Yoshida: Games tech power "has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe"

Speaking to VG247, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that Japanese developers are making "slow progress" compared to the West thanks to a generational shift in technology power to the US and Europe.

"What's happened since the days of PS2; technology becomes more sophisticated, and more and more intense graphics technology [has appeared]," he said.

"The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe."

Geography and the intrinsic needs of creating graphic-heavy games have led to a struggling Japanese games tradem the exec said.

"There are also talented people, engineers... in the US and Europe, and it's relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games," he added.

"That's not the case in Japan. Because they don't have a large base, like the movie industry; there aren't [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. That's making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress."

Yoshida pointed to the obvious examples of Metal Gear and Gran Turismo as ongoing Japanese success stories, but said the rest of the industry in Japan was not so fortunate.

"It's amazing that some teams like Kojima-san's team and Polyphony Digital are still creating such immense games," he said. "But that's not [indicative] of the core Japanese software industry, unfortunately."

Yoshida was speaking at Games Convention in Germany.