14 DAY TRIAL // When asked about their favorite games of the year that ended a few days ago a majority of developers based in Japan have provided the surprising answer of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the open world first person role playing game from Bethesda.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was the choice of such developers as Naoki Yoshida from Final Fantasy XIV, producer Satoshi Sakai, who worked on Phantasy Star Portable at SEGA and Level-5 CEO and president Akihiro Hino, of Professor Layton fame.
The game managed to be the first Western developed title to get a perfect 40/40 score in the well known Japanese magazine Famitsu.
Another popular choice was Portal 2 from Valve, which was chosen as the favorite game of 2011 by Fumito Ueda, who is working on the Last Guardian, Youjiro Ogawa, a developer on Yakuza: Black Panther.
Other developers have singled out titles like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception from Naughty Dog, Infinity Blade II from Chair and Epic Games, Battlefield 3 from DICE and Electronic Arts and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, from Activision Blizzard and Infinity Ward.
The most popular Japanese games were Dark Souls from From Software and Catherine from Atlus.
When the same developers were asked about the persons they paid attention to during 2011 their answers were mostly linked to Steve Jobs, but also to Shuhei Yoshida, the leader of the Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios and Toshihiro Kondo, the leader of Falcom.
The Japanese gaming industry has been seen as declining lately, even if both Sony and Nintendo continue to do very good business, and a number of companies have chosen to adopt more ideas and mechanics from Western developers.
The 2012 launch of the new Wii U home console might lead to a revival of games made by Japanese development teams.