User Reactions and Localization in the Video Game Industry: Developer and Publisher Dominances and Regional Release Date and Review Text Specifics

To find out whether there is a dominance in game releases and reception of Japanese game developers and publishers on a console by a Japan-based manufacturer, we analysed Nintendo Switch rating score and rating number data from German, U.S.-American, and Japanese Nintendo- and Amazon-websites. This study’s results reveal that although Nintendo as a publisher and developer has the most games on the system, and although most of the top five games by rating numbers were developed by Japan-based studios, the overall top five publishers and developers are not as strongly Japan-dominated. We further present localization-related analyses, namely by release dates and reviews (i.e., customer feedback). Retrieved release dates from the three selected countries show a slight tendency of games being released earlier in Japan, and a strong tendency of games being released in autumn and the pre-Christmas season in all three regions. To standardize a manual sentiment analysis of review texts, we derive 12 gaming-related categories: (1) Economic (monetary) factor, (2) Genre, (3) Audio design, (4) Story, (5) Game characters, (6) Visual presentation, (7) Author background information, (8) Game background information, (9) Game design, (10) Constructive feedback, (11) No constructive feedback, and (12) Sense of objective review and review structure. We then assign review texts to one or more of those categories. Found similarities between German, U.S.-American, and Japanese review texts are the mentioning of an economic (monetary) factor, of author and game background information, and of audio design. All the analysed texts contain some constructive feedback, and almost all texts further mention some aspects of game design. U.S. reviewers mention game genres more frequently, but their texts have less of a sense of objective review or review structure, and no U.S.-reviewer mentions a game’s difficulty. German reviewers mention game developers less frequently, and two of three review texts mentioning the game’s target audience are German. Japanese reviewers mention visual aspects less but story and game characters more frequently. Overall interpretations reveal that half of each region’s texts is written in a casual manner.