Over the last decade or so, there are those who would argue that the Japanese game development industry has fallen behind the west. Claims that Japanese studios struggle to make use of the latest game engines and software technology.
While it’s true that the pendulum has definitely swung in the west’s favour recently, following Japan’s strong performance in the 16 and 32 bit eras, Nintendo’s Miyamoto believes this will change very soon.
He believes that Japanese programmers, specifically ones within Nintendo have mastered new technology.
While speaking to investors recently, about how easy making games for the switch he had this to say:
Even though game software developers in the U.S. and E.U. are often said to have superior skills to their Japanese counterparts when it comes to software development techniques, Nintendo?s software developers have mastered state-of-the-art technologies such as Unreal engine, and their skills can now be compared with those of Western developers. Our developers are more excited than ever to create software.
He stopped short of stating that Nintendo is using third-party engines to power it’s own games, but executive officer Shinya Takahashi did say that embracing such engines would make developing on the switch much easier.
For our previous game platforms, creating our own development tools was a high priority for us. However, since the start of Nintendo Switch development we have been aiming to realize an environment in which a variety of different third-party developers are able to easily develop compatible software, such as by making it compatible with Unreal and Unity as well as our own development tools. As a result, even companies with only a few developers have already started making games for Nintendo Switch.
