"Oraganizational Type and Performance in Japanese Video Game Industries - A Comparison of Integrated Firms and Publisher Firms -" (in Japanese)

How does information technology change the organization of Japanese firms? We try to answer this question through analysis of Japan's video game industry, which is an exceptionally successful industry among the information-related industries in Japan. According to the interview survey, there are two types of firms in the Japanese video game industry: integrated firms and publisher firms. Integrated firms keep most development staff within the firms and produce game software using these employees. On the other hand, publisher firms have few in-house development staff and produce game software using outside staff. Integrated firms have similar characteristics to conventional Japanese firms such as less incentive system and stable labor relations, whereas the publisher firms not. Both types of firms are successful in the video game industry and have coexisted. To explain the coexistence of these two types of firms, we classified game software into two categories: technology-driven game and concept-driven game. While technology-driven games intensively use programming techniques such as 3D modeling, concept-driven games need novel ideas or interesting stories above programming techniques. Econometric analysis using sales of game software titles shows that, in the case of technology-driven games, integrated firms have better performance and accumulation of production experience has a positive effect on sales. In the case of concept-driven games, however, accumulation of production has no effect on sales. This result suggests that the efficient firm organization depends on the type of the products in information-related industries.