High budget experimental Japanese games.
During the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era, the formula for what made a 3d game good was not defined. Thus, unlike in the late SNES era, companies were more willing to invest money in experimental games.
Japan especially, produced a great deal of high budget experimental video games.
A few of these would go on to influence gaming as a whole
Primarily
DMC and RE4.
Both of those games did something no other game had done before and were copied by the west and east alike.
After this era, what defined a successful 3d video game was no longer a mystery and we started to get more derivative video games. Japanese companies became less and less willing to experiment. If they did experiment they'd do so on handhelds where the risk of failure was much lower.
Nowadays, most Japanese games are either sequels, gachas, or jrpgs. The innovative era of Japanese gaming has long been over.
During the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era, the formula for what made a 3d game good was not defined. Thus, unlike in the late SNES era, companies were more willing to invest money in experimental games.
Japan especially, produced a great deal of high budget experimental video games.
A few of these would go on to influence gaming as a whole
Primarily
DMC and RE4.
Both of those games did something no other game had done before and were copied by the west and east alike.
After this era, what defined a successful 3d video game was no longer a mystery and we started to get more derivative video games. Japanese companies became less and less willing to experiment. If they did experiment they'd do so on handhelds where the risk of failure was much lower.
Nowadays, most Japanese games are either sequels, gachas, or jrpgs. The innovative era of Japanese gaming has long been over.
