During the era of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Japanese developers have struggled to keep up with their Western counterparts, as stated by Yoko Taro, creator of the NieR series. In an interview with IGN, Yoko Taro discussed game development with Hyung-Tae Kim, the creative director of Stellar Blade. According to him, Japanese developers are not adept at incorporating technology from overseas for various reasons.
One of the main reasons why Japanese developers struggle to adapt technology from overseas is that they are accustomed to creating their own engines. As a result, they were slow to adopt rendering tools and middleware from the West. Many educational institutions also do not teach these skills to new developers.
Yoko Taro believes that Japanese developers struggle to adapt technology from overseas while developers from China and South Korea are quicker to utilize engines like Unreal for games with Japanese aesthetics.
Some Japanese developers have faced difficulties with their proprietary engines, such as Square Enix with the Luminous Engine, which was only used for two games before being abandoned. However, others have excelled in this area. For example, CAPCOM has developed the RE Engine, which powers a variety of games including 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 now setting a new standard for visual quality, it will be interesting to see if Japanese developers will embrace it for their future games or if they will continue to rely on proprietary engines to maintain high-quality standards.