I-Protest-I said:
It gladdens my heart to know Japanese games are going down the toilet, they allowed their own games to stagnate.
And quotes like this are why I hope Western gaming follows it down the pan.
Seriously, a stupid amount of the comments on this thread are barely disguised xenophobia. It's really quite disgusting. Japanese games have stagnated no more or less than Western games. You can look at any genre out there now, and the Japanese gaming industry is doing just as much interesting stuff as Western developers.
Third person shooters? While Western developers are all busy aping Gears Of War, Japan gave us Vanquish, without a doubt one of the most inventive TPS games to come out this generation.
Hack and Slash games? Oh please. Japan has owned this genre since forever. Us Westerners got one good stab in there with God Of War, but when they can respond with the likes of Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, Onimusha and Ninja Gaiden, there's no way you can contest the point. We may have cornered FPS games in the West, but Japan still continues to dominate the H&S genre.
Stealth games? Oh my, didn't we get this little game a few years ago called Metal Gear Solid 4? Funny how a supposedly stagnating industry managed to create arguably the best stealth game this generation.
In terms of racing games, Gran Turismo is still one of the leaders of the genre, arguably sharing pole position with FORZA.
In fact, if you look pretty much anywhere away from first-person shooters, you see that Japanese developers are doing just as much to move the medium forward as Western developers. Arguably more when you look at the utterly banal way developers are now simply copying each other wholesale.
And let's address that elephant in the room, the oft maligned JRPG. The fact is that if you can be bothered to acknowledge that there
are JRPGS outside of Final Fantasy, Japanese developers are creating some of the absolute best RPGs of this generation. Xenoblade. Dark Souls. The Last Story. All absolutely fantastic games, and about as far as you can get from linear FF-type fare.
It seems to me like there are simply a load of butthurt fanboys who got burned over FFXIII, and are now using outmoded stereotypes to try and legitimise their own prejudices. I find it hilarious and oh so ironic that people try and claim xenophobia on Japan's part as an excuse for their own xenophobia. Sure, because Japan hates the rest of the world so much that it has become one of the commercial trade centres of the world, with Japanese companies now exporting goods all over the world and leading the field in automobiles, consumer electronics, musical instruments...
wait!
The Japanese industry is just like any other. There is crap, there is good stuff, and there is amazing stuff. Just because they follow Sturgeon's Law like everyone else, that doesn't somehow make it alright to treat them like a gaming pariah.
