Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1410838-20141028132600/@comment-25467429-20141207205130

I'm not saying theres isn't bad blood between Japan and China. But I wouldn't exactly use Battlefield as a standard of aeronautical expertise either. They basically used the same stats as the F-22 and pasted them on a J-20 image. There is little frame of reference of performance applied. Now, I don't dare say Ace Combat is exactly percise in their rendering of their aircraft and the relative performance, but their fidelity to the source product has been better. Furthermore, as the main antagonist of the game, there was little choice but to add Chinese weapon systems, so they had a much greater incentive to pursue that avenue. And again, you're talking about Electronic Arts, one of the biggest companies in the industry. Their resoruces to secure a license and/or fight legal battles far and away outstrip PA and Bandai Namco.

I'd also add that it's not as though PA has before now included a diverse set of aircraft. Traditionally all their planes were either American, Russian, or German. They didn't even have any Japanese planes, save the F-2, until recently. So again, I don't think this boils down to the matter of China/Japan relations. It's just a matter of China being relatively new to the air combat space in terms of original creation, and the fact that there isn't a whole lot of frame of reference to go by. The F-22 is the latest great plane from the US, the Typhoon is the latest great plane from Europe, the T-50 is the latest great plane from Russia - the J-31 and J-20 are just new, from a country that hasn't exactly been known for its air power with its own designs, despite its pressence on the world stage and considered militray strength.

To put it another way, it is like expecting Chinese cars to be featured prominently in a Forza or Gran Turismo game.