For those who love Japanese games, a new feature page has been launched on Steam to promote games made in Japan.
The "Made in Japan Games Market" page can already be found on Steam and features about 100 titles from 43 Japanese companies.
It'll also feature a dedicated sale that will start on March 18 and end on March 25 to coincide with the Game Developers Conference 2024.
The initiative comes from JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), a Japanese government-related organization founded in 1958 with the mission of promoting mutual trade and investment between Japan and the rest of the world.
If you're wondering, JETRO is what is defined in Japan as an Independent Administrative Institution. That's a kind of agency based on the concept of separating the activities of the government into planning and operating functions.
Planning is done by government agencies, while independent agencies take care of the operational aspects. They are managed in a way more similar to private companies with a lot of autonomy on how they operate and use their budgets.
JETRO will also have a boot at GDC at the Japan Pavilion with the goal of promoting Japanese games.
The new page on Steam features Japanese games with a variety of sizes and genres, including JRPGs, Strategy Games, Visual Novels, Fighting Games, and more.
Some examples are Samurai SNK's Samurai Shodown, Bushiroad's Gift, Compile Heart's Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars, Petit Depot's Gnosia, and BeXide's Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze in the Deeplblue.
This is certainly an interesting initiative, as finding an audience in the West remains a challenge, especially for small Japanese developers, albeit some games certainly manage to achieve viral success like the recent Palworld.
It's worth mentioning that Japanese games are doing quite well on Steam. In the recent ranking of the most played games for February 2024 on the popular Steam Deck, five of the top-ten titles have been developed by Japanese studios.
