Developers in Japan have voted Skyrim their favourite game of 2011, they were going to go vote for Pokémon but they took an arrow in the knee.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the latest instalment in Bethesda’s critically acclaimed The Elder Scrolls series and has been making waves in the gaming world since its release in December of last year. The game has already been voted Game of the Year by
a number of video game review sites.
The PlayStation 3 version is suffering from a host of problems though; however, the PC version has broken all previous records on Valve’s digital distribution platform, Steam outselling other titles by a ratio of three to one.
At the same time, trends and tastes in Japan are very different to those in the West and many AAA titles do not do too well in the Japanese market.
Skyrim on the other hand seems to be an exception as a poll conducted by 4Gamer seems to indicate that the fifth instalment in the Elder Scrolls series is their favourite game for 2011.
Naoki Yoshida, which many will know as the producer behind Final Fantasy XIV, is one such high profile developer who gave the dragon infested game the nod along with the CEO of Level-5, Akihiro Hino.
Skyrim managed to beat out every other game including a number of heavyweight Japanese titles; the most notable of which was the mercilessly difficult, Dark Souls, which we were just about to end before we took an arrow in the knee.
Internet meme jokes aside, a fair number of Western titles were given votes as the developers of the Last Guardian and Yakuza: Black Panther (Fumito Ueda and Youjiro Ogawa respectively) gave their approval to Portal 2.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was a bit of a surprise entry when the votes were tabulated as was Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3. Other games that ranked slightly higher were Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and iOS’s premier title, Infinity
Blade II.
2011 seems to have been a good year for western games in Japan and one can only hope that the trend continues into 2012.
Tags: