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The story
A thread titled “Japanese Game Companies, Remake Festival” appeared on 5ch’s “Anything Goes Live G” board, sparking discussion about how domestic publishers are leaning toward remakes and remasters instead of new titles. One poster noted that Switch 2’s weekly sales dropped from around 50,000 units to just over 20,000 after the price hike, fueling a broader discussion rooted in a sense of market stagnation. Posters pointed to soaring development costs turning new IPs into a gamble, citing SEGA’s Hatsune Miku and Like a Dragon (Yakuza) franchises, along with Pragmata — a new IP that actually became a hit — as rare success stories. But opinions split when some argued it’s the fans themselves who are really the ones asking for all these remakes.
What people said
It's your own fault
It used to be around 30,000 units, now it's just barely over 20,000
That's pretty weak for a supposedly winning new console
Nah, before the price hike it was moving about 50,000 a week
That wasn't even a remake, and you expected way too much from a remaster
What do they even have besides Hatsune Miku and Like a Dragon?
Aren't they too scared of flopping?
You just don't see that gloriously stupid stuff anymore — like the Virtual Boy or the Dreamcast's Seaman, the kind of thing where you'd go 'who on earth is buying this…'
Try running a company yourself, then
Yeah, I get it — recycling the same IP means it's bound to lack freshness
It's your own fault for not buying new IPs
Then put out a good new IP
Costs have gotten so high they can't even keep up appearances anymore
Someone from an actual company said before that if they make a new IP and it flops, the company goes under — so they can't afford to take risks
How's it doing in Japan though?
If Diana wasn't in it, it probably would've flopped
It's basically a game about doting on a little blonde girl
Given the size of the companies involved, Raho no Kurashi pulling that off is honestly more impressive (obscure reference — unclear exactly which title this is)
Even for idea-driven indies, getting 1 hit out of 1000 games is already a decent batting average
The sense of stagnation is real everywhere
The only ones cranking out new titles one after another are Chinese studios
China can just throw money at it
It's wild that they can casually drop 10 to 20 billion yen on development
And yet the number of solid, reliably successful major publishers isn't growing either
If anything it just keeps shrinking through mergers and closures
It's almost all free-to-play with item gacha though
Over there, piracy culture means there's basically no environment for developing buy-once games
Sounds like a boring era of endless throwaway minigames
Nice try, hater
You can actually play the ocarina in it
In the end it's the kids from back then who are the ones buying them
Well even when they do sell, it's usually only tens of thousands to maybe a hundred-something thousand units domestically
There just aren't many of those original fans left anymore
lol that's a foreign game
Total chameleon (i.e., a dodge — good luck pinning down a straight answer)
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Soaring game development costs aren’t unique to Japan — as one poster in the thread noted, remakes of old Call of Duty titles are selling well overseas too, reflecting a global trend of leaning on existing IPs. Pragmata, cited as a rare new-IP success story, was developed by Capcom and drew attention as one of the few brand-new IPs launched by a major publisher at a time when that’s become uncommon. That said, it’s worth noting that the Switch 2 weekly sales figures discussed in the thread (roughly 50,000 units before the price hike, down to just over 20,000 after) are based on individual posters’ impressions, not official Nintendo figures. The debate split between those who see fans themselves as the ones really driving demand for remakes, and those who blame publishers’ risk-aversion and rising development costs — suggesting this is a structural problem that can’t be pinned on any single cause.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Anything Goes Live G) thread “[Sad News] Japan’s 🇯🇵 Game Companies, Remake Festival lmaoooooooooooooooooooooo.”
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