'Japan can't keep up with US tech' says Cliff Bleszinski

[Mr Khan]

jarrod said:

Vertigo-X said:

makingmusic476 said:

Nintendo, Sony Japan, and Polyphony Digital beg to differ.

Okay, so who else, then? I believe those comments, even if they were misquoted/completely wrong, are pretty spot on. There are only a few developers in Japan who create games that sell very well while there are more in the West.

Besides Nintendo and SCE?  Level-5, Game Freak, Cooking Mama Inc, Capcom, Hudson, Square Enix, Team Ninja, Sonic Team, Sora, Intelligent Systems, HAL, Clap Hanz, Sega, Dimps, Altron, Tose... many of these companies have had games this generation that sold more than Epic's Gears of War titles in fact.  

Again, Japanese developers haven't "fallen behind", they've more tripped sideways and now largely focus on a different market (DS/PSP/Wii). For the platforms that JP devs really focus on, their games are also unmatched technically.  Western games on DS/PSP/Wii by in large look like utter shit.  Why can't western devs compete?

This is the main point. It's the conundrum of Nintendo's non-competition, but played out in the 3rd party sphere. Sony and Microsoft say Nintendo can't compete, but it's simply a matter of them having a different focus. The same goes here. Everyone howls about how Japanese devs have lost their way, but the only sphere where Japanese devs are behind is in PS3/360 development, which is the smallest userbase pair of consoles you can stitch together. Go on to Wii, DS, or PSP, and you'll find that it's almost exclusively Japanese developers making games worth buying, and even the PSP which is derided as a dying platform can point and laugh at either PS3 or 360's install base.

 

It just shows that there's a fundamental split happening between the self-proclaimed "hardcore" and the rest of the industry. In the world of the former, PS3/360 and Western developers are king, in the other world, Wii, DS, and PSP have the numbers, and the Japanese are the clear leaders.