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[LazyParrot]

What is this 'change' they are extremely resistant to? What do you expect them to change that people don't like? seems to me that their uniqueness has helped the whole country stay relevant and strong, even when they have their flaws, like any country on this earth

Have people already forgotten how Japanese games were dominating console gaming up until the PS3/360 era, where they pretty much shat the bed? That generation established a ton of the standards that made consoles what they are today, from increased reliance on third-party engines and middleware on the development side to standardized control schemes and a focus on online multiplayer in the games themselves, and a ton of Japanese developers either never managed to make the switch or took ages to do so. Steam also really took off during that time, and they totally slept on that opportunity as well.

With the exception of Nintendo (who, as we all know, can do no wrong), most of the Japanese studios that are still relevant today got there because they eventually adopted the "Western" way of doing things.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

You couldn't pay me to play TLOU2 over Devil May Cry 5.

TLOU2 has good core gameplay, provided you're ok with wading through story/flashbacks/etc to get to it.

 

[nush]

Have people already forgotten how Japanese games were dominating console gaming up until the PS3/360 era, where they pretty much shat the bed?

The fallout from them chasing the mobile market and outsourcing their IP to western devs is still being felt it seems.

 

[Madflavor]

The best games I’ve played in the past few years, are mostly games made by Japan. BG3 and CP77 are the only western made games that blew me away, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they were also made by European developers.

 

[iHaunter]

I dunno. The Stellar Blade demo had some of those lower-than-low quality environment textures UE4 seems to facilitate even with 13GB of RAM and SSD.

It uses Unreal Engine 5 which is a Western Engine no?

 

[Esppiral]

No longer? It has been a while now

Since the ps3 era their tech has laked.

 

[nial]

Based and truthpilled, even if I don't necessarily agree with it as a whole.
I can't wait for Death Stranding 2 to make Capcom, SEGA, Konami and Square Enix look bad in comparison.

 

[Metnut]

It’s a race to nowhere to try and keep up with the graphics and tech of the “top” western games IMO. Japanese devs can make games like Elden Ring, FF7 Rebirth, Yakuza, Persona 3 Remake, etc. that all look great and are great games and have developmental budgets a fraction of western ones.

Japan is kicking ass lately IMO. With smaller development budgets, they can release “2.5A” games and sell 1-3 million copies and get a nice ROI.

Edit: that’s not even including Nintendo which churns out $300M grossing games like nothing on nearly decade old tech

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Western "technology" is just hugely bloated budgets and staff counts...

Which it is true, the Japanese devs cannot compete with.

 

[SantaC]

Yeah but gameplay is better in Japan games

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

I dunno. The Stellar Blade demo had some of those lower-than-low quality environment textures UE4 seems to facilitate even with 13GB of RAM and SSD.

I have to agree ...it ain't that good graphically

 

[Alexios]

Capcom at least kept up just fine, if not led the way, since the PS360 era this was first brought up (MT Framework was ace between DMC4, RE5/6, Lost Planet 1/2 etc.), obviously Platinum Games' first JRPG wouldn't be a tech leader, I doubt it had the budget for it anyway.

It's not like every western game is on the same level, only a certain type of cinematic game Japanese devs don't even do may be seen as somewhat ahead, otherwise whole genres like fighting games seem to be on par in Japan if not better (tech wise, they rule gameplay).

Other companies did great as well, like Kojima's or Tecmo's output that generation or recently Sega with the Dragon Engine (even if it's not to the standard of what's gonna be seen in GTAVI, for their own usage and the breadth and scope of their games it's pretty amazing).

This guy's games tended to be well behind the curve even if restricting standards to just his own region, maybe he has an inferiority complex that surfaces, or tries to make it like his studios' shortcomings were more generalized in the whole region, not just their own problem.

Also while there are plenty janky ass Japanese games (like his own, lol) they tend to go for performance & gameplay quality more than presenting ace bullshots/trailers he may be going by, there were better looking games than DMC4 too but not in flawless blazing fast 60fps.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

As a counterpoint, I find Team Asobi’s (Astro Bot) approach to graphics far more satisfying than Insomniac Games’. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison with a small team making a small launch game but Asobi still punched well above their weight.

They didn’t sacrifice resolution, framerate, texture resolution or anisotropic filtering chasing ray tracing or open world gameplay or whatever it is that lead to Spider-Man 2’s 60fps smudgefest. Even the VRR 40fps mode has unsatisfying image quality suggesting the 30fps mode was the focus for that game. Ratchet & Clank was much better looking in its range of (ray tracing off) modes, many patched in post-launch with VRR.

I think Astro Bot may use ray tracing in the hub area with the glass-housed CPU character buts it’s a very selective use, only reflecting a few bots on a curved glass slightly matte surface that’s less revealing of the missing lower resolution reflected details. I expected more games to make clever selective use like this, especially during cutscenes with closeups of characters’ eyes, like Ratchet & Clank for example.

Insomniac done fucked up with Spiderman 2 on multiple levels. Even in 30 fps Fidelity mode I was expecting better. They didn't come close to the reveal trailers graphics. Yes, Ratchet was MUCH more impressive when it came out in 2021 than Spiderman 2.

Everyone's talking about how they don't want or need better graphics in this thread and I'm over here still waiting for the generational leap to happen. This is the first gen EVER, that we haven't had that leap! It kinda kills me to see gamers standards for graphics seemingly dropped off too this gen. Between people not seeming to need "next gen visuals" and these consoles just not having the GPU grunt necessary we are left with what we have now- very small incremental improvement to visuals.

That's why I want the PS5 Pro so bad. From the beginning of the gen it was apparent, these are 1440p/60 for cross gen quality of game machines. Then, if you want a couple next gen features, they are 1080p/30 fps machines with crappy upscaling.

I love games with good gameplay and the majority of my games played are Japanese but I'm from the old school where I want to see a generational leap. That has always been THE reason for a new generation, don't believe people who say "I've been gaming since the NES so I know better than you that graphics don't matter". That's bullshit!

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

When will it be used tho

When there's consoles capable of running it well. These consoles "can run it" but being able to doesn't mean they do it well and that it's worth it. We've had two examples of UE5 imo that run UE5 and do the engine justice imo, Brothers Remake and Robocop, both ironically smaller budged and scope games. Hellblade 2 comes next month but has to use black bars Taki g up what, like 40 % of the screen? I'm calling it now too, it's not going to have good image quality on SX.

Once consoles are available with a beefy GPU and more memory bandwidth and/or great upscaling, THEN UE5 will take off on PC too.

 

[KXVXII9X]

They don't necessarily need to although it helps a lot with making some things a lot easier and gives developers more options. It is kind of ironic as I have been enjoying some Japanese made games more due to their limited scope and stylized art. I don't think the heavy push for hyperrealism and these gigantic open worlds really pay off in bettering the experience. The uncanny valley is even worse than before with more static assets. Gameplay has barely advanced, so you get these super realistic looking assets with PS2/PS3 level gameplay. It just takes me out.

It seems like some of the Japanese games industry is making some compromises like with some of their JRPG's by making them 2.5D with 3D assets and lighting like in the newest Star Ocean game and the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicles game.

 

[KXVXII9X]

Insomniac done fucked up with Spiderman 2 on multiple levels. Even in 30 fps Fidelity mode I was expecting better. They didn't come close to the reveal trailers graphics. Yes, Ratchet was MUCH more impressive when it came out in 2021 than Spiderman 2.

Everyone's talking about how they don't want or need better graphics in this thread and I'm over here still waiting for the generational leap to happen. This is the first gen EVER, that we haven't had that leap! It kinda kills me to see gamers standards for graphics seemingly dropped off too this gen. Between people not seeming to need "next gen visuals" and these consoles just not having the GPU grunt necessary we are left with what we have now- very small incremental improvement to visuals.

That's why I want the PS5 Pro so bad. From the beginning of the gen it was apparent, these are 1440p/60 for cross gen quality of game machines. Then, if you want a couple next gen features, they are 1080p/30 fps machines with crappy upscaling.

I love games with good gameplay and the majority of my games played are Japanese but I'm from the old school where I want to see a generational leap. That has always been THE reason for a new generation, don't believe people who say "I've been gaming since the NES so I know better than you that graphics don't matter". That's bullshit!

While I say I prefer stylization and not a fan of realism, I still want a graphical leap too. I guess more so presentation like with animation quality, art direction, physics, UI/HUD, AI behavior, soundtrack and sound design, etc.

The thing that frustrates me about this gen is a lot of the added power of these current gen consoles goes towards ever increasing world sizes and hyper realistic graphics when they can at least settle for something semi open with a hint of stylization. Everything seems wasted on asset quality and almost nothing on how anything moves or interacts with each other. Everything is smothered in post processing and AI upscaling which just muddies the realism anyways. I don't think it helps that UE5 games are still kind of rare even this far into the generation.

 

[Spooky Scary Skeleton]

Define "Western". Are we only strictly counting American/Canadian/British game companies?

Or are we just lumping the entire western, including European game companies, because they aren't really a fair comparison if you lump all of them and compare them to Japanese game companies.

American game companies tends to be overbloated with sequels and terrible games locked behind microtransactions, but only with AAA, considering the usual suspects who does this shit are EA, Blizzard Activision and Ubi most of time.

 

[Warablo]

Its mostly the controls and UI that are weird for me

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

He basically pointed out the only value (most) western non-indie-games have...

"It look shiny"
That's it. Complety fucking worthless, if the actual video game is mediocre at best.

I would rather play 1 Switch game that looks shittier then a PS2 game, then to play any non-indie western game made today.

Graphical fidelity is mind-numbingly boring, if the person who designed the game is more interested in pleasing their movie director daddies, then their are making an actually good video game.

 

[Boss Man]

I don’t buy this at all. Maybe the state of the art in graphics comes from the West, but frankly Japanese games are still better IMO and historically speaking the Japanese have been quicker than anyone to adopt foreign technology.

 

[Shut0wen]

I dont get why people are bashing japanese devs, they were the first to make photorealistic engines such as the fox engine and re engine, they are more then capable of doing it just theyd rather not due being cost effective plus theres no third party in japan thats even interested

 

[Shut0wen]

To be honest, this part from the lengthy IGN interview with Kim and Yoko has me a bit shook. It reminded me of the Insomniac leaks where an exec, I think, pointed out that they were investing significantly more money in SM2 development, but the overall fidelity wasn't increasing proportionally. They were questioning if most gamers would even notice a substantial difference in visual fidelity from the first SM. Just fucking stop this highly regarded chase for top level visuals, it's doing more harm than good to the industry.

Hit the nail on the head, id say we are lucky with covid because most devs now would of jumped on unreal engine 5 by now, sure it looks nice but current consoles and most pcs cant even hack it

 

[Robb]

Ironic considering TotK took the award for best technology recently.

They just focus on things other than shiny pixels.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Couldn't care less. Give me ten Nier automatas over one western game.

 

[AncientOrigin]

That is not true.Capcom Kojima Square all make amazing looking Games.Sonys Japanese Studios Too.

 

[SHA]

I have read this post 3 times and I still don’t understand it.

My bad, I was half awake, These ips will always take more time to make a sequel, that's an endless loop, if these mentioned games gonna take 10+ years to make them, then it's pointless.

 

[lh032]

Good.
We don't need another AAA ballooning budget shitty games

 

[Kumomeme]

Japan has a long history with companies developing their own engines, and it was hard to move away from that. We were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West.

basically this is issue with most of japanese developers and partly the reason why they fall from grace from PS2 era since PS3 era. their old way of doing things not feasible anymore. game development scale also increasing on HD era and they failed to adapt. we see the result happened with PS360 generation with some of exceptions.

Naoki Yoshida did mention something like this in No Clip documentary in addressing FFXIV 1.0 and Square Enix issue during PS360 era:

"Back then, we has swordsmiths, artisan that make katanas. We compared them to swordsmiths creating katanas one by one, by hand. And they would create world class quality, but meawhile the world is developing technologies so that they can cover sort of tedious manual labor through technology. And so going back to the gaming industry, once PS3 came out, technology has caught up, and you are able to cover those tedious task through technology. Square Enix did not change our old methods of creating assets. And we didnt have the resource to catch up on the technology to cover for that as well. And then the programmers we knew that we had and issue to catch up technology-wise were wrapped up in creating middleware. And ofcourse the artist are in that sort of artisan mindset thinking that, oh, i made the world best graphics and so it was very laborious and time consuming way of creating our assets. And i believe that is one of large problems we had in term of the original 1.0" - Naoki Yoshida

this basically might reflect overall situation of japanese devs industry that time. they failed to adapt fast and perhaps their old working method culture and their success during golden PS2 era put their head to high to the point failed to prepare for big change.

to be fair, from what i see some of big company aware of it at beginning of the PS360 generation. thats why Square Enix that time throw money on Crystal Tools however that engine turn out not as expected to be. even Kojima push Fox engine later on that wasted on Konami hands. only one obvious exception is Capcom where their MT Framework doing awesome job.

but so far as long there is company like Capcom and Square Enix keep pushing their limit, sooner or later they could catch up. UE4 existence also a boon toward japanese developers to bridging the gap with western devs.

 

[crackajack]

Devs here and there opting for mostly Unity or Unreal (Crytengine & lumberyard if they are crazy) is a trend that is also happening in the West though, it just happens that these engines are western. Fox Engine or Capcom incl unfinished Panta Rhei or even Luminous feel like the severe PS360 era struggles can be overcome if they actually try to compete. I guess Capcom could license their stuff to other Japanese devs, but other then them Japan seems to be headed towards Unreal.

 

[FingerBang]

Japan found success with not just games, but also anime and manga early on. After being exported to the West and other Asian countries, games, manga and anime have evolved in their own ways in each region respectively. As for games, it has proven difficult for Japanese companies to implement Western systems. Japan has a long history with companies developing their own engines, and it was hard to move away from that. We were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West. Even to this day, many schools don’t teach this to new developers. I think that Japanese people are not good at adapting technology from overseas. Chinese and South Korean games were much faster to use engines like Unreal for games with a Japanese aesthetic.”

He's hitting the nail right on the head.

Square Enix has developed FFVII Rebirth, a pretty big game, in less than four years. It is working on a final chapter that it expects to be released in three years and that runs pretty well without major bugs overall.

Building your own engine for the specific game you're working on used to make sense when things were much simpler. Nowadays, it's a luxury only massive studios can afford, and many still decide not to. That's because it's an enormous pain in the ass with technology moving as fast as today.

Even first-party engines struggle to keep up, and there's no ray tracing even in first-party games (looking at you, Sony). Using UE4/5 saves a ton of development cost AND TIME, even if you're giving Epic a cut because they have a triple-A studio working exclusively on the engine and can follow the latest trend and be up-to-date without being constrained by any deadline.

It's sad, but that model works. It'd be nice if more companies were willing to have their triple-A ready engine with the same business model instead of having Godot and Unity as alternatives (both perfect for smaller games but not for what is expected by modern games). I wonder if Guerrilla will ever do the same with the Decima engine. It's probably not ready, but it makes sense in a hardware-agnostic future.

 

[Hudo]

Ironic considering TotK took the award for best technology recently.

They just focus on things other than shiny pixels.

I am legitimately still impressed at how robust the implementation of the physics system in TotK is. Never broke on me once and I've tried some edge cases. The guys and gals and Nintendo who implemented this did good.

 

[Arsic]

Remember when the reward for progressing a final fantasy game was a cut scene with more visuals and a potential CG scene?

The rest of the game relies on amazing art style direction.

Games like viewtiful Joe, Okomi, wind waker, etc are timeless thanks to art.

They don’t need breaking edge graphics because art is more important.

 

[Hunnybun]

It's been obvious for a long time that Japan has become a technological backwater when it comes to games. It's only now people are starting to admit it.

Seems like AAA games have had a declining market over there for years - maybe even decades - now. The gap between something like Forspoken and a top Western effort like Ratchet or Spiderman 2 is absolutely staggering. They're like a generation apart - and the Western games usually run at a higher resolution too. It's a big fucking difference.

 

[Kataploom]

Platinum sucks with their engine. Most Japanese devs have used the Unreal engine since the PS3/360 days. Look at what Square and Namco are pumping out. Capcom is the only one with a good inhouse engine. Konami fucked it up. Kojima is making better looking games with Decima than GG.

None of Final Fantasy post 15 have looked better than it and it was done in an internal engine, once they went to UE games started to look... worse? IDK, but it has to do with lighting engine... Luminous Engine looks just right, Days Gone is the only game I've seen coming to this level on an open world (and FF7R isn't even open world).

They don't necessarily need to although it helps a lot with making some things a lot easier and gives developers more options. It is kind of ironic as I have been enjoying some Japanese made games more due to their limited scope and stylized art. I don't think the heavy push for hyperrealism and these gigantic open worlds really pay off in bettering the experience. The uncanny valley is even worse than before with more static assets. Gameplay has barely advanced, so you get these super realistic looking assets with PS2/PS3 level gameplay. It just takes me out.

It seems like some of the Japanese games industry is making some compromises like with some of their JRPG's by making them 2.5D with 3D assets and lighting like in the newest Star Ocean game and the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicles game.

Exactly. The only jap devs pursuing "high tech" are those aiming to the west, where people need to excite their dopamine with "novelty" (instead of, IDK, playing a videogame or so), the rest make games for the people that don't give a shit about realism, so they literally don't need to. Not only it's more expensive but also would report them no benefit since their target audience care more about art direction.

It seems like japanese devs only focus on what works for them financially instead messing up with emormous debts and loses like in the west, for which western studios had to comply with ESG score (you know, inclusivity features we all love) just to get access to them.

While I say I prefer stylization and not a fan of realism, I still want a graphical leap too. I guess more so presentation like with animation quality, art direction, physics, UI/HUD, AI behavior, soundtrack and sound design, etc.

Oh, you didn't get the memo... "Stylization" here means "bad graphics" because they don't care about "weeb shit" .

BTW, for me the best looking games out there and with barely any competition are Xenoblade games... They just managed to check every box in my list (except for 60 fps)... It has something most RPG and even most western open worlds don't have: Actual sense of scale... That combined with art style make an unbeatable combo.

He basically pointed out the only value (most) western non-indie-games have...

Most western realistic games bore me just by seeing them, and not kidding

And what's worse, their stories aren't for everyone... I don't like most north american game stories, TLOU? I thought it was "meh", and basically any other story out there is conceptually simple and very cliche, which isn't great for everyone and if that's the only thing they have, they can just serve as pretty benchmarks for new GPU upgrades lol.

For example Hellblade, Alan Wake, A Plague Tale... Damn I love those games' stories, Europeans are just in their own league, so "story focus" isn't always a strength for western games, it can also be a dead weight if gameplay is just modern "point and click" (just using twin sticks).

 

[skit_data]

Idk, FF16 looks crazy good to me at times

 

[violence]

Japan always excelled at doing a lot with a little. And having visited Japan recently their toilet technology is beyond Americas.

I always assumed they didn’t have the budgets to compete with the Western Studios starting with the 360/PS3 generation

 

[WitchHunter]

This isn't criticizing the game design. It's just pointing out that a lot of the game engines aren't keeping up with what's coming. Korean devs don't have amazing proprietary engines either, they just seem to be pretty good at using Unreal. Seems the main ones pushing into NextGen are Unreal 5, Decima. I assume Naughty Dog's engine as well when we finally see their next game, Rockstar's engine, Snowdrop (Ubisoft).

Not really seeing the big game engine demo stuff we used to from Japan like Luminous, Crystal Engine, Fox Engine. Capcom's RE engine is pretty solid but seems to buckle a bit with open world, and probably can't compete with Metahuman stuff, but they are going for a more stylized look.

Tecmo's Engine, FromSoft's engine are both falling behind.

Because why keep up with something that you don't need? Graphics already reached a point where the previous gen is more than enough in current gen to keep people entertained. There is really no need to jump on trains that would bring you only misery in the long run.

Fuck the fancy graphics, bring in more creativity.

 

[//DEVIL//]

Funny he says that when I think FF7 rebirth / tekken 8 / GT7 are some of the best if not the best looking games of their field. Rebirth is a stunning looking game.

I dont need ray tracing for a game to look good. I do not think cyberpunk looks good either to be honest either.

 

[SmokedMeat]

But really we should be talking about how the boys in Europe seem to have found the healthy balance. Cyberpunk and Baldurs Gate 3 seem to prove that, great gameplay and visuals

This is nothing new. PC developers have always provided great gameplay and visuals,

 

[saintjules]

Nani?

 

[Fabieter]

Dated or not they bring their games more finished to the market. Japanese games are a farcry of the train whreck of alot of western releases.

 

[rofif]

Yet ff16 is one of best looking games. They still manage

 

[Saber]

Have fun playing games with ultra definition hairy ass from angry realistic ulgy women. I take what dated japanese games have to offer every day easly.

 

[March Climber]

Yet ff16 is one of best looking games. They still manage

It helps very much that FF16 had a fantastic sense of artistic direction and cinematography. If more and more JP devs lean into this I think there would be less and less complaints about their graphical merits.