbers are not the best metric you can use. Or even the only metric you should use.

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Otaku_Instinct t1_j1l8evh wrote

"The Japanese market is no longer sufficient for achieving a level of earnings that enables us to recoup our development investment and generate a profit, and we therefore need to approach our development efforts based on the assumption that we have to succeed in the global market."

-Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix President

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