Shadow)OS said:
Japanese Philosophy: Take our time, get the job done with some clean coding. Stick with the formulas we've been doing for years, rarely stray. Western Philosophy: Rush it out the gates; we'll solve all the bugs in a patch in the following months. Try new directions until we find something that works. Hype hype hype, milk milk milk.
That's the pattern I noticed. A humble Japanese strategy vs agressive Western strategy. Both need work in my opinion, one just happens to make a lot more money because people are dumb and fall for the same trick countless times. |
You're being...rather unkind to the Westerners, but I think you've gotten the Japanese philosophy down pretty well.
And yes, the Western studios seem to be more comfortable with having a little less polish in their games than Squeenix (the big player in the JRPG market), and with utilizing larger teams to get stuff done more quickly. That results in games coming out sooner, but there's also less attention given to the smaller details than in Squeenix's approach.
Fun fact: this is the first generation in which Squeenix is using middleware to make its games, rather than making a unique engine for each game. The same is true for many other Japanese developers. I get the impression that Mistwalker was originally looked down on for using middleware, but it seems reality has brought everyone around.
