Looks like Silent Hill games aren't being made by Japanese developers anymore. I wonder how that will affect the series moving forward.
Regarding Japanese publishers and western devs- the products of 10-15 years ago were the result of a very different industry and publishing mindset.
Japanese publishers went through a big shock in the late 2000s and early 2010s as the industry navigated two major shifts: offline to online titles and SD to HD asset pipelines. The domestic industry was stagnant while the western industry grew. It was the reason we (I was at SQEX at the time) acquired Eidos: Wada-san determined the best way to manage this shifts was to build titles oriented toward larger, western markets.
We created multiple titles, some managed by Japanese, some managed by Westerners, trying to tackle this market and its shifts. This is why you got new Tomb Raiders, Hitman, Sleeping Dogs, as well as titles like Murdered: Soul Suspect (Japanese creator, western dev). The logic was western devs would best know how to develop for westerners.
It was very hard to get the best western talent, though. The really good creators founded their own studios, or were attracted to work at western publishers so if you were a Japanese publisher trying to get a western team to develop, you were often dealing with work for hire studios, and because of the nature of sales (30% to gamestop, 30% to sony, 10% to manufacturing, and you don't get a dime from re-sale) you needed to manage the budget very carefully.
Communication wasn't easy, and every time we had Japanese creative or management working with western devs, we ran into cultural and development issues, particularly as the industry shifted away from traditional packaged/single player titles toward online titles with f2p and other business models. Additionally, engines were very hard.
The Japanese publishing business is radically different today. You can thank digital stores, mobile and Unreal.
Digital stores: you now have an ongoing window for sales for titles beyond the package disc. The way sales worked then, you sold in to GameStop, paid them 30% of your revenue, and you trusted them to do the rest of the work. Now you can have direct relationships + have a long tail of sales through Steam, App store, Game Pass., etc. This improves profitability and letting you invest more into the content quality.
Mobile: the strength of the domestic mobile industry in Japan taught a generation of developers how to create online, connected titles which was missing a decade prior and revitalized profits, enabling Japanese publishers invest in tech and quality.
Finally, Unreal Engine resolved the asset pipeline issue by eliminating old engine tech as a factor. (Look how much of FF and DQ is on UE now. RE is one of the few holdovers of its own engine; even SF moved to UE. Our Ascension title is also Unreal.)
Now we're in a new era where Japanese publishers understand the engine and HD asset pipeline, see possibilities in the business model, and finally, have worked out the problematic communication and cultural aspects of working with western studios and western creators. So you can have good control over the IP and the creative with the benefits of a global workforce.
If you want proof of the latter you can see it in the way in which Japanese publishers are working with Hollywood: the Sonic films, the upcoming Mario film. High quality output that respects the IP. Beyond Ascension, we also released PAC-MAN Community last year with Bandai that's had 8m players.
