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A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

disruptingjapan.com

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Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#311

Post by astrange »

oli5679 wrote: post #111

The first video game I played was Pokémon blue, created by a Japanese game studio, and the most recent was Elden Ring, created by another. Sony and Nintendo are two of the world’s biggest companies, and a key part of their business model is creating great games franchises, either in house or working with local studios. This is all driven by an ecosystem of great software companies, making the best games in the world…

Sony closed SCEJ/Japan Studio and moved PlayStation to the US branch, where it's now being run by people only interested in AAA games following the Hollywood movie + collectathon + puzzles where nearby NPCs yell the answer at you after 30 seconds formula.

So I don't feel like they're demonstrating Japanese software quality at the moment. The Alpha series cameras are pretty nice, but not as much as they could be.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#312

Post by anthomtb »

courgette wrote: post #78
makeitdouble wrote: post #62

The key part to me: > But the rest of the word was moving in a different direction. The rest of the world was moving away from dedicated hardware and towards innovative software running on standard hardware platforms. This piece is about Japan vs the world, but looking at countries other than the US I'm not sure this narrative works. For instance did the UK become a Software behemoth ? France ? Germany ? Brazil ? Ind…

France had more than ok software company. Bull for instance. Ubisoft and a bazillion other video game company. Alcatel / Lucent / Thales for industrial stuff. For the deepness of my ass I would say failure was tree fold : - France like a good old top down approach. That … mostly don’t work for software. - France decided to listen to our American friends and sell the familly heirloom to the market. ( I’m bitter on thi…

Nitpicking but Lucent was an American company. A Bell Labs spin-off according to the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucent.

It merged with Alcatel (French indeed) but that was in 2006. Well after the rise of Silicon Valley, right around the time of the Web 2.0 pivot.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#313

Post by Gordonjcp »

amiga386 wrote: post #292
Gordonjcp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Bathgate nor IBM made inexpensive home computers that could be picked out of the reject pile, sneaked out under a jacket, repaired, and sold down the pub for 100 quid. The thing is that while a lot of people throughout the UK, by Christmas '83 literally everyone in Dundee had a ZX Spectrum. Probably half the reason they had difficulty fulfilling orders is that so many "minor faults" ones on the lines ended up…

I don't know if this is specifically your childhood experience, but you're describing also my childhood too, and I didn't grow up in Dundee. There were plenty of first- and second-hand ZX Spectrums to go around, VIC-20s, C16s, C64s, Amstrad CPCs, and the schools had BBCs. The UK went home-computer mad. Remember when there were type-in listings in C+VG? The Usbourne computer books? [1] INPUT magazine? [3] Kids were sw…

> I still think Timex's main contribution to Dundee's games industry was to make David Jones redundant, giving him the money to buy an Amiga 1000

Valid.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#314

Post by entropicdrifter »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #293
Alex3917 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Japanese didn't historically own desktop computers due to the average Japanese home not having enough square feet to easily accommodate them, which is why they adopted smartphones ten years earlier than every other country except Finland. If they had had a couple more decades to play with computers before software took off as a big industry, maybe the culture would have shifted somewhat.

They could have used gaming consoles with more mainstreamed 'developement kits/setups' instead? That existed at least for some Sony Playstation, or something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000 Running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project !1!! :-)

I mean, going farther back, the original Japanese version of the first Nintendo console was called the Famicom, which was short for Family Computer. It had a keyboard accessory, disk system, modem, tape drive add-on, and a port of BASIC.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#315

Post by entropicdrifter »

achenet wrote: post #296
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Also, in Japan, you cannot argue with your manager. There is a very strict hierarchy. Another posible reason, very few people in Japan speak English (at least that was the case when I worked there in the 90s). That might have affected international penetration of their software. Perhaps this is why we don't see much software from Germany either.

Germans speak very good English on average, probably some of the best English speakers in the world outside of anglophone countries.

Yeah, pretty much the worst example country to choose from Europe

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#316

Post by gernb »

skhr0680 wrote: post #262
Retric wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, Japan had no issue building a wide range of popular console video games but had far less success in PC games. Language seems like a better explanation as US and Japan had quite different UI constraints in their native language.

“I’m getting it for the kids” doesn’t work for a $2,000+ PC that can play the latest games, and that has always kept PC gaming niche in Japan.

There are often other reasons. For example, in Korea console gaming isn't or wasn't a thing. It's PC gaming. Why? Because to Koreans in the 80s and 90s, playing something made by Japanese, their former occupiers, was unacceptable. Because of that they played games on PCs until that became standard for Korean gaming.

Other reasons PC gaming might not be a thing in Japan. It takes a lot less room for a console (especially NES/SNES/Gamecube) than it does for a PC. You plug the console into your exiting TV. A PC needs it's own space with it's own monitor and desk. Japanese houses and especially apartments are small.

I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons than just that a PC costs more.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#317

Post by peapicker »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #273
dudeinjapan wrote: post #193

Tim Romero (author of linked podcast) misses the point. Paul Graham has a far better take on this topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html The problem isn't that Japanese companies "missed" the opportunity to do software at X point in time--the problem is that they are culturally Japanese. Japan is about consensus-based design, there is a high penalty for making mistakes, and individuality/creativity is not valued.…

True. Also, in Japan, you cannot argue with your manager. There is a very strict hierarchy. Another posible reason, very few people in Japan speak English (at least that was the case when I worked there in the 90s). That might have affected international penetration of their software. Perhaps this is why we don't see much software from Germany either.

Germany is huge in Digital Audio Workstation software. Ableton Live, Bitwig, Steinberg (Cubase and creator of VST plugin format), Native Instruments, Celemony (Melodyne=autotune), and the former EMagic, whom Apple bought to make Logic Pro. Also plugin makers U-He, Synapse Audio, zPlane. Probably more that I’ve missed.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#318

Post by astrange »

noobermin wrote: post #48
bvanderveen wrote: post #41

All credibility lost here: > Cloud computing drastically reduced the capital and time required to start a startup. In the dot-com era a decade before, starting an internet startup required purchasing racks of servers and paying system administrators to keep them running, but suddenly fully configured, maintained, and secure serves could be had for a few cents per minute — pay as you go. > Suddenly Japan’s software de…

The one thing I might add (don't know for sure, just guessing) is the cost of things might look different in Japan vs. here in the US. May be the cloud made a serious differential in the upfront cost as hardware is more expensive there, I don't know.

Buying anything in Japan (even an MS Office license) is at least more likely to require going out drinking with salespeople rather than just visiting a website.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#319

Post by hbn »

_skel wrote: post #294
dudeinjapan wrote: post #193

Tim Romero (author of linked podcast) misses the point. Paul Graham has a far better take on this topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html The problem isn't that Japanese companies "missed" the opportunity to do software at X point in time--the problem is that they are culturally Japanese. Japan is about consensus-based design, there is a high penalty for making mistakes, and individuality/creativity is not valued.…

Being culturally Japanese didn't prevent Japanese companies from achieving dominant positions in electronics, automobile manufacturing, video games, shipbuilding, steel production... Why is software so special? I would argue that the kind of risk aversion that holds back software companies is just as evident in most of Europe as it is in Japan. It is also the norm in a bunch of American companies in the tech industry…

Software is different from those other industries cause it's not really a science. No one's figured out a "right way" to make software, and it seems being well-made is a very small factor in the grand scheme of whether a piece of software becomes ubiquitous/successful. So throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks works better than iterating and perfecting a technique.

Video games are a strange exception I suppose, because they are software. But it seems like above-described culture obsession with not making mistakes doesn't apply so much to the arts.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#320

Post by cutemonster »

fxtentacle wrote: post #303
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Also, in Japan, you cannot argue with your manager. There is a very strict hierarchy. Another posible reason, very few people in Japan speak English (at least that was the case when I worked there in the 90s). That might have affected international penetration of their software. Perhaps this is why we don't see much software from Germany either.

Oh you see A LOT of software from Germany. But we learned our lesson and resell it through US entities for less liability and higher profit margins ;) (US CTO living in Germany)

Less liability? When selling through US? How does that work

(I would have guessed the opposite, thinking about patent trolls who ... live in the US?)

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