Sony’s Yoshida agrees: Japan lagging in video game technology race
A couple weeks back, we heard Ryan Payton expressing his thoughts that Japan was no longer the center of video game development. Today we hear how Sony Worldwide Studios big wig Shuhei Yoshida echoes Payton’s thoughts, saying that Japan is starting to lag in its video game technology, especially when compared to the speed in which it’s progressing in the US and Europe. Despite gaming feats like MGS4 or GT5: Prologue, there doesn’t seem to be enough to go by with in game technology in in Japan.
A couple weeks back, we heard Ryan Payton expressing his thoughts that Japan was no longer the center of video game development. As it turns out, he just might be right, if Sony Worldwide Studio big wig Shuhei Yoshida‘s word hold any water.
Yoshida echoes Payton’s thoughts, saying that Japan is starting to lag in its video game technology, especially when compared to the speed in which it’s progressing in the US and Europe. Yoshida explains to vg247:
WhatÂ’s happened since the days of PS2; technology becomes more sophisticated, and more and more intense graphics technology [has appeared]. The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe.
(Sorry, Mr. Yoshida, if I may interject – because I’m a Hydrophobia geek like that – case in point: Blade Interactive’s Hydro Engine. And then there’s Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet engine too. Both studios from Europe. Of course, there’s also the ever-ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3… Anyways, moving on…)
There are also talented people, engineersÂ… in the US and Europe, and itÂ’s relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games.
ThatÂ’s not the case in Japan. Because they donÂ’t have a large base, like the movie industry; there arenÂ’t [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. ThatÂ’s making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress.
ItÂ’s amazing that some teams like Kojima-sanÂ’s team and Polyphony Digital are still creating such immense games. But thatÂ’s not [indicative] of the core Japanese software industry, unfortunately.
Will the plague continue, or will they eventually get back to speed? Only time will tell how Japan will surpass this current predicament.
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