For Mikami, the difference between the East and West was apparent for him even while he was still employed by Capcom. "Games have become big projects, requiring a lot of resources both to create and market. Games have become more risky. Japanese companies don't take those kinds of risks like Western developers do. In the past, what the Capcom president [Kenzo Tsuijimoto] told me was that game development is becoming more and more expensive and many Japanese publishers won't be investing $30 million or more in a game," he said.
Mikami noted that Western developers seem to be "working harder" but "if we can invest $30 million into a game, we can win." Of course, Bethesda Softworks wasn't about to disclose what the development and marketing budget is for The Evil Within, but if we had to guess it's likely over $30 million.
Mikami is no doubt happy to be a part of a Western game company but he emphasized that "there are still a lot of good [Japanese] companies." Even so, he'd like to see more Japanese developers utilize Western tech when it can help. "As for the organizational structure of companies, I think it would be good if companies would be more flexible about incorporating foreign technologies," he said.
That's certainly an advantage for Tango as it works on The Evil Within, as the studio is leveraging id Software's proprietary id Tech 5 engine, which he said is easier for Tango to customize than something off-the-shelf like Unreal.
Mikami told us that he lacked "motivation" in the survival horror genre after working on similar games for a long time, but in the years since he stopped working on the genre he's seen a lot of concepts that he's strongly disagreed with. He wouldn't get into details, saying "I'm not allowed to say bad things," but he noted that Capcom "started going in a different direction with Resident Evil" and so he got the itch to come back and create "true" survival horror.
