Game Studio President Says Microsoft's Culture Complicates Game Development

Ray Nakazato has been around the gaming block a time or two, and has seen his fair share of games through the ups and downs of development. The president of FeelPlus Studio, currently working on the drool-inducing Lost Odyssey, told Gamasutra that some of the downs can come from the culture of the company overseeing the development. Microsoft's way of doing things can be tough for Japanese developers, he said:

We had to recruit a lot of people [for Ninety-Nine Nights], and Microsoft as a company has a very high bar to hire people in. The person has to be generally superior in all areas, but game specialists, in general, are often great in one area and not so great in others. It was very hard to meet all of the hiring criteria that Microsoft had, so it was hard to hire people. Stuff like that.

The interview has a lot of this-studio-begat-that-studio, which you might find somewhat tedious, but it also has some more interesting observations on U.S. game development versus Japanese game development.
We, apparently, tend to plan more up front and follow through no matter what (for good or for ill), whereas Japanese devs will start completely over at the end of a project if they think it sucks.

Ray Tracing: A Japanese Game Market Expose With Ray Nakazato [Gamasutra]