Capcom Producer: Japanese Industry Has No “Hope in Hell”

Jun Takeuchi, producer of Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet 2, thinks that his native games industry needs to evolve or perish.

Jun Takeuchi may have just shipped a game, but the Capcom producer had some harsh words for his countrymen. When games mag Xbox World 360 asked Takeuchi if he thought the Japanese industry could catch up to an increasingly-dominant Western development scene, the RE5 boss gave a grim answer.

“If the Japanese games industry doesn’t evolve and simply maintains its current status quo, I really don’t think we have a hope in hell,” said Takeuchi. “Drastically innovative ideas are needed – and quickly – to equal or exceed the Western games industry.”

This seems to echo remarks made by fellow Capcom star Keiji Inafune, who at last year’s Tokyo Game Show said he thought the Japanese games industry was “finished”: “Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor … I said ‘Man, Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.'”

One has to wonder if Takeuchi is also pointing fingers at himself: Regardless of what you want to say about quality, neither Resident Evil 5 nor Lost Planet 2 were particularly “innovative.”

(CVG)