Well, yeah. But you're taking his words a bit too literally. He made a really brilliant point. You can't just assume that Americans see a game and go, "Derp! Guns! I buy this!" It's like if Epic made a game about sexually confused teenagers who wield gigantic swords on the basis that such a thing will automatically sell like hotcakes in Japan. The reason people like shooters (or more generally, action games) is because of things like easy accessibility, intense action, and competitive multiplayer. If you can't capture that, you'll fail.

For example, look at Warriors: Legends of Troy. What a total flop and all because Koei decided to, in their own words, make "a Dynasty Warriors for people who hate Dynasty Warriors". Such a game has no audience at all, and the sales show it. It would have been far better to have just made another successful musou game for Japan.

Compared to, say, Square-Enix? Yes.

If you aren't amused by a revered Japanese developer using the same animu girly-boy stereotypes that make Japanophile heads explode across the internet every day, then you simply have no soul!

He's right.
Some Japanese developers aren't even making their own games right, so their focus on titles with global reach may end up even worse.

Also, their output this gen feels very mediocre as opposed to what we've received in the past. Part of that is due to their greater focus on the handheld side of things.

Square Enix can learn a lot from this man.

Did you really just post this? Japanese people like Platformers, Japanese RPG, and many other things including first and third person shooters. Shooters are just not as popular in Japan as in North America. To be honest I never seen or heard about the type of games you claim Japanese people like.

Wow honeslty Kojima is both right in this interview and horribly off in other ways.

He's pretty much ignoring what the main problem is with why Japan has lost success worldwide. Its because they haven't innovated at all not because "American like to shoot aliens". That's just absurd.

Look at games like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Uncharted, Halo and countless others, and why they are so successful and critically acclaimed. Its because they've had REAL innovation and pushed gameing and brought fresh experiences to gamers. Japan hasn't pushed out anything to really move gameing foreward this entire generation. They are makeing the exact same games they made 10 years ago just with up rezzed graphics.

Tell ya what Japan you want to see real success again? Think outside the box, don't make the same games you've been making forever, and fix your development cycles. The fact is no matter how they want to spin it and say "The world just doesn't get our games" is plain wrong. Final Fantasy was and is massive in the west. Pokemon is huge in the west. The world gets Japan's games but we are growing more and more dissinterested in them simply because they have grown just plain stale.

No offense but someone rocking a massive Tri-Ace sig shouldn't be complaining about other games not beeing "innovative"  and yes every franchise I listed has innovated.

Mass Effect:  No game in history has made makeing choices so important over multiple installments.  Period this isn't up for debate.  While other games have somewhat used the feature Mass Effect has taken it and blown it out of the park.  Not to mention how many Space sci-fi RPG's are there?  Some yes but they are few and far between.  Not to mention successfully hypbridizing TPS and RPG elements together cohesively.  Again not "never been seen before" but boundary pushing.

Fallout 3:  Again unlike what Japan likes to do Bethesda managed to take an old franchise completly revamp it in every single aspect from how the game plays to how it looks and make it a great experience for the modern gamer.  Also utilizes the V.A.T.S. system which manges to make a FPS truely feel like an RPG.  A massive game world filled with endless amounts to do, deep character customization, deep converation system, and a fantastic DLC program to keep the game fresh even after release.

Call of Duty:  MASSIVELY innovated in online in many many many many ways.  Again regardless of how you feel abou the franchise it has brought level progression and and mutliplayer unlocks to an entire new level as well as community and matchmaking tech "under the hood"

Assassins Creed:  Really how many franchises can you name me which span 1000's of years in story and yet keep the same main protagonist in every installment?  How many games are there set in near future, the medival ages, and Renaissance Italy all in one franchise?  How many games can you name which portray the FULL life of a character from boyhood all the way to being an old man and really show you the progression and radically change the character ( Ezio ).  How many franchises can you name me which use real historical figures as the basis of the mysteries of the game and as the characters influences, family, and enemies?  Doing all this from a strory perspective while haveing a huge open world richly detailed full of exact replicas of historical buildings and places and utilizing a fantastic mix of stealth, combat, and even vehicle controlled missions.

Uncharted:  Brought cinimatic gameplay to an entire new level.  While didn't innovate much in terms of story or gameplay it did however bring all gameing foeward in a huge way from a cinematography sense and the WAY a story is told.  Few if any games have ever had that "Summer action movie"  feel like Uncharted and that is due to innovations in paceing, character acting, and set pieces.

Halo:  Made FPS on consoles possible.  Period.  Everyone from Ken Levine to Warren Spector state how Bungie managed to change the entire landscape of console gameing forever.  While the idea seems simple now there was a time when an actual good working shooter on consoles was thought nearly impossible.  Not to mention MASSIVE innovations in online bring true lage scale matchmaking to consoles, the huge Forge system, persistant developing multiplayer identities, dual wielding weapons, the whole idea of recharing health and not health packs, vehicular vs infantry warfare and endless others.

So in  conclusion while not every game I listed COMPLETLY showed us something never seen before most did and those that didn't still innovated the genre's and gameing massively.

Owned.

You have not listed one innovation in in of those games... just concepts that already xxisted but refined to better which you actually acknowledge in your post? thats not innovative...making a old idea better happens in EVERY game, by yourt words EVERY game is innovative

I dont think you know what innovate means

Please and I mean PLEASE stop arguing cemantics.  Any innovation comes from the root of something else in modern society.  EVERY SINGLE ONE.  That is what innovation means takeing something that was there and introducing something new and perfecting it.  At this point in gameing we will see VERY LITTLE innovation in terms of "never been done before" simply because we have at least had the basis of nearly every mechanic possilbe.  True innovation will come from perfecting and expanding on pre-existing mechanics or ideas 99.999999999% of the time.  Everything from the Wii, to the DS, to Kinect, to Move, to Wii U, to everything else is just takeing a pre-existing idea and expanding or perfecting it.

And I did name you examples of true never been done before innovation.  I have to say you are quickly becoming my least favorite member of Vgchartz, now days all you do is argue with everyone in the forums about every single aspect of modern gameing from achievements to games in every single thread.  At the end of the day I've made my point its blindingly apparent the West has done more innovation THIS GEN then Japan has and I'm not going to argue with you because I already know how this will go and I have zero desire to dirty up these awesome forums with pointless argument.