Are Japanese developers bad with gaming technology?

@pc_rocks: Last I checked, most of the world's biggest tech companies are in Asia... Unless you were specifically talking about just gaming tech companies?

Gaming, since that's the topic. However even in terms of overall technology, West is also leading apart from telecommunications and consumer electronics. The most complex technologies are still western owned.

@pc_rocks: That's what "tech companies" usually means, companies specialising in electronics and/or IT. In terms of non-IT/electronic technologies, it varies greatly from industry to industry, with the West leading some industries and Asia leading some other industries.

I know that and even here West has a lead. They don't manufacture most of it yet they own the most complex parts like the actual design.

No, they just don't focus so heavily on graphical output.

@pc_rocks: You're being too vague and making broad generalizations. What do you mean by designs? Last I checked, Asia produces more annual patents than the West. And what non-electronic technology industries do you mean? Last I checked, Asian companies dominate the automobile industry.

I'm talking about semiconductor designs, processor designs, GPU designs etc. West has a clear edge there. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, ARM, Nvidia, Apple, IBM. Semiconductor fabrication - Intel. Inter processor/electrnoc buses etc - again mostly western. Satellites/Jet Propulsion/Rockets/Outer Space - west, automobiles - Germany is better or just as good (I know Toyotta sells the most but that wasn't the point), Electric cars - Tesla has the lead there, jets/airplanes/flight control systems/jet engines - US is a clear winner there, Google/MS/Amazon/Apple/Uber/Facebook/Oracle/IBM/SAP/Savion are far superior to whatever counterpart Asia has if any, weapon technology - I shouldn't even need to say anything here, hell many multimedia formats/codec/remaster technology - west.

The only thing Asia has over west is telecommunications technology/infrastructure, manufacturing but you know that's more to do with how high you're on the food chain as compare to lacking the actual capability and consumer electronics like TVs, Phones, Appliances etc.

@pc_rocks:

• Industrial designs - 4 out of the top 6 nations with the most industrial design patents are Asian, including the #1 spot (China).
• Semiconductor industry - 3 out of the top 5 largest semiconductor companies are Asian, including the #1 annual spot (Samsung).
• GPU manufacturers - 6 out of the top 10 best-ranked GPU manufacturing companies are Asian.
• Graphics cards - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked graphics card manufacturers are Asian, including the #1 spot (Asus).
• Motherboards - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked motherboard manufacturers are Asian, including the #1 spot (Asus).
• Space industry - 4 out of the top 6 biggest space launching nations are Asian, including the #1 spot (Russia).
• Automobile industry - 4 out of the top 7 largest automobile manufacturing companies are Asian, including the #1 spot (Toyota).
• Electric vehicles - 7 out of the top 10 largest electric vehicle manufacturing companies are Asian, including the #1 spot (Nissan).
• Internet companies - 3 out of the top 6 largest internet companies are Asian.
• Online websites - 4 out of the top 8 most popular online websites are Asian.
• Arms industry - 2 out of the top 3 largest arms developing nations are Asian.
• Multimedia formats - The MPEG standard (the basis for most multimedia codecs) was developed by a Japanese company (NTT).

Yikes this can’t be a serious question!

Sega

Nintendo

Sony

Capcom

Square

Enix

FromSoftware

Just to name a few all day hello.

Western companies having significant technical prowess in game design and engineering is a very recent phenomenon. Probably only within the past 15 years.

MH World and FF15 are actually pretty good looking games. Even though MH World is using a pretty meh engine (MT Framework Engine). While FF15 is actually using a pretty good engine which is a modified engine that is being used by FF14 ARR.

Then you have RE2 remake, which is using the RE Engine which is supposedly a modified/sister engine to the MT Framework Engine.

But you have games like Y's VIII which looks like dog ****

I don't know how that relates to what I said. Most of what you listed is manufacturing and capacity, it's hardly the same as cutting edge or having a lead. I already mentioned the actual design and how manufacturing has mostly to do with food chain economics rather than the capability. Same is the case with patents; number of patents alone don't mean anything if they aren't worth anything. Let's go one by one:

• Industrial designs - 4 out of the top 6 nations with the most industrial design patents are Asian, including the #1 spot (China). Again no. of patents alone don't mean anything. With my experience in the software industry I have seen how companies/universities pad the no. of patents by mixing/matching elements as well as downright plagiarized/low quality content. Going back to my point again, the actual designs are western and most Asian countries licensed it with ToT agreements to kickstart.
• Semiconductor industry - 3 out of the top 5 largest semiconductor companies are Asian, including the #1 annual spot (Samsung). Manufacturing+Volume =/= cutting edge. Intel has the most cutting edge nodes and their transistor density hasn't been met by anyone for a very long time. Don't be confused ith marketing terms.
• GPU manufacturers - 6 out of the top 10 best-ranked GPU manufacturing companies are Asian. Again manufacturing, the actual R&D and designs are owned by the west.
• Graphics cards - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked graphics card manufacturers are Asian, including the #1 spot (Asus). Manufacturing again.
• Motherboards - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked motherboard manufacturers are Asian, including the #1 spot (Asus). Manufacturing again.
• Space industry - 4 out of the top 6 biggest space launching nations are Asian, including the #1 spot (Russia). Again volume, not technology or cutting edge science, R&D. And how is Russia not included in west/Europe? The majority of their population resides in Europe.
• Automobile industry - 4 out of the top 7 largest automobile manufacturing companies are Asian, including the #1 spot (Toyota). Again volume and manufacturing, selling the most =/= best quality. Germany has been setting the standard here for quite sometime.
• Electric vehicles - 7 out of the top 10 largest electric vehicle manufacturing companies are Asian, including the #1 spot (Nissan). Again manufacturing and volume, not who's lead they are following.
• Internet companies - 3 out of the top 6 largest internet companies are Asian. Exclude china and their ban on similar foreign companies and what are you left with? AGain you missed the point, these very same companies also follows the standards set by western companies like Google, Amazon etc.
• Online websites - 4 out of the top 8 most popular online websites are Asian. See above point.
• Arms industry - 2 out of the top 3 largest arms developing nations are Asian. Again manufacturing and volume. The cutting edge stuff is all western and have been for over a century.
• Multimedia formats - The MPEG standard (the basis for most multimedia codecs) was developed by a Japanese company (NTT). Was! Long surpassed, all the new codecs/ remastering standards are west leading like Dolby etc.

Also let me tell you from my experience in the software industry and across different verticals. Many Asian countries for their cutting edge IT projects and digital transformation projects almost always get a western company to undertake them. Have seen it like clockwork. They get the western consultants, license western software and get western hardware. Just recently I'm part of a $100M+ project and you know what all the leading software companies that have implemented such solutions or have a product are all western and the funny things is all these companies built their solution/product by outsourcing it to cheap labor countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh etc however the actual architecture and solution design was still oversee by themselves.

A bit off topic here, do you know what happens when world bodies like World Bank, IMF and ICF fund projects or give grants to developing countries? It looks really cool in terms of PR that World Bank is bankrolling a $100-500M project for advancing a third world country but what actually happens is they mandate a western company's software/hardware be bought/licensed/implemented like IBM/MS etc. Even when a country or relevant department possess the capability and wanted to go with Open Source software they don't allow it. So you get their software license, their hardware, their consultants and at best they will allow you to do is implement the solution via their local business partner. What's worse is they don't even give the money to local/country's branch of that western company, it always goes to their western accounts like IBM UK, US etc. The country will be lucky to see 20% amount invested in their own country when all is said and done.

@pc_rocks:

• Intellectual patents - 5 out of the top 8 countries are Asian, including #1 (China).
• Industrial designs - 4 out of the top 6 countries are Asian, including #1 (China).
• Semiconductor industry - Asian companies (Samsung and TSMC) have the most cutting-edge nodes and transistor density, with 3nm semiconductor nodes. Intel is lagging far behind, stuck with outdated 10nm nodes.
• GPU chips - Fair enough. Nvidia and AMD clearly lead in this category. Although both the Nvidia and AMD GPU divisions are founded and led by Asian immigrants.
• Graphics cards - 7 out of the top 10 designer companies are Asian, including #1 (Asus). Not to be confused with GPU chips, which make up the core but not the entirety of a graphics card.
• Motherboards - 7 out of the top 10 designer companies are Asian, including #1 (Asus).
• Space industry - 4 out of the top 5 countries with the highest space research & exploration funding are Asian. Most of Russia's land is in Asia, and its space launch facilities are in Asia. Russia is never called "Western" but has always been "the East".
• Automobile industry - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked quality car brands are Asian, including #1 (Lexus).
• Electric vehicles - The most cutting-edge electric cars, with the highest real-world range, are from Asian companies (Hyundai and Kia).
• Online companies - Chinese search engine Baidu's predecessor Rankdex pioneered the algorithms and set the standards adopted by Google, Japan's i-mode service set the standards adopted by the iOS and Google app stores, Japanese app Line set the standards for WhatsApp, TikTok is a Chinese app, online microtransactions were pioneered in South Korea, etc.
• Arms industry - The Pentagon itself acknowledges that China has surpassed the US in terms of cutting-edge military technology.
• Multimedia formats - The current AVC and AAC standards were set by Japanese companies, when they created the Blu-ray format.
• IT software - Fair enough. The West has a clear lead in this category.

Are we going off-topic here? This thread is supposed to be on the Japanese and gaming technology, but it has drifting to a non-System Wars "East vs. West" technology discussion.

By the way, the question could have been worded better as it implies that the Japanese are incompetent in terms of gaming technology which some examples on this thread show is untrue.

@onesiphorus: Yeah, we have drifted way off-topic. I think I'll stop here.

@Jag85:

• Intellectual patents - 5 out of the top 8 countries are Asian, including #1 (China). Numbers...
• Industrial designs - 4 out of the top 6 countries are Asian, including #1 (China). Again numbers....
• Semiconductor industry - Asian companies (Samsung and TSMC) have the most cutting-edge nodes and transistor density, with 3nm semiconductor nodes. Intel is lagging far behind, stuck with outdated 10nm nodes. As I said don't fall for the marketing. Intel's 10nm is better than Samsung/TSMC's 7nm+. None of these companies follow the same conventions. Intel still has a lead in terms of transistor density, always had.
• Graphics cards - 7 out of the top 10 designer companies are Asian, including #1 (Asus). Not to be confused with GPU chips, which make up the core but not the entirety of a graphics card. I know that yet all the standards, buses, protocols are designed and enforced by the chip makers, that was always the case.
• Motherboards - 7 out of the top 10 designer companies are Asian, including #1 (Asus). Again manufacturing. My point was design.
• Space industry - 4 out of the top 5 countries with the highest space research & exploration funding are Asian. Most of Russia's land is in Asia, and its space launch facilities are in Asia. Russia is never called "Western" but has always been "the East". Still not relevant, US has a clear lead here. Anyone thinking the rest of the world isn't following their lead is just disingenuous. Fact is both Russia's and US space program were kickstarted by German/Nazi talent.
• Automobile industry - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked quality car brands are Asian, including #1 (Lexus). Again volume. German automobiles are more luxurious, have better quality and more sought after.
• Electric vehicles - The most cutting-edge electric cars, with the highest real-world range, are from Asian companies (Hyundai and Kia). No, they aren't. The rest of the world is following Tesla's lead for now in pretty much all aspects though it's only been a matter of time before traditional manufacturers surpass them.
• Online companies - Chinese search engine Baidu's predecessor Rankdex pioneered the algorithms and set the standards adopted by Google, Japan's i-mode service set the standards adopted by the iOS and Google app stores, Japanese app Line set the standards for WhatsApp, TikTok is a Chinese app, online microtransactions were pioneered in South Korea, etc. None of them are anywhere near the level of MS, Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Uber etc. And LOL at calling Google adopted Baidu's algorithms. Baidu's chief scientist was a former Google employee (even though he's ethnically Chinese). Pretty much all of Chinese internet companies are copycat of western services for the Chinese market. App Stores may be influenced by Japanese market but now they have long surpassed whatever they copied and are now the dominant platforms all over the world apart from China.
• Arms industry - The Pentagon itself acknowledges that China has surpassed the US in terms of cutting-edge military technology. Again stop falling for the marketing hype and willful fear mongering to get more budgets from Congress. China/Russia has yet to deploy a 5th gen stealth fighter. US had them since late 80's/early 90's and already working on 6th gen fighters. China/Russia has yet to come up with Stealth frigates/destroyers. US have deployed them since decades. Chinese/Russian tanks are considered cheap and are designed to deploy in numbers. German tanks/artillery is so far ahead of anything Asia has. There isn't a single category where the world has something over US/West in arms technology.
• Multimedia formats - The current AVC and AAC standards were set by Japanese companies, when they created the Blu-ray format. Bluray is no longer dominated or controlled by Japanese companies. It's a consortium now and again the remastering technology is all western.
• IT software - Fair enough. The West has a clear lead in this category.

Which doesn't excuse many of their games running like trash.

I would want to go down that path. Can the west at least, AT LEAST learn hitboxes n hurtboxes again. Ubisoft made that effort with the recent ass creed games, i mean the game is still trash, it says Assassin's Creed right in the title, but you know, baby steps.

The last time I remember Ubisoft making a good melee combat system was the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy well over a decade ago... But then Assassin's Creed happened.

https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication

You're wrong. Different companies markets their silicon density differently.

Intel's 10 nm is effectively TSMC's 7nm+ on apples to apples density comparison.

@Jag85 said:

GPU chips - Fair enough. Nvidia and AMD clearly lead in this category. Although both the Nvidia and AMD GPU divisions are founded and led by Asian immigrants.

US is a nation of migrants. US is consistent with helping/protecting Republic of China (located in Taiwan) since pre-WW2 to this day with a special defence agreement between US and Taiwan. US trade blockaded Imperial Japan to support Republic of China before WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Founders_and_initial_investment

2 of 3 NVIDIA's co-founders are "white". NVIDIA's founding was banked rolled by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Capital Sequoia was founded by "white" Don Valentine

Three people co-founded Nvidia in April 1993:^[11][12]

• Jensen Huang (CEO as of 2019), a Taiwanese American, previously director of CoreWare at LSI Logic and a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
• Chris Malachowsky, an electrical engineer who worked at Sun Microsystemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Malachowsky
• Curtis Priem, previously a senior staff engineer and graphics chip designer at Sun Microsystems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Priem

Chris Malachowsky worked with HP and Sun.

In the early 1990s, Commodore was working with HP on PA-RISC based 3D chipset. HP fabricated Commodore's Amiga chipsets like AGA's Lisa chip (display chip).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset

According to Dr. Ed Hepler, Hombre was to be fabricated in 0.6 µm 3-level metal CMOS with the help of Hewlett-Packard. HP had fabricated the AGA Lisa chip and collaborated in the design of the AAA chipset.

Amiga Hombre was early 1990s "Xbox" which can run MS's Windows NT 3.1 with OpenGL (licensed from SGI).

The original plan for the Hombre-based computer system was to have Windows NT compatibility, with native AmigaOS recompiled for the new big-endian CPU to run legacy 68k Amiga software through emulation. Commodore chose the PA-7150 microprocessor over the MIPSR3000 microprocessor and first generation embedded PowerPC microprocessors, mainly because these low-cost microprocessors were unqualified to run Windows NT. This wasn't the case for the 64-bitMIPSR4200, but it was rejected for its high price at the time.

Microsoft developed their Xbox when it run out of game console hardware partners.

US EPA killed Commodore.

------

@Jag85 said:

Space industry - 4 out of the top 5 countries with the highest space research & exploration funding are Asian.

https://www.alphr.com/space/1005737/how-much-do-governments-spend-on-space-science

US located Space X leads the rocket tech innovation which has beaten every government run rocket programs.

@Jag85 said:

Most of Russia's land is in Asia, and its space launch facilities are in Asia. Russia is never called "Western" but has always been "the East". Still not relevant, US has a clear lead here. Anyone thinking the rest of the world isn't following their lead is just disingenuous.

Russia's current civilisation is based on Eastern "Holy" Roman empire's Christian Orthodox branch.

US and majority of EU civilisation is based on Western "Holy" Roman empire's Catholic/Protestant Christian branch.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism

@Jag85 said:

Fact is both Russia's and US space program were kickstarted by German/Nazi talent.

Reminder, English and German languages are part of Germanic family. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

@Jag85 said:

Automobile industry - 7 out of the top 10 best-ranked quality car brands are Asian, including #1 (Lexus). Again volume.

There are multiple Toyota factories in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_manufacturing_facilities#United_States including very popular Camry and Corolla models.

For Lexus, https://lexus2.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8025/~/where-are-lexus-vehicles-assembled-for-the-u.s.-market%3F

@Jag85 said:

German automobiles are more luxurious, have better quality and more sought after.

German automobiles like VW was caught cheating against US EPA's rules.

Tesla is leading the EV race and Giga-Factory is create near a Nevada Lithium mine. Unlike EU, North American continent is rich with raw metals and oil.

nVIDIA for the win with AI vehicle driving which has beaten both Japanese and German AI software/hardware developments.

@Jag85 said:

Multimedia formats - The current AVC and AAC standards were set by Japanese companies, when they created the Blu-ray format.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

US: Bell Labs

EU(germany): Fraunhofer Institute

US: Dolby Labs

JP: Sony

EU(Finland): Nokia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

H.264 was developed by the ITU-TVideo Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC JTC1Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)

H.264 is protected by patents owned by various parties. A license covering most (but not all) patents essential to H.264 is administered by patent poolMPEG LA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

That ultimately led to a group of eight MPEG-2 patent owners—Fujitsu, Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scientific Atlanta, Columbia University, Philips and General Instrument—along with CableLabs and certain individuals, to form MPEG LA, which in turn created the first modern-day patent pool as a solution.

4 companies: Japan

4 companies (including Columbia University): US

1 company: EU

Military hardware... start a debate in general forum.

Come at me. You got my attention, I'll debate you on one on one.

PS; I don't agree with bashing the Japanese since they are security and defence partner with the US e.g. Six Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

@ajstyles: get gud

@ronvalencia: As mentioned above, we've drifted way off-topic with this general East vs. West tech debate (or in your case, US tech vs. the world). That's a debate more appropriate for OT, rather than SW.

@br0kenrabbit:

The opposite is true, having methods/variables based on loanwords of your own native language would actually be more of a hindrance from a programming standpoint (which itself much like doing mathematical proofs is based on rigorous logic). One of the biggest difficulties of language is having to deal with ambiguity, so having the same words with multiple different meanings makes it harder, being an English/arts major would actually be more difficult than your stereotypical engineer who could barely speak/write coherently in English.

Although various programming languages do have an alternative version (with equivalent methods based on "foreign" loanwords), a lot of non-English speaking programmers although they use your generic programming language in English letters/words (such as Java or C++ for instance) still comment in their own native language (or English with other devs). However with that being said, the English/native meaning of the loanword is irrelevant, it is only the logical meaning of the variable/method in the respective programming language that matters.

i.e. English definition of word =/= Programming definition of the word

Theory in common tongue =/= Theory in Science

Ruby was written by a native Japanese speaker who wasn't too fluent in communicating in normal English (much like a lot of Engineering/Programmer types), wrote the entire documentation of the programming language in English.

Not sure, but I will say that I have noticed that Western games tend to launch 1/2 finished and need a million patches. Eastern games tend to come out in more of a finished state.

My point is that the West does not seem that amazing with tech when they release so many glitchy messes day one.

Japanese culture dictates that they focus on quality rather than features. Their development processes are setup for consensus so that large risks are almost always minimized. this is good from a quality perspective, but it also means that they are slow to implement change.

No, they are the tops in almost every category.

The East Asian devs makes great games with great controls and mechanics. Everybody else makes 30fps movie games with poor controls/input lag, QTE's and silly RPG mechanics. I'll take a slightly less pretty East Asian game any day.

These men speak truth.

It's true that the Japanese video game industry was decaying. But not anymore. As of 2016, it recovered and now the games are better than ever.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/15894404/japan-video-game-comeback-zelda-resident-evil-e3-2017

@skalgarxlr: For the new person such as yourself, please don't bump old threads and this is a year old thread no less. Locked for necro thread.