Can Japanese games ever catch up?

[The Anarchyz]

bugrimmar said:

It seems that the best games in every genre, except fighting perhaps, are now made by the West. Among the old guard of Japanese franchises, some have been bested, some now have very stiff competition from the West.

Resident Evil (survival horror) has been panned by critics, told that the game feels ancient, and no longer scary. Dead Space and Bioshock have risen to be strong contenders for the king of the horror genre.

Devil May Cry (hack and slash), which once was the premier slasher, has fallen to the wayside, and has been soundly replaced by God of War.

Metal Gear Solid (stealth action), once the most revolutionary and advanced game of it's genre, is now under stiff competition from the likes of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin's Creed, and Splinter Cell.

Gran Turismo (racing) has always had an air of invincibility. Though the 5th installment has yet to release, it already has stiff competition from Forza, with reviewers hailing it to be at the least an equal to Polyphony's racer.

Final Fantasy (RPG) also has had this air of invincibility, but trends show that it's popularity is declining. 13 would be a clear signal of where this franchise will go in the future, but right now, Bethesda's Fallout and Oblivion series are already claiming the mantles of best RPGs.

It seems Mario is the only giant Japanese franchise left that has yet to have a true rival.

On the other side of the coin, the West has games in other genres that have no rivals at all from Japan. Japan does not produce shooters, RTS, or sandbox games that are worth noting. Innovation has also mostly been coming from the West, with games like Littlebigplanet.

So do you guys think that Japanese games can still catch up with the West? 

Oblivion and Fallout 3??? in terms of WRPGs they don't come near Mass Effect...

Of course, i prefer Final Fantasy over WRPGs any time of day, in fact, i play more JRPGs than WRPGs, i'm just more interested in them...

Gran Turismo is still the king of racing simulation... Need for Speed beats it in absolute sales, but overall quality and sales per/game is still GT territory...

The thing is, Japan was the king of console games because most western devs moved to PCs once the crash occured, so Japan took the lead on consoles, but once the systems got near and near PCs the best W devs started moving to consoles again with games like Tomb Raider, and Sony itself got W devs like Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot) and Insomniac (Spyro), Nintendo always had Rare but with the N64 they did one epic shooter (Goldeneye), Rockstar North brought Grand Theft Auto, and the list goes on...

The final trigger was the Xbox, a real US contender almost 20 years later, it proved that FPS, WRPGs and other PC genres can be succesful on consoles, the flagship of that idea was Halo, once people went berserk for it, FPS devs also moved, then the other genres followed, today with the HD consoles, the only barrier left was brought down: The screen resolution, remember that PCs by 2005 could handle more than 1024x768, while TVs still had 480i (640x480/720x480 in pixels), but with 360 and PS3 both supporting 1280x720, PC devs don't have that excuse anymore (except on the Wii, but that's a different story)...

So now, W devs are fully back on consoles and J devs now have a fierce competition that they didn't have for a lot of years...