Report - Japanese developers losing money, reliant on external tech
A University of Gothenburg report has painted a grim picture of Japanese development.
The data was extracted from 74 CEOs of Japanese gaming companies by Mirko Ernkvist. Gamasutra plucked a few highlights from the report (PDF), most notably that 48.2% of respondents could not report a profit over the last few years.
Many responding companies reported a reliance on external technology over the last three years, with 57.8% having used licensed game engines.
40.6% used physics engines, 37.5% used software configuration management programs and 35.9% used AI engines.
Many companies seem to lean on outsourcing both to complete projects and bring in funds; 63.5% of companies had worked on other company's games, while 78.7% has outsourced their own projects.