The Chinese are actively luring Japanese developers to their studios, the popularity of Chinese games is growing

Chinese companies are actively attracting Japanese game developers to work on games under Chinese flags, and they are doing it successfully, writes Bloomberg.

Salaries in many Japanese studios are significantly inferior to international ones, and in some famous companies, like FromSoftware, they lose even to the national average.

Against this background, the Chinese manage to easily attract even industry veterans to their ranks, such as Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi and No More Heroes producer Goichi Suda, simultaneously investing in various independent publishing houses and enterprises.

Experts note that the Japanese industry remains very conservative and clumsy, does not keep up with trends and in the future may lose its position even in its native region, as it previously happened with smartphones and televisions.

Already, 2-3 games from China are consistently in the Japanese ranking of the most popular mobile games, and at the international level, Japanese companies have not released a single mobile hit of the level of the Chinese Genshin Impact.

"Local studios showed arrogance and believed that their Japanese users were unique and would not play games made abroad.

But now they are losing, and they are losing on their home territory," said analyst Serkan Toto from Tokyo.

Japanese developers are bypassing the Chinese in games for consoles and PCs, but the Chinese continue to attract Japanese specialists to their ranks. And the Chinese are not alone in this.

Saudi Arabia recently announced multibillion-dollar investments in the industry and has already bought the Japanese publishing house SNK.

"Companies from Saudi Arabia and China associated with the games have recently been hiring foreign employees at a very rapid pace.

The players would be very surprised if they found out how aggressively they are acting," added analyst Daniel Ahmad.

In China, they also believe that games can be used as a "soft power", spreading their cultural influence around the world with their help, writes Bloomberg. In Europe, the same opinion is held.

Recently, the European Parliament voted to increase investment in the gaming industry and advocated the spread of "European values" through interactive entertainment.