Despite being one of the most successful games released by Remedy Entertainment, Alan Wake II still hasn't recouped its expenses, according to a new financial report.
19.04.2024 - 04:09 / wccftech.com / Yoko Taro / Francesco De Meo / Hyung-Tae Kim
Since the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era, Japanese developers have struggled to keep up with their Western colleagues, as, according to the NieR series creator, they are not good at adapting technology from overseas for multiple reasons.
Discussing game development with Stellar Blade creative director Hyung-Tae Kim in a lengthy interview posted on IGN, Yoko Taro highlighted how it has proven difficult for Japanese developers to implement Western rendering systems, mostly because they are used to developing their own engines. Japanese developers were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West, and even to this day, many schools still don't teach this to new developers. In general, Yoko Taro feels that Japanese developers are not good at adapting technology from overseas, while Chinese and South Korean developers are much faster at using engines like Unreal for games with Japanese aesthetics.
While many Japanese developers definitely struggled with their proprietary engines, such as Square Enix with the Luminous Engine, which was used for only two games before getting shelved, other developers have developed great engines, such as CAPCOM with the RE Engine, which powers diverse games such as multiple entries in the Resident Evil series, Monster Hunter Rise, Devil May Cry 5, Street Fighter 6 and Dragon's Dogma 2. With Unreal Engine 5 setting a new benchmark for visual quality, it will be interesting to see if Japanese developers will use it to power their future games or if any proprietary engine will be able to match its quality.
Despite being one of the most successful games released by Remedy Entertainment, Alan Wake II still hasn't recouped its expenses, according to a new financial report.
Stellar Blade has launched to huge acclaim this weekend, but not every fan is delighted with Shift Up’s PS5 debut. Eagle-eyed players spotted some changes to a couple of costumes in the final product, prompting accusations of censorship from publisher Sony. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time the Japanese giant has requested changes in PlayStation games, as more titillating cutscenes in titles like Devil May Cry 5 were inexplicably edited on PS4 in the past. This decision was later reversed.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will be a conservative hardware evolution over the original model, according to a recent report from a Chinese peripheral manufacturer.
It’s been barely a month since the reboot of horror classic Alone in the Dark arrived, but it looks like developers Pieces Interactive are now making a number of layoffs in the wake of its release.
Resident Evil 9, the next entry in the CAPCOM survival horror series rumored to sport open-world features, has apparently been delayed internally and may skip its 2025 release window.
Who is the real-life model Eve is based on in Stellar Blade? Eve's curves and revealing attire has attracted a lot of fans to Shift Up's console debut, but is she inspired by a real person and who is it? On this page, as part of our Stellar Blade guide, we're going to answer the question: who is the real-life model Eve is based on?
Indie developers have contributed to a large bundle of games to raise money for Palestinian relief.
If you were concerned that the PS5-exclusive Stellar Blade, out 26th April on PS5, might run afoul of Sony's censors, fear not. Developer ShiftUp is advertising that the game will remain entirely uncensored in all regions, including Japan.
Stellar Blade developer Shift Up quite clearly took a lot of inspiration from PS4 great NieR: Automata during the making of its soon-to-be-released PS5 exclusive, but in the case of Automata director Yoko Taro, he thinks that the student has already become the master. In an interview with IGN Japan (via Eurogamer), Taro says Stellar Blade «is a really amazing game. I'd say that it's much better than NieR: Automata.»
Nier Automata's director believes Japanese game developers have had difficulty implementing "Western systems" because it was hard for them to move away from Japanese-made game engines.
A significant number of game developers are unsure about the long-term sustainability of the live-service monetization model, according to a recent survey. Generally, live-service games are those that receive continual updates after launch, often divided into seasons or chapters, and are usually accompanied by a monetization scheme like battle passes. The goal is to keep players engaged and continuously playing the game and spending money, and the model has proven extremely lucrative for developers.
Stellar Blade has invited quite a lot of comparisons to other titles in recent weeks, ever since the game's demo officially dropped. First thought to be a Devil May Cry/Bayonetta inspired hack-and-slash, fans jumped into the game to see that developer Shift Up has actually taken a lot of inspiration from the likes of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Nier Automata.