Fri, Feb 17, 2012 | 00:12 GMT
Report – Japanese developers losing money, reliant on external tech
A University of Gothenburg report has painted a grim picture of Japanese development.
The data was extracted from 74 CEOs of Japanese gaming companies by Mirko Ernkvist. Gamasutra plucked a few highlights from the report (PDF), most notably that 48.2% of respondents could not report a profit over the last few years.
Many responding companies reported a reliance on external technology over the last three years, with 57.8% having used licensed game engines.
40.6% used physics engines, 37.5% used software configuration management programs and 35.9% used AI engines.
Many companies seem to lean on outsourcing both to complete projects and bring in funds; 63.5% of companies had worked on other company’s games, while 78.7% has outsourced their own projects.
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Posted in: Japan, Trade
Tags: University of Gothenburg
2 comments
#1
sb319
17/02/12, 7:52 am
If only 37.5% of the respondents claim to use SCM tools such as revision control systems (Perforce etc) than I think we can safely say that a large number of those CEOs either (a) in charge of highly amateur non-AAA studios or (b) didn’t understand the question. Only bedroom coders can get by without revision control in 2012.
#2
Da Man
17/02/12, 11:37 am
Nah, they do everything ‘eastern style’.
They have Zen in place of revision control systems.