Or so says the New York Times:
“I look around Tokyo Games Show, and everyone’s making awful games; Japan is at least five years behind,” said Keiji Inafune, 45, head of global research and development at Capcom and one of Japan’s most prominent game designers.
“Capcom is barely keeping up,” he said in an interview at the show, which ended Sunday. “I want to study how Westerners live, and make games that appeal to them.”
“Japan used to define gaming,” said Jake Kazdal, a longtime developer who has worked at Sega in Tokyo and the American game publisher Electronic Arts. “But now many developers just do the same thing over and over again.”
Nintendo has been the major exception, a Japanese game company that has remained dominant. The company, based in Kyoto, reinvented the industry with its Wii home console and wandlike remote, which was introduced in 2006, luring new casual players into the market while setting an industry standard in motion control.
What do you think: is there really a dichotomy of quality? Are the Japanese playing fewer games? Or are Japanese developers suffering from a Western-inferiority complex?