The world, ladies and gentlemen, is changing. Remember 20 years ago when everything we were playing was coming out of Japan? Not really the same anymore, is it?
Japanese development isn’t what it once was, and publisher Ignition have made a few comments about just that. Business development director Shane Bettenhausen told Siliconera: “There are very few independent guys in Japan that don’t have a Western subsidiary, but those little guys need someone to help them, [and they] don’t know how to succeed in the West and the Japanese market is shrinking.
“I think the future is to make games together for the global market. That’s what I really want to do with Japan is actually from the ground up create a game with a Japanese developer that would work everywhere.”
It’s an idea we’re yet to see fully realised. Capcom is buying up developers in the West and plenty of today’s Western games take influence from Japan, but a fully accessible Japanese title? That’s something we’d like to see.
