SN Systems, the company that produces development tools for PlayStation, PS2 and PSP, has branched out into inter-continental match-making. No, they're not running a Russian brides agency - the company's Japanese office is setting up a service to link Japanese developers with Western publishers. Apparently, the games industry has changed quite a bit in Japan recently, with smaller developers now keen to gain an international audience rather than concentrating on the domestic market. Check out the press release for yourself.
Of course, we're all familiar with the works of Capcom, Namco, Konami, Sega and Nintendo, but there are hundreds of Japanese studios that we've barely heard of producing games that we never get to see in the west. A lot of stuff is going to be lost on us - dating sims, hamster games and beetle beat 'em ups among them - but surely this can only be a good thing for the Euro gamer sick of the same old game series'.
Incidentally, SN Systems isn't the only company attempting to bridge the gap between non-mainstream Japanese development and western audiences. New publisher Rising Star specialises in making lesser known content from the East available in the West, beginning with hack n' slash adventure Sword of Honour, Space Invaders Revolution, an updated version of the coin-op for the Nintendo DS, and new iterations of the fabulous Harvest Moon series.
