Japanese Game Development

Anyone who pays any amount of attention to trends in gaming has probably noticed the decline of Japanese developed games in the last generation. From Square Enix to Capcom, many Japanese developers are falling behind in the furthering of modern game design. Horrible control schemes, poor online implementation, year after year of the same thing, and outright refusal to change are the main problems but certainly aren't the least. The West has become the main innovator in gaming, a huge change from the old way of things.

Lucky for us, some of the major game developers from Japan are learning that, even if the rest of the country isn't quite yet. Keiji Inafune (Capcom), Tomonobu Itagaki (Tecmo/Team Ninja), and Shinji Mikami (Capcom, particularly the creator of Resident Evil) have all left their respective Japanese companies in search of more creativity in their fields. More recently, Fumito Ueda of Team Ico has announced he will be doing the same. Many of them have stated publicly that they left because Japan is simply too far behind.

Japanese game development needs to evolve and evolve soon or some of the world's most well-known franchises could flounder. Everyone always praises the new Mario or Zelda game but they know it is usually just more of the same. Nintendo has done okay with Super Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword, pushing their franchises forward a small bit, but is it enough? What about Monster Hunter with its inexorable sequels that are clones of the last game? Capcom wonders why these games aren't popular over here even though we have told them why several times - poor controls, too much tutorials, etc. Japanese developers need to learn to listen to the West's concerns and evolve or we might lose interest entirely.