From the mid 1980's to the early 2000's, Japan ruled the industry. If you had a console, your console HAD to have Japanese support in order to stay alive. This is why for the longest time, all the major consoles on the market were Japanese. It's also why many were skeptical of Microsoft when they first announced Xbox. Something happened along the way. The Japanese were the best. Sometime in the early 2000's however, they started to fall behind and the west caught up.
There's a lot of debate over what happened, some of it factual, some of it opinionated but I think one thing that made everything worse (after the initial decline in the Japanese market) was when the Japanese stopped being themselves and started trying to replicate what was popular in the west. They alienated their own market while looking mediocre in the eyes of western gamers. I think Resident Evil 6 is still the poster child of what the Japanese should NOT be doing with their games. I think the best solution for the Japanese is to borrow ideas from the west such using licensed game engines while still doing their own thing.
As someone who grew up on mostly Japanese games, it saddens me to see people (presumingly young people) actually bashing them. One idiot on youtube was actually bashing Japanese developers by using racial slurs......and he was a PlayStation supporter. Fucking idiot.
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