Tag Archives: Yoshiki Okamoto

Game Republic head Yoshiki Okamoto thinks it’s all over. Almost. The ex-Capcom man think western development is now too far ahead for Japan to ever revisit the glory days.

“It’s almost too late,” he said. “During the Famicom (NES) era, Japanese video games comprised 70 percent of all video games.

“And currently, it’s like 15 or 20 percent, isn’t it? Now, Western games are more advanced. For games like GTAIV, those guys are spending something like 5 or 10 years to make them. Even if we thought about catching up with them now, they’d still be making progress.

“But, not necessarily giving up, it’s just not possible to catch up in a single lifetime.”

He has a point. Thanks, Kotaku.

According to this, Brash and Game Republic have signed a deal to work on a game based on a “popular Hollywood film,” for release in 2010.

Game Republic was founded by Yoshiki Okamoto, developer of Resident Evil and Street Fighter II, and most recently delivered Genji: Days of the Blade and Folklore for Sony’s PlayStation 3.

“One of my goals with games is to do something revolutionary with something that has been never been seen before,” commented Okamoto. “The opportunity to re-imagine a fictional world provided by a compelling Hollywood IP using the interactive medium of games is very exciting to me.”