Continuing his interview with British trade site GI.biz, Square Enix boss Yoichi "Imperial Hot" Wada has chipped in with his two cents on what's wrong with the Japanese development scene.
"From the developer side, the Japanese games industry became so successful that we didn't recruit new people" he says. "So today, if you look at the main creators of games, they're already in their late thirties."
"When you look at the industry in the US", he continues, "the industry has attracted some very talented people from, say, computer science and the film industries - so people from different sectors came into the industry and that kept the market vital, succeeding in creating new products."
"But in Japan the old people are doing the same old job - and even the so-called new people... there are some people that you'd call 'game geeks' but it was a very closed world."
Ruthless, but then, mostly correct as well. Note he neglects to mention the other things wrong with most Japanese developers — a reluctance to take risks and an over-reliance on old franchises — but then, he is the head honcho of Square Enix.
A Fresh Start - Part Two [GI.biz]