Japanese developers are “coming back to console in a major way” for Sony’s E3 reveals

There are a few things in life that you can always rely on: The sky being blue, the art teacher’s office always having a weird haze of smoke coming from it and Geoff’s propensity for puns that makes me start every morning with a game of Russian roulette. One other constant in this universe used to be quality games from Japanese developers.

The land of the rising sun was the birthplace of so many great franchises in the past: Final Fantasy, Pokémon and Castlevania just for a start. A couple of years back, something changed in the homeland of fantastic video games. The quality started dipping, innovation was chucked out the window and everyone wanted to make a quick Yen on the mobile market.

That resulted in a period of stagnation for Japanese-developed games. An era of shoddiness that Sony wants to do away with as they prepare to announce a few new games over at E3. “I think a lot of Japanese developers lost their way chasing the mobile games yen, if you will, but they’re coming back to console in a major way,” Sony’s Shawn Layden said to Time via VG247.

And speaking of, we’ll have some big announcements at E3 in that precise vein. That’s super important for us.

That’s exactly what I want to hear ahead of E3. Japan’s recent big-name releases have been somewhat brilliant lately. Nioh is an RPG that straddles the line between challenge and frustration beautifully, Final Fantasy 15 was apparently well worth the wait and Nier: Automata is already a strong contender for game of the year. Chuck in Persona 5 and Resident Evil 7, and Japan is finally ready to reclaim the throne that it had lost in the past.

It’s about damned time.

Last Updated: June 7, 2017