Wed, Sep 24, 2008 | 14:26 BST
Yoshida: Games tech power “has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe”
Speaking to VG247, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that Japanese developers are making “slow progress” compared to the West thanks to a generational shift in technology power to the US and Europe.
“What’s happened since the days of PS2; technology becomes more sophisticated, and more and more intense graphics technology [has appeared],” he said.
“The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe.”
Geography and the intrinsic needs of creating graphic-heavy games have led to a struggling Japanese games tradem the exec said.
“There are also talented people, engineers… in the US and Europe, and it’s relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games,” he added.
“That’s not the case in Japan. Because they don’t have a large base, like the movie industry; there aren’t [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. That’s making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress.”
Yoshida pointed to the obvious examples of Metal Gear and Gran Turismo as ongoing Japanese success stories, but said the rest of the industry in Japan was not so fortunate.
“It’s amazing that some teams like Kojima-san’s team and Polyphony Digital are still creating such immense games,” he said. “But that’s not [indicative] of the core Japanese software industry, unfortunately.”
Yoshida was speaking at Games Convention in Germany.
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Posted in: America, Development, Europe, Hot, Japan, PS3, Sony, Trade
Tags: Shuhei Yoshida
5 comments
#1
Blerk
24/09/08, 3:16 pm
Japan really do seem to be admitting defeat on this when you’d think it should be spurring them on to do better. I guess when your home market doesn’t really give a shit it’s hard to justify investing more into these areas to your money men.
#2
Quiiick
24/09/08, 3:29 pm
It’s very, very sad to see Japan loosing this battle. I’m a big fan of games from Hideo Kojima. There’s a cultural aspect to these games you will never find here in the west. Like a perfect aka miso-soup or a plate of nigri-sushi, there’s just nothing better …
I hope that at least a few studios will survive and not try to mimic western philosophy in game-design.
#3
patlike
24/09/08, 3:32 pm
Sounds to me like they’ve just accepted it. There are only so many Japanese developers and there are more developers in the West. I think he has a point, to be honest.
#4
DrDamn
24/09/08, 3:45 pm
Sounds like he is stating facts rather than admitting defeat as such. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Bigger and more badass is not necessarily better. A lot of the biggest selling games still come from Japan too – via Nintendo mainly. They just need to play to their strengths.
#5
akiraman
25/09/08, 5:22 am
from: http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/09/24/sonys-yoshida-admits-japan-lagging-in-games-technology/2#c14500024
The Japanese gameplay and general game mechanics / thought process are actually a lot better than Euro/US games: the teams are smaller, the projects more personal and the end product more relevant to to the team working on it.
I still love games from Japan unlike the cookie cutter games from the west.