So I've noticed that most GoG games were made in the US or EU, but we have very few, if any, Japanese titles available. Steam managed to get some Sega titles, but GoG doesn't have any of those. Are Japanese developers more difficult to negoitate with than most other developers?

There really isn't a PC game market in Japan. Like, since Windows 95 or 98 came out. Even Falcom had to drop PC support and focus more on handhelds.

That and Japanese publishers aren't exactly in a hurry to embrace digital or DRM free stuff.

I don't like Japanese games, they're just not my cup of tea.

But.....I know a lot of people do so, yes, they're be a good addition.

I'm guessing, though, as someone from Japan wrote in another forum, it could be because some Japanese developers don't have anyone on staff that speaks English and GOG probably doesn't have anyone on staff that speaks Japanese???

As silly as that sounds, the Japanese overall have very low English-speaking skills, which is always surprising to westerners when they first go there. You think "Highly developed country" etc etc. But, in English speaking skills, no. So, when it comes to negotiating contracts in English for a smaller development company -- very very difficult.

There had been some discussion about this in the past, you may want to look this topic: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/other_japanese_developers/page1.

Why my message got messed up?

Funny story about Japanese English speaking skills --

Thais absolutely ADORE Japan - everything about it, so they emulate everything including clothing, comic books, movies, love Japanese food etc. And a lot of Thais travel to Japan, as it's the country they most want to go to (Behind Switzerland and the US - The Thai king was educated in Switzerland and born in the US - that's why :)

At least 50 percent of my adult students have been to Japan and, as Thai, they already know the Thais' English speaking skills are just about the lowest in Asia (almost every study done shows that). So,....when they get to Japan and can hardly find anyone in Tokyo who speaks English, they're bemused.

One of my students who came back from a trip to Tokyo said to me, "I very happy. Thailand suck at English. But Japan suck more. At least one thing we do better than Japanese" LOL

Bear in mind that Sega consists/consisted of 3 branches: Japan, Europe, and America. That's probably what makes their titles more apt for digital distribution. If Sega keeps branching out to other sites like they've been doing lately, then who knows? :)

(Sega, if you're listening... pretty please?)

I think the language barrier is the main issue. Japan does have a large selection of PC games, although a lot of it is doujin and hentai visual novel games. I think what we GOGgers/GOGlodytes/GOGoyals/whatever need to do is take a more active role in contacting the companies that hold the rights to the games we want to see on GOG (every game not just Japanese games). So far I've contacted quite a few companies. Some never wrote back, but others replied that they were interested in seeing their games on GOG and gave vague hints that they would like this to happen at some point in the future. The community ought to take a more active role, as you can bet those companies aren't lurking in these forums hoping for someone to ask for their game to come to GOG, and GOG itself, with only about 30 employees, can only do so much.

They sure are. Especially as GOG has a no-regional pricing, no regional restrictions stance. Japanese publishers like both regionally pricing in the US/EU and restricting access to their products in Japan. So chances of seeing any Japanese publisher other than Square Enix on GOG? Basically zero.

So while the main problem for certain titles not being available in Japan on GamersGate (while they are on Steam) is due to the language barrier -- GG has no Japanese speaking Staff, Steam at least used to (it's unclear if they do currently) -- that language barrier issue will be the least of GOG's worries.

In the case of Steam it's not all smooth sailing either as Valve needlessly further compound the issue with their misinformed stance on CERO ratings. We'd have things like the eXceed collection available if it wasn't for Valve's demands that Capcom provide a CERO rating (it's too expensive compared to the price the games sell at and totally not required for digital PC sales). That seems to be a case of Valve applying US requirements in a market where they are not needed and thus they are needlessly denying access to products in said market.

As for the English speaking skills of Japanese, you have to remember that Japanese DON'T learn English as a spoken language. They learn it as written language, as a bunch of rules to be memorized, and then only to pass entrance exams for universities. Very few actually learn English with the intention of using it as a tool for communication.

That's why there used to be an English language conversation school boom when companies started to want their employees speaking English (few companies now conduct all their internal business in English, Rakuten and Uniqlo being two examples). But the English language school boom is long since over as a result of the leading school of that market being found to be ripping off students (and to an extent its own staff), breaking immigration rules, and so forth. They were slapped with a 6 month ban on advertising and accepting new students. They never recovered, and neither did the industry as a whole, as the majority of them were pulling the same stunts.

So yeah. To sum up, two main problems for GOG:
Communication barrier
GOG's no regional pricing/restriction stance

Japanese developers are very hard.Sometimes they dont even reply.

Recently, a UK company - Ghostlight - has mentioned on its blog that they're looking to bring ports of console-based Japanese RPGs to the PC. They've been fairly close-lipped about specific titles, but have said that they have some in mind already and are in negotiations.

No channel for release has been spoken of by them as yet, although public response to the blog posts have mentioned both Steam and GOG as possible outlets.

Ghostlight - for those who don't know - are the EU distributor for several Atlus games in the Shin Megami Tensei series, such as Nocturne/Lucifer's Call, Persona 3 Portable, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Devil Survivor, and the Digital Devil Saga games, as well as the Agarest games and Fate/EXTRA. A Persona game on the PC? I'll let my friend Nanako Dojima respond to that!

This would be nice to broaden GOG's range.

It's the same here in Thailand. Thais are taught grammar, and how to regurgitate it for exams, so they're brilliant at grammar. Needless to say, some of my Thai students have better English grammar than I do :), but they can barely speak it and they don't understand English when it's spoken to them. When I was teaching, I had many students who had been learning English for 15-20 years but still couldn't say more than a few sentences correctly.

BTW, I had a couple of teacher friends who got screwed by NOVA while teaching in Japan -- didn't get paid, weren't given work permits etc. NOVA really screwed Japan's reputation for how the country treats foreign teachers, so it's made a lot of teachers wary about teaching there. Some English teachers now avoid it because of that, which is a real shame as I know people who taught in Japan for years and said it was the best experience of their lives.

I'll add in my observation.

From my experience, Japanese people below the age of 30 or so do all speak English (in Tokyo). By that I mean that they can understand you pretty much perfectly, but while in Japan they will only respond in Japanese. You can actually have a decent conversation with most, you speaking English, them speaking Japanese. Providing that your Japanese is as good as their English.

Now, my credentials? I have a bad case of yellow fever and have had a number of Japanese girlfriends. Only been there once though. Interestingly enough even though they learn to read and write English their written English can be terribad. So this Japanese girl who I had been seeing for a while. Have been emailing her again recently (she's coming back soon!) and even though her spoken English is top notch she writes like a child. Very simplistic sentence structure and her prepositions are way off. Probably gets 1/4 right. Can say the same about Koreans too. Also, my mate who went to Japan a couple of weeks ago effectively said the same thing.

Ys Origin and Ys : The Oath in Felghana were just released on Steam recently. Xseed is a pretty customer friendly publisher so it would be nice to see something worked out with Falcom/Xseed and GOG.

meh. probably would turn out to be Spectral Souls or Generations of Chaos since there's already Android versions of the games.