Japanese devs/publishers. What's up with them?

[S.T.A.G.E.]

Adinnieken said:

I'm sorry, but your original premise is wrong.

Of the studios that developed games for the original Xbox launch, only two were solely DOS/Windows developers before then. 

Bungie was an Apple developer.  The majority of the launch title developers had both PC and console development history, one studio had their first game on the Xbox console.  While the majority of developers for the original Xbox were western developers, four were not.  Tecmo/Team Ninja, and Sega being the two most prominante Japanese developers that released launch games on the Xbox. 

The most successful company to release FPS games on the Xbox, besides Microsoft, was Ubisoft and the Tom Clancey series of games.  Ubisoft's development history goes back to the Famicon/Super Nintendo, and include a number of different platforms as well as consoles.  Epic released it's Unreal games on the Xbox, but those actually came after the PS2 and Dreamcast versions were released.

The investment necessary to make the transition to multi-core, parrallel, and modern GPU development wasn't made by most Japanese developers.  While most Western developers were building 3D rendering and physics engines, Japanese developers were still largely locked in 2D gaming with scrollers, and platform games.  Western games made the transition to consoles long before the Xbox. 

Rare showed an FPS could work on the console.  What was missing from FPS games on the console wasn't the control scheme, but the means to play against someone.  With the original Xbox and Xbox LIVE FPS gaming began to climb, and it was Ubisoft that rode that wave. 

The only Western developer that Microsoft had to drag, kicking and screaming to the Xbox platform was EA.  In order to get EA to release an Xbox LIVE enabled game, Microsoft had to sell off it's sports games IPs.  

If two Western PC only developers are your evidence for Microsoft bringing PC developers to the console, it's a really weak argument.   The evidence, which a few minutes on Wikipedia will demonstrate, is that the companies that developed games for the Xbox were largely developers that had crossed over to consoles long-before the Xbox was released. 

Had the PS3 not included the Cell processor, had it ended up being a more powerful PS2, far more game developers would have made the transition the Gen7 consoles.  The problem was the investment to develop on the PS3 was far greater than most developers could afford, but fanbase for Japanese games was on the PS3, and while the PS3 sold well in Japan, in NA it didn't do as well.  With a smaller fanbase, development split between two consoles, and the development costs excessive for one over the other, it wasn't profitable. 

I don't think you quite grasp how significant of a paradigm shift happened in 2005/2006.  Prior to 2005/2006, game developers pushed the hardware on the PC.  They were constantly well ahead of the technological curve of hardware.  That's why you see software-based solutions to graphical processing problems prior to 2006.  The introduction of multi-core processors was the first change, which no game developer took advantage of until the Xbox 360.  PC developers were happy to get a core all to themselves that they could use and let the OS play in the other core.  A tri-core processor, with six hardware threads, all for a game was a big deal.  That was just multi-core symmetrical processing.  The PS3's Cell processor threw and even more extravagant wrench into the works, parrallel processing/programming.  Multi-core symmetrical processing/programming is still far easier than programming for a parrallel processor.  The concept was so foreign to developers that some of the initial PS3 games only utilized the PowerPC core, none of the SPUs.  Programming for parrallel processing involves a lot of code and memory management, as well as performance and timing tweaking.  It was a huge hurdle.  Kudos to Naughty Dog for all of the investment they made in it, but the fact that so many successful western developers struggled with it, there was no hope for small studios that didn't have large cash reserves or Sony to back them while they learned. 

The final challenge were the dynamic performance gains achieved in GPU.  Where as in the past developers were pushing the capabilities of the GPUs almost as soon as they were released, the GPUs that came in the latter part of the decade were far more capable than what most developers could easily push.  Crytek is the only developer I know of in the past 7 years to push the hardware technology that was available to it, and that was early on with Crysis.

Had the PS3 been easier to program for, I think things would have faired better for Japanese developers.        

 

 

DOS/Apple/PC = Still non console gaming that made games for home computers. FACT

Halo was to be a MAC game to show how powerful the MAC could be. Steven Jobs though the Halo was coming to the Mac to show how powerful their computer was but Bungie wanted Apple to buy them and they didn't. MS offered to buy and it became a PC/Xbox game once they bought Bungie outright.

Don't tell me they didn't take from the PC realm because they did.

Team Ninja was not and Xbox developer, nor was Sega. They were all third party who had second party contracts with Microsoft.

To all of the people who say hardware isn't an issue for third party devs with Nintendo IT IS! Nintendo answered the question of whether console games could play FPS titles properly.

Again, without the N64's analog stick we would not have been able to Play Doom 64 or Duke Nukem 64 properly on consoles, both which came out in the US before Goldeneye ever landed. Goldeneye was the pinnacle of FPS on consoles at the time because of the realistic hit detection, great map making and set a great standard for Perfect Dark. Rare then split off and created Free Radical who made Time Splitters. 

Enough of the history, back to the point. 

Microsoft took the top PC gaming titles from the PC realm  with them in a flood.

Microsoft brought Lionhead, Valve, Bioware, id was dabbling part time with consoles until they saw the 360's specs and decided to work full time on Rage specifically for consoles, Bethesda came over with Elder Scrolls. Ubisoft and Eidos were making and Dice had been making games. They came in by the boatload. Theres much, much more and they all just seemed to flood in this generation. With all of the western devs who were mostly working on PC flooding in, you mean to tell me this had zero effect on inspiring or increasing the credibility of western games vs the Japanese? They left them in the dust. 

As for the Japan...

had the PS3 been easier to develop for, the result would've remained basically the same. On paper the PS3 was more powerful than the 360. In reality it only had better looking exclusives. Japanese haven't been pushing tech like western devs. Never to the extent, they only have been pushing gameplay, but not really expansive worlds and playing with others in them. Essentially westerners were ahead of them by a generation already. If you look at it PC gaming today is being held back by console gaming, because the top publishers and developers are waiting for console revenue. How many Japanese devs outside of Inafune do you see getting on the case of Japan? Very few. Hideo Kojima has to be depressed because he's figuratively alone right now. I still love the games, but come on, who are we kidding here? Platinum Games is in the safe zone right now developing for the Wii U and you know it. Monolith will finally get hardware to make a proper JRPG and I think right now outside of Versus thats the only one I am interested in. Lost Odyssey was great and when I get the Wii U I will definitely look into buying the digital version of the Last Story.

Western development is growing at an alarming rate and the only thing holding back multiplat PC devs is console development. On the upside their company grows because of the revenue they bring it from consoles. Hopefully Japan shapes up for next gen, because when we see how crazy and expansive the next gen WRPG's are the JRPG's better match up.