Yeah, there's no real way to know for sure, but I only learned recently that Japan has no games rental market and that fact really surprised me and totally changed my understanding of the Japanese video game scene, so now I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they did.
If I had to wager a guess though I would say it probably wouldn't have changed that much, as the ballooning cost of game development over the 7th gen killed many a western developer too and that's with the rental market.
Still, it would be interesting to hop into an alternate dimension and find out for sure, I just really miss the days of mid budget Japanese games that still looked impressive or at least solid, there's still a few devs doing that like From software or Platinum, but a lot less than there used to be and some that do still come out are below par, like compare the newest Disaster Report, which looks like total garbage, to the PS2 Disaster Reports which looked decent for the time.
western developers also tried to cater to graphic whores and bankrupted themselves creating HD assets for bullshots. reminds me of that story going around that a design proposal in the west is several pages long with gameplay first getting mentioned on page 6 or 7, and in japan it's 2 pages tops leading with gameplay (dunno if it's legit or a meme at this point).
not sure if an alternative dimension would look much different, I mean the culture evolved in the way it did, which makes me wonder if rentals ever had a chance to begin with. for example (and this is just my filthy outsider impression) the whole creator/consumer relationship is different over there, due to local factors alone. japanese create for the japanese market first, and given the size, density and population, it makes you feel much "closer" to it than in the west. besides the usa no country really has a gaming industry worth mentioning, over here it's either some fag on the other side of the coast or in europe not even someone that speaks the same language, which leads japanese to be much more willing to "reward" creators by buying (with the prestige of owning it), even more so when it's a fellow japanese. when was the last time anyone over here gave a fuck about "made in usa" etc.?
plus there's also the whole weird aspect of consumerism? materialism? (can't really define it) they seem to have where they buy stuff more willingly where even I'd say I rather spend my money else where or not that much. but as I said that's just me looking in from the outside.
Almost every single franchise I love has been deflowered for one reason or the other...and one thing is to have a shitty reboot or entry, whatever, one thing is to have it being woke. For me, Woke murders any sort of love I had for the franchise, period.
Its the type of shit that made me go from a guy who went insane upon hearing the words "Star Wars" to someone who forever now groans in exaustion everytime someone reminds me of its existance...Thanks for that that, Rian Johnson and Kathy Kennedy.
time to take the weebpill mate. novels/manga are usually a single author or small team, so you usually don't see shit go off the rails for the simple reason they value their own creation. and even the adaptions try to be faithful enough to not shit on the original creators work, mangling someone's material the way it's happening in the west is an exception because japs are well aware who their fans are (and what they want, else they wouldn't be fans to begin with. fucking common sense). shit like the battletoads remake would never happen and if it does would look much different.
and as much as people shit on all the fanservice, why would you complain if you're actually a fan? sure there might be too much at times but it hardly goes to the level you can't just skip past it or ignore it, but it almost never turns to shit the way it does in [current year] over here (well, endless eight is a thing, but still...)
TLDR: it's great to be a weeb because you can actually feel rewarded for being one.