Technologically, western games have always been way ahead of their eastern counterparts. Not surprising, as western game budgets (and teams) typically outweigh their eastern cousins by a considerable margin.
I'm not sure I'd go as far to say that the reverse is true for gameplay, but... I'm tempted. Japanese games have really innovated in some areas... in other areas they've been a little stagnant (cloning of FF7 comes to mind).
The focus on high-tech shooters in the west is really lame though. There are rare few gameplay innovations, and when there are, no matter how minor, they are heralded as some sort of marvel.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the one of the big reasons there haven't been a lot of big eastern titles this generation, especially in genres that the eastern devs are famous for (eg: RPGs), is due to the same thing that has probably allowed them to innovate so much, in the gameplay dept. Teams *need* to be big to tackle the modern HD consoles... and a lot of Japanese, etc. devs just don't want to go there.
Bring on the Wii and DS, and even the PSP -- they're very well suited to the Eastern-style development budget and cycle. Convenient, since those are by far the most popular consoles in Japan.
