Being a big fan of MMOs, I decided to go and figure do a bit of research on the Japanese, MMO market, which really has never taken off. Of the classic computer MMORPGS, there are quite a few in the market, but none of them really have a huge following:
Final Fantasy XI
Front Mission Online
Lineage II
Imagine
Ultima Online
Nobunaga Online
La Frontera
Ragnarok Online
Phantasy Star Universe
Monster Hunter
E10
Emil Chronicle
Out of all of these, most of them are of Korean origin, with the few Japanese ones (Final Fantasy XI, Nobunaga Online, Phantasy Star Universe, Monster Hunter) also available for console, really driving in the point of console dominance in the Japanese market as compared to the rest of Asia.
Oddly enough, World of Warcraft was to be seen in any major retailers in any sort of prominent capacity. Interestingly enough, it seems that even a highly stylized art aesthetic such as WoW has difficulty finding a place in the Japanese market, although Blizzard has done a fine job destroying China, Korea, and Taiwan’s economy. Opium Wars redux anyone?
On a side note, with the big hullabaloo surrounding Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix in Japan, I noticed that the new part of the game, chain of memories, was already dubbed in English with Japanese Subtitles. This leads me to believe an upcoming US release, and also shows the importance of the US market to Japanese game makers, this is getting pretty clear with titles such as Blue Dragon that also had English subtitles right from the get go and the decision for Square Enix to publish Remnant simultaneously.
With the release of the spiritual successor to Princess Crown, Odin Sphere in Japan on May 17th, I'm also very pleased with seeing the US release date, May 22nd. Hopefully this means that US QA teams will be working closed with their Japanese counterparts in the future and hopefully even providing design feedback while the game is being developed.