Platinum Games’ Inaba: It’s not East vs West game devs

I was there the night that Capcom producer Keiji Inafune took a big dump on Japan and Japanese game studios and developers. In his now famous (and probably drunken) speech at a Japanese Capcom event he said that “Japan is at least five years behind” and that Japanese games were bad. 

Platinum Games doesn’t see it that way. In fact, producer Atsushi Inaba sees the situation as good versus bad, not East versus West. 

“It’s not like Platinum Games is trying to present a role model to the Japanese gaming industry and my personal opinion is that it’s not very meaningful to segment the industry into Japanese and American,” Inaba told Play.

“Wherever you go there are two kinds of game developers. One is good developers who have brilliant ideas and passion and the means and the resources to make their ideas into games. The other is bad studios who are not as good at what they do and those studios will be naturally selected to fail.”

Face. Ass-y games can be made anywhere, just as good games can. And he’s right: It helps nothing to split the industry up this way.