Japanese devs/publishers. What's up with them?

[DevilRising]

I seem to be one of the few who disagrees with the popular notion (not so surprisingly, popular specifically among western gamers), that western developers have taken over the industry and are SO much better now than Japanese developers are.

It's pretty obvious that the west has risen up within the last couple of generations, with companies like 2K Games, EA, Activision and Ubisoft all really coming into prominence, and studios like Rockstar, Insomniac, Bethesda, Sucker Punch, Bungie, Retro, Naughty Dog, etc. rising to popularity. And I'll also openly admit/lament the fact that many Japanese companies that were once synonymous with greatness and assured quality, such as Squaresoft, Enix, Capcom, Konami, Namco, Sega, etc., have really fallen off within that same span of time, or many more like Hudson Soft, have simply disappeared.

But, beyond that, while I don't deny that western developed games have seemed to take over the industry (other than Nintendo made games), I will absolutely argue the notion that western made games are so much better than Japanese ones these days. And I'm not talking about those aforementioned big studios that have slid in quality. I'm more disappointed than anyone how those companies have turned out, considering they used to make some of my favorite games of all time. BUT, some people seem to like to ignore that there are a lot of great Japanese developers, many of them new, who are excellent and to my mind, still make more creative/more fun games than a good majority of western developed stuff.

Just to name a few: Team Ico (if they'd ever actually hurry the fuck up and finish The Last Guardian), Studio Pixel, Nigoro, Good-Feel, Grasshopper Manufacture, Platinum Games, Vanillaware, Monolith Soft, Intelligent Systems, Camelot, Mistwalker, Treasure, Level-5, Atlus, HAL, Polyphony Digital, etc.

I can't/won't deny that there are a lot of great (especially indie) western dev studios now. But I personally don't think that a lot of the now-popular western devs really deserve quite the amount of hype they get, especially all the purveyors of FPS after FPS. Some of those are even quality games, no doubt. But I just think there is still a hell of a lot more creativity and talent in Japanese devs that many want to think, just not from the major studios (outside of Nintendo). I'd love to see Capcom, Square or Konami return to form and quit putting out bullshit. But I don't trust that to happen. Which is why it's good all of these other, smaller studios do still make great games.