Almost Too Late

Game Republic's Yoshiki Okamoto today offered a pessimistic assessment of whether or not Japanese developers will ever catch back up with Western developers. He echoes the sentiments of Silent Hill: Homecoming producer Akira Yamaoka, who said late last year, 'Japan is in trouble' and Hideo Kojima who commented that Japan's leadership in the gaming sphere was 'becoming a thing of the past.'

"It's almost too late," said Okamoto according to a Kotaku translation. "During the Famicom (NES) era, Japanese video games comprised 70 percent of all video games. And currently, it's like 15 or 20 percent, isn't it? Now, Western games are more advanced. For games like GTA IV, those guys are spending something like 5 or 10 years to make them. Even if we thought about catching up with them now, they'd still be making progress. But, not necessarily giving up, it's just not possible to catch up in a single lifetime."

Force Unleashed on Xbox Live Sets Download Record

The Force is indeed strong with this one. The Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo has been downloaded 2.3 million times on both Xbox Live and PSN.
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Game Developer

Game Developer magazine is now on-line:
http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/200809/?sub_id=Dazf2Nfzxyy2E

Insomniac to Open Studio in North Carolina

RALEIGH, NC--North Carolina is becoming a hotbed of video game development. Insomniac Games is the latest game company to target the Raleigh-Durham area (known as the Research Triangle with its collection of technology, video game and biotech companies) as the perfect location to make games. For the first time in its 14-year history, the independent developer is expanding beyond its Burbank, California studio.
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New Robotic Arms

Miyamoto

Although Miyamoto's name has become one of the few in the video game industry to actually reach the mainstream (he came in first on the Time 100), the creator of Mario and Donkey Kong isn't one to seek out the spotlight. All he cares about is that Nintendo thrives. "What's important is that the people that I work with are also recognized and that it's the Nintendo brand that goes forward and continues to become strong and popular," he said when asked about comparisons to Walt Disney. He added, "And if people are going to consider the Nintendo brand as being on the same level as the Disney brand, that's very flattering and makes me happy to hear."

Miyamoto also reflected on how he's changed as a designer in recent years. "I would say that over the last five years or so, the types of games I create has changed somewhat," he said. "Whereas before I could kind of use my own imagination to create these worlds or create these games, I would say that over the last five years I've had more of a tendency to take interests or topics in my life and try to draw the entertainment out of that."

Certainly with games like Pikmin (inspired by his love of gardening), Nintendogs (inspired by his family getting a dog) or Wii Fit (inspired by his own recent weight obsession), his change in game design philosophy is quite evident.

EA Extends Offer a Third Time, Take-Two Rebuffs It Again

Same old, same old. EA won't up its offer, and instead simply extended the deadline, while Take-Two politely told them to take their offer and stick it where the sun don't shine.

-- Posted by James Brightman on Monday, May 19, 2008

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New Games

Some news on some new games:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/02/01/intv.west.game.on.cnn

Activision Blizzard!

ARS Technica: Activision has announced some earth-shattering news: the gaming giant would be merging with Vivendi Games to form one monolithic gaming company called Activision Blizzard. The deal, worth almost $20 billion, will see Activision CEO Bobby Kotick keep his place as CEO, while Vivendi's Bruce Hack will become the Chief Corporate Officer of the combined company. After all the stock shuffling, Vivendi will own approximately 68 percent of the new company. [more]