Yes, and by using that connotation to refer to it, he's showing a degree of bias.

How do you explain the popularity of the games during the SNES and Genesis era? Almost all of them were made with a Japanese audience in mind. Does it come down to gamers back in the 1990s had no choice, but once given with each new generation they have gravitated towards games fitting their cultural expectations?

I don't disagree with you. I just differ, it is not the West or the rest of the world who has a problem playing games from another culture. It is Japan's own problem, which is due to what you said which basically comes down to insularity.

Because, if your hypothesis was true from country to country, Red Dead Redemption would not have sold out the first week in the United Kingdom. Europe never had cowboys and the wild west to the extent of the USA.

I just don't buy that it is entirely culturally specific. I think it comes down to games that sell very well worldwide and games that sell very well in Japan. Until Japanese consumers become accustomed to games developed from another cultural perspective, then the situation will not change and Japanese developers will continue a zero sum game of catering to the smallest video game market with a declining population at the expense of making the game culturally neutral and pushing 2 to 3 million more outside of the Japanese market.

As for my claim of "with a declining population" the information is widely known and here is a source backing up my claim look under "People > Population Growth Rate": https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html

Not culturally specific, culturally relevant to you. Yeah we never had cowboys here, but being an English speaking nation Western movies dominated TV/cinema just as much as it did in America, and with no localization or anything lost in translation. Like I said, it's for the reason that MS succeeds most in English speaking regions, because the culture between English speaking nations is easily exported to eachother in the form of television and movies (and now games).

You are aware that English is only spoken in 3 European countries right? So your theory doesn't explain why Western games are successfull in all of Europe. Plus WTF???, when have Westerns ever dominated TV/cinema in America or in any other place?

They are comparably more successful in English speaking regions like the UK (the example the poster before gave). Westerns were extremely popular in the early years of film, and have you never heard of Spaghetti Westerns of the 60's and 70's? All of these things were heavily exported to other English speaking countries. Perhaps it is because you are not in an English speaking country that you are not aware of this...

Meh... IMO all i get out of these articles is how Japan wont conform to America.  Really it just sounds like America is stuck up and think they're the hot stuff, like if its big in America it MUST be big everywhere else in the world or else something is wrong with that country.

Different country, different culture, different mind-set, get over it!

Bioware who has yet to put out a bad game has several franchises besides Mass Effect and Dragon Age is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. Blizzard in 1998 had only three good franchises to it's name: Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft. Bioware has Mass Effect, Star Wars, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate.

The West does not equal USA. I think of the West as any game developer in the Western hemisphere or Europe.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.

For a company that prides themselves on intensive storytelling, that game was particularly abysmal.

They are successfull in all Western countries, regardless of language spoken. Do you somehow think that American TV shows and movies don't make it to European countries who don't speak English? And I doubt that Westerns have had a significant impact on Britsh culture. It's just that, when it comes to video games at least, the Japanese are highly xenophobic, and reject non-Japanese video games. And I'm pretty sure Windows based PC's are pretty popular in Japan, it's just that they reject Microsoft when it comes to video games (because, like I said before, they're xenohpobic).

They don't know what starcraft is? I knew they were cloistered but god damn thats too much.

Oh homophones you so crazy