The Japanese game industry

[Cyborg Ninja]

There may be a few of you who will get offended at what I'm about to say, but bear in mind the following is my opinion, and I welcome all other respectable opinions.

The Japanese game industry seems to be in a slump this generation. Keiji Inafune, Mega Man's creator, stated that the industry has fallen far behind the West. Many analysts have noticed this, including the New York Times ("To Regain Video Game Lead, Japan Looks to West.") Recently I checked the Japanese video game charts and the top game was a dating sim, and at #6 was the same game, but the PS2 version of it. And this game is several years old. Square Enix and Capcom have spread out and now have development teams in the UK and US, among other places. This seems to have helped the companies stay solvent during the worldwide recession.

Why has Japan largely rejected the current generation of consoles? Even the PS3 pales in comparison, in sales, to the PSP and Nintendo DS. Why is there a relative drought of creativity among Japanese developers, compared to last-gen? The PS2 era had a deluge of interesting, unique, and fun Japanese titles that succeeded elsewhere in the world. It seems Japanese publishers do not want to fund large projects; but then again, there are Japanese publishers that are funding expensive projects like Batman: Arkham City and Dead Rising in the West. So why not keep their money in Japan?

[micahcowan]

I don't consider it to be just the Japanese game industry. The entire game industry, across the world, has been in a long and steady decline in terms of game quality - by which I really mean game enjoyability. Cost of development and graphics have gone steadily upward, but today's games don't grab me as well as the older ones. I feel like I'm lucky if there's one great game in the year, and usually that one game takes less than a weekend to beat. :\