Us Western Programmers Have Been Taking Our Salaries For Granted.
- Thread starter gary
- Start date
By IMF's PPP estimation for 2009, if the US is 1.0, then the prices of some countries are:
It seems that after two decades of economic stagnant, Japan is no longer that expensiveOf course, it's still expensive by Asian standard but that's because Japan does not artificially undervalue their currency, unlike their neighbors.
Japan has actually been accused of doing so up until the recession and have been pressured by the US and others not to do so during the currently because it would add further instability to the economic crisis.
Exports are a major part of Japan's economy and the more you lower the value of the yen to other currencies the cheaper japanese exports can retail.
Given that, I find it very odd for Japanese programmers to make so little. Maybe thats why outside of Nintendo and Sony, we don't see the level of global success of Japanese developed titles as we did in past console generations.
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Well, I think it's not fair to say that yen was undervalued before this recession. After all, from 1999 (right after the Asian economy crisis, when Japan took the chance to dump its currency) to 2007 (just before current recession) Japanese yen was mostly stable at around 110 ~ 120 per USD (which actually made Japanese estimated implied PPP exchange rate roughly the same as the market exchange rate). Right now yen is traded at around 90, but that's mostly because the fall of the USD rather than an accurate re-evaluation of yen. After all, the export of Japan actually went down during this recession. There is no good reason for yen to go up.
corduroygt
Banned
So I guess this puts an end to GT5 and Poliphony Digital bashing? It may be taking 4 years but with such low salaries, it should still be wildly profitable.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Hmm? Murder rate per capita is still incredibly low for 2009 ... I guess media hysteria is universal. I'll bet you that my chance of getting knifed going to a random bar over here is many times higher than visiting Akihabara, unless there are a lot of hidden Yakuza hangouts I'm not aware of there
BTW, you budget about 3 hours of minimum US federal wage for your lunch and dinner.
Could be media hysteria. Could also be that there are reporting and accounting differences between Japan and say the US (where even in the US there's reporting requirement discrepencies between states). But, regardless, prior to 2004-2005 there was far less media coverage of violent crimes there than in the past 3-4 years. A lot more cases of spouses/GF's being killed rather than beaten. Home theft results in murder more often than previously, something that was quite rare before. Home security market has also skyrocketed in the past couple years there. Previous to that it was quite rare to enter a home with private home security services. Not so rare now.
While in Japan, yes.
In the US, I budget between 4-8 for lunch and 6-12 for dinner if I go out. Where things are different is that it's a lot cheaper to cook at home in the US than it is to cook at home in Japan depending on what you get.Regards,
SB
Silent_Buddha
Legend
The larger studios that compete with world wide AAA titles are generally paid a bit better, although possibly still not the same as their Western counterparts. Although I wouldn't be entirely sure about that.
Compensation for workers is a bit different if you are marketing a title you hope will sell in the millions versus a title you are hoping might sell 30k with some luck.
That said, I also wouldn't be surprised if entry level was quite a bit lower but experience devs was closer to parity with western equivalent for the AAA titles.
Regards,
SB
In the case of Sony, at least, the pay in Japan is quite a bit lower than in the California-based studios.
