Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai has addressed a fan’s concerns in his semi-weekly column for Weekly Famitsu. The fan asked why Japanese games supposedly take longer to develop than western games. The fan asked the following question: “It appears that the time it takes to develop a game differs between Japan and other countries, so why do people say that Japan takes a lot of time on development?” Here’s what Sakurai had to say on the matter.
“Whether it’s domestic or international, development speed is a case-by-case scenario, so I feel this may be a biased opinion. I think the Yakuza team is quite fast considering the scale of their games, and some foreign games can take over 5 years from initial proposal to the actual product release.”
“However, the fact that someone asks this does seem to indicate that it’s not completely unfounded. If I were to guess, it seems that foreign studios have the appearance of a stricter product schedule and organization. Then again, in some cases, even if the development period is long, the development staff can be small, so the entire picture is a mystery.”
“Also, the time between announcement and release does not necessarily equal the development period. In most cases, when development actually started is never publicly announced.”
“In any case, whether it’s cost-effective or not is what’s important. Whether the development period is long or short, the real questions is if the man-hours spent can bring about a profit or results. Of course, this is also a case-by-case scenario.”
i agree
the first time im the first in something
The “keeping it real” reason is that these Japanese games are generally created with an amount of care whereas Western developers just shit them out annually.
It takes more time because they deliver a better product 😊