Famed game developer Yoshiki Okamoto went from riches to rags. His studio’s website went off the internet. That’s not all—the Game Republic offices are completely vacant, with a “For Rent” sign in the window. More »
Game designer Yoshiki Okamoto went from riches to rags. The website for his studio, Game Republic, went off the internet. Not a good sign.
Developer Dimps is responsible for developing Street Fighter IV for Capcom. Dimps president Takashi Nishiyama? “Pretty sure bisexual,” outs former Capcom employee Yoshiki Okamoto.
Game Republic, (in)famous for its work on Genji and Folklore, as well as its founder Yoshiki Okamoto, was working on a Tom and Jerry game tie-in with an upcoming movie, according to a new interview.
Game developer Yoshiki Okamoto is best known for his years at Capcom, where he worked on titles like Gyruss and Forgotten Worlds as well as his involvement in Final Fight and Street Fighter II. He’s an industry vet and has been around. When he looks at the current Japanese game landscape, Okamoto says there’s at least one thing that does not compute:
Believe it or not, Genji developers Game Republic made a game for Microsoft that it thought was worse than Every Party, the team’s lame duck party game that never made it out of Japan. Game Republic president and former Capcom designer Yoshiki Okamoto tells 1UP that the Folklore devs were nine months into a project that Microsoft just wasn’t interested in.
Okamoto theorises that Microsoft had simply given up on the Japanese market. After showing their follow up to Every Party to Microsoft, the publisher passed. But development continued at Game Republic, hoping that the company would come around. Okamoto calls the gamble “a major mistake for us and a bad move for our company early on”.
What we’re interested in knowing is how this mystery title could be any more unappealing that both Genji games? A question for the ages, we suppose.
Gloom and doom time. Well, for Japanese game developers. While the country’s game makers seems to be down on themselves of late, it’s hard to separate that from stereotypical Japanese humility and plain old self-realisation. Here’s Genji developer Game Republic head and former Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto talking about whether Japan can catch up with the West:
It’s almost too late. During the Famicom (NES) era, Japanese video games comprised 70 percent of all video games. And currently, it’s like 15 or 20 percent, isn’t it? Now, Western games are more advanced. For games like GTAIV, those guys are spending something like 5 or 10 years to make them. Even if we thought about catching up with them now, they’d still be making progress. But, not necessarily giving up, it’s just not possible to catch up in a single lifetime.
Man, that Okamoto, talk about a downer. Chin up, Japan, chin up.
「日本はもうゲーム先進国ではない」 [IT Media via 痛いニュース][Pic]
Game Republic’s Yoshiki Okamoto, a twenty year industry vet whose credits include Street Fighter II, Resident Evil and, more recently, Folklore, tells Gamasutra he fears the Japanese game industry may be in danger of suffering the same fate that befell Atari in the early ’80s. If you’re too young to remember, a glut of software for the Atari 2600 and its peers, the majority of which we’ll be nice enough to describe as liquid faeces written in assembler, flooded the market, resulting in a industry crushing crash.
Today’s problem? A glut of software—particularly “brain” games—for the Nintendo DS published by inexperienced companies looking to make a quick buck.
Horror game fans have reasons to be moderately excited, as the man dubbed the pioneer of the survival horror game genre, Yoshiki Okamoto, has signed on with Brash Entertainment to create a game based on a popular Hollywood film. Why only moderately excited? There’s no word yet on what movie the game will be based on, it won’t be released until 2010, and there isn’t even any confirmation that it will be another horror game. Okamoto spent 20 years at Capcom, working on titles such as Resident Evil and Street Fighter II, and Game Republic, his studio which will be working on the mysterious game, has most recently published Folklore for PS3. Not really a lot of information to go on yet, but the potential for something fun is present (depending on what “blockbuster title” they choose, of course).
Resident Evil Pioneer Okamoto Partners with Brash on Movie-Based Game [Game Daily Biz]
