Is it me or are a lot of japanese devs having trouble with scaling their game engines this gen?

[Remember_Spinal]

It feels like a lot of japanese game designers are really having a a lot of trouble scaling their engines up from last gen.

Fromsoft with Elden Ring, Atlus with Metaphor, Capcom with Monster Hunter Wilds, Team Ninja with Rise of The Ronin

Feels like everything graphically impressive we saw last night was from western devs. Feels like a repeat of when the HD gaming era first started

 

[GachaMadeMeBroke]

Elden Ring is gorgeous though? Especially for a game of that scale. Atlus never really does High graphical fidelity and rather goes the stylistic route. Capcom is fine too? RE4R is also fucking gorgeous. Haven’t seen enough from Wilds to have an opinion. I mean, Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks incredible. Can’t say I share the same viewpoint

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Elden Ring is gorgeous though? Especially for a game of that scale. Atlus never really does High graphical fidelity and rather goes the stylistic route. Capcom is fine too? RE4R is also fucking gorgeous. Haven’t seen enough from Wilds to have an opinion. I mean, Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks incredible. Can’t say I share the same viewpoint

I think i pretty much disagree with all of that. RE4R looks good but it looks like a ps4 game, elden Ring looks no better than DS3 for me except it can be played in 60fps.

Wilds also looks no better than World so far. I’m not saying the games are ugly or bad looking just that for “current gen” only games they don’t really look better than their previous gen iterations

 

[Gods&Monsters]

They are not using the RE Engine for Monster Hunter? That engine scales nicely and it's very versatile. SF6 looked good.

I disagree with Rise of the Ronin. I thought it looked nice but then I see all these comments. Are people comparing it with Horizon FW or something?

 

[ethomaz]

I don't think so.

From is using the same engine since they created Demon's Souls with the same weird frame pace issues... it is not a matter of upgrading their engine... they just don't care.

In the others side Capcom, Square Enix ,etc are all outputting great looking games with their engines.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

In the others side Capcom, Square Enix ,etc are all outputting great looking games with their engines

FF16, Mana and Rebirth look gorgeous and next-gen to me.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

They are not using the RE Engine for Monster Hunter? That engine scales nicely and it's very versatile

I mean there is a reason why they are working on a new current gen verison of it. What they are using now is not scalable, they are essentially stuck on on the UE4 versions of their modern engines.

 

[nongkris]

You're right OP, RE Engine seems to be the only engine with actual next gen visuals. Even Square Enix who have excellent graphics engineers have dropped the ball with FF16 and Forespoken visuals. But I honestly think western devs are also struggling graphically as well. This gen has been horrible graphics wise

 

[Yobo]

Next gen graphics really is about the subtleties. How light realistically works, bounce effects and shadow gradiation. Density in environments. The granular details on a model like expressions, minor imperfections, sub surface scattering

I think a lot of Japanese Devs probably don't even know what they are looking at let alone how to achieve it

Not surprising a lot of them are struggling when the industry has been trained in making mobile and PS2-3 era handheld graphics for a decade

 

[Infinity]

Rise of the ronin looks last gen

 

[shrike0fth0rns]

It feels like a lot of japanese game designers are really having a a lot of trouble scaling their engines up from last gen.

Fromsoft with Elden Ring, Atlus with Metaphor, Capcom with Monster Hunter Wilds, Team Ninja with Rise of The Ronin

Feels like everything graphically impressive we saw last night was from western devs. Feels like a repeat of when the HD gaming era first started

Outside of Capcom, square, kojima productions most Japanese devs do not seem to invest much in tech or have an interest in remaining current if edge. Most of them are using engines and tech that’s dated asf. They’ve just seemed to have hit a wall gradually.

 

[nongkris]

Outside of Capcom, square, kojima productions most Japanese devs do not seem to invest much in tech or have an interest in remaining current if edge. Most of them are using engines and tech that’s dated asf. They’ve just seemed to have hit a wall gradually.

Capcom and Square enix are hit and miss depending on what engine their team uses. Square enix's FF7 team with unreal engine looks amazing, while their FF16 and Forespoken engines were a blurry flat mess. Same with capcom, any team using RE Engine usually makes great looking games, while that new monster hunter looks horrid.

 

[flaccidsnake]

Japanese devs were making a comback in the 2nd half of PS4. Capcom, Square, Kojima, even From put out games that at least looked in the same generation as Uncharted 4. Their tech has continued to scale well into the cross-gen period of PS5. But now that fully next-gen games are starting to arrive, I don't know if they keep pace. Compared with the new Avatar game, or the tech demo of Squadron 42, is Pragmata in the same generation?

 

[Gediminas]

Rise of the ronin looks last gen

yeah, i am a fan of theirs, but their graphical engine dog shit(still looking like running from 2017 at least), pluses are : that they avoid bugs and performance good, plus, great graphical modes.

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Capcom and SE usually release impressive looking games. They just concluded cross gen period. And Capcom already announced they are developing a new RE engine. SE on the other hand, just released FFXVI with impressive engine and I am sure they will continue to build upon it. Fromsoftware were tech was never good. Their Engine was originally made by Sony in 2005 and Fromsoftware continued to build on it.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Outside of Capcom, square, kojima productions most Japanese devs do not seem to invest much in tech or have an interest in remaining current if edge. Most of them are using engines and tech that’s dated asf. They’ve just seemed to have hit a wall gradually.

Kojima is safe on Decima engine at least

 

[Yurinka]

It feels like a lot of japanese game designers are really having a a lot of trouble scaling their engines up from last gen.

Fromsoft with Elden Ring, Atlus with Metaphor, Capcom with Monster Hunter Wilds, Team Ninja with Rise of The Ronin

Feels like everything graphically impressive we saw last night was from western devs. Feels like a repeat of when the HD gaming era first started

I'd say we have to consider a lot of impressive stuff we saw were cutscenes/CGs.

And also that some games, Japanese or not were started to be developed many years ago, when they didn't have next gen hardware, engines or even the specs. So they started as previous gen games and later they gave some minor next gen facelift.

It also depends of the time and resources of the team, and also where they want to focus (top visuals or other areas), or if they prefer to support low end devices or not.

 

[KnittedKnight]

No it's not just you. Massive tech lag, only very few exceptions.

 

[anonpuffs]

Yes. But find me a japanese publisher willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars on a project and the technical capability to craft an inhouse modern engine. You can't, the closest is square enix and they pretty much failed with luminous (plus that shit looks dated now)

 

[historia]

Yes. But find me a japanese publisher willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars on a project and the technical capability to craft an inhouse modern engine. You can't, the closest is square enix and they pretty much failed with luminous (plus that shit looks dated now)

Problem with piroteraty engine(idk how to pronounce that and I don't want to bust out dictionary) is that it is really hard to keep improving without fucking up the whole pipeline. Japan studios don't have buying power, unless they are Nintendo. You can't afford pumping out less games since it gonna fuck the revenue sources.

Most technilogical advanced Jap game is well, Death Stranding(its engine housed from Grurilla), Resident Evil and Gran Turismo.

GT started development from GT5(in-game tellessation, planar lighting, etc). The improvment in car models, track fidelity comes later. So basically it take them 8 years to go from GT5 Prolouge to GT Sports.

RE:7 started development all the way in 2011. It is the pioneer thst made the breakthrough called RE Engine but MH World used the old engine which look really outdated now, like a PS3 game.(So 6 years of developement)

Konami used to have Fox which is light and have really impressive physics but we know how that went. Oh well.

Most Jap devs's engine ran by hope and dream, a few scraps, ductapes. From used the engine that they took from JPStudio back in Demon's Souls development. TeamNinja used the NG 2 engine through these days, essentially it is a fork of RenderWare that got de-commercialized by EA 10 years ago.

Everything now is UE. Even Luminious Engine is based on UE3. Dragon Engine is a fork of the UE2 engine too.

Also outsourcing to SEA requires smooth pipeline which upgrading engine could no afford.