Like several Japanese third party publishers, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan is betting on the global market to help make up for the slump in general Japanese gaming scene. Speaking at the DICE Summit Asia in Singapore, SCEJ vice president Yasuhide Kobayashi concedes that SCE as a whole can no longer rely solely on domestic sales in Japan as a measure of real success.

From internal figures shared by Kobayashi at the conference, most of the bigger name Japanese publishers still derive anywhere from 67 to almost 92 percent of total sales from their home base of Japan. Perhaps it may come as no surprise that Koei is usually the most successful Japanese publisher with over 91 percent; their Dynasty and Samurai Warrior series of historically-themed action games tend to hit stores with a bang. Square Enix also remains strong in Japan, netting over 86 percent of its sales from the Japanese market. On the other end, SCEJ's Japanese business constitutes "only" around 66.9 percent of its total sales.

Japanese sales once made up a third of the global games market, and relatively lower development costs meant there was relatively less risk to profitability of more insular Japanese companies. Yet that was the era of the original PlayStation, and fast-forwarding to 2009 we can only expect a much different picture with costs reaching as high as 1-1.5 billion. Kobayashi further explains:

...now we're in the era of the PlayStation 3, and the Japanese market is only one fifth of the global market - when it comes to production costs, those are swelling, so it means that unless we gain success in the overseas market our studio will go bankrupt. It's a crisis we recognise.

SCEJ has much to learn in trying to make their software more attractive to the "West", as demonstrated by the relatively milder reception to ICO on our shores. In this example, Kobayashi believed that ICO's markedly different North American box art could have used a lot more work. Of course SCEJ doesn't intend on giving up, as Kobayashi confirms that Team ICO's upcoming PS3 game, The Last Guardian, was so christened specifically to better resonate with North American and European audiences.