| largedarryl said: I'm not too sure your title suits the thread. Basically I get out of your thread that Western devs are on the verge of collapse because of Nintendo. I wouldn't normally comment on this thread, but developing for Nintendo isn't the end-all be-all of the gaming industry. Currently Western devs are on the verge of collapse because of years of typical US business strategies (i.e. cultural differences between Japan and US). US companies culturally focus on near-term growth and profit, often times taking large risks in the process (blockbuster movies/games), this is almost opposite to Japanese culture, where companies are attempting to insure more long-term goals. This will lead Japanese companies to be more conservative and taking less risks. So this being one of the main reasons why Japanese companies are less likely to be impacted by a series of poor decisions. |
One of the deeper problems facing western publishers/developers at the moment is their dependance on inexpensive credit to fund their games ...
Most developers/publishers do not have the cash on hand to fund one of their larger games and yet can be in the middle of development of several of these large games. There are several problems that come from this; with every game that fails to turn a profit you dig yourself into a deeper hole which is difficult to get out of (in part because it hurts your ability to get access to inexpensive credit), and the current ecconomic climate makes it very difficult for anyone (except for companies who don't need it) to get access to the same ammount of low cost credit that they had access to 12 months ago. Right now, there are probably several publishers/developers who will be cutting back or canceling projects simply because they don't have access to credit to make payroll.
