People get to hate Pachter coz he tells it like it is (he may be wrong sometimes but most of his comments are decent).... You know how stuff goes with fanboys - if you don't say what they want to hear you're ... scuffed. I think there are western players who love japanese stuff just for the sake of it; just to be different (I'm not mainstream so I'm a mofo). Most japanese games are technically lame; have a story that even the creators don't understand and the sad part : bad gameplay with hard stupid gimmicks.

Of course there are good japanese games... but not many.
SE can't handle a new FF VII release. They're not there anymore.

That's...not why I left actually. But a lot more of them seem to have sprung up. 

To be honest i dont get them either, and they often piss me off for not bringing their games to the west. If not only to build a fanbase and relationship with the customer. Its beyond me, but probably because they are Japanese, that they dont realise this. The less games that get released, the few costumers they will enter a relationship with. In short, they really have no clue about business. I dunno what they teach on those Japanese management universities.

I know that in the case of square and FF7 it was Wada that was stubburn. I'm pretty sure they will do it under the new management.

I laugh at Pachter just like you and consider his predictions ridiculous, but this time I have to agree with him. Japanese developers really act very unreasonable. They seem to be sitting on a pile of gold just unwilling to pick it up. SE is struggling? Well, how many copies would a remake of FF VII sell? How much would they earn by bringing their games to the West - even just Type-0 and Bravely Default? The list of stupid decisions can go on and other developers really aren't any better. The localisation policy of Japanese devs is just ridiculous and can't be justified in any logical way. I also hate the way some of them are ignoring Vita (crapcom) while others just ignore the West (Namco-Bandai). There are only a few noteworthy developers who act in a reasonable manner like Atlus or Marvelous AQL, but unfortunately they are not the norm.

I really think that, unlike some of you suggest here, he isn't talking about what Japanese games are like and that they should be more western, but is questioning the policy of these companies and their business decisions. And I totally agree with him.

Eh, when a country is ruled by a party it's the whole country, not just the ones who voted for them. Same goes here. MOST western developers go the Hollywood way and MOST Japanese don't. People always shorten things like this to general statements (actually not saying "all").

If you haven't noticed any innovations in the past 10 years besides motion control (not just Nintendo's) and movie playback, you missed a lot of gaming. That's the point where people start to think you only play those big games with big names that are famous in all media. Look around and you can find a lot more variety, innovation, crazy stuff, interesting stuff. It's the same with movies, music, books, etc. There's more than what's in the media every day. Of course, it's not cool because people don't talk about it that much and it's not as shiny and in your face.

go back to school, and this time try not to ditch math class

Now who's generalizing?  I was talking specifically about the Japanese market when I said there haven't been that many innovations over the past decade in gaming aside from the Wii (and DS/3DS arguably), and you somehow turn that into "well you must only play those big AAA yearly release games that everyone's heard of".  There are plenty of innovative games I've enjoyed over the past generation or so that weren't AAA Hollywood blockbusters, such as Portal 1 & 2, Braid, Minecraft, Scribblenauts, etc.

Of course many of these games recieved praise and attention from mainstream media outlets, therefore I guess that means they're not very innovative, right?  But on the other hand, some weird hybrid puzzle/dating sim game like Catherine or the 10 millionth JRPG that tries to be different by featuring a slight twist on a rusty old battle system is innovative, right?  Sorry, but niche =/= innovative.  A game can be a huge mega hit and still be innovative to the industry.  Hell, COD4 is the biggest example of this...as much as everyone loves to rag on the series now, COD4 introduced an INNOVATIVE multiplayer system that has spawed dozens upon dozens of copies and is still popular to this day.

What have the latest FF releases brought to the table for example?  Or even the latest Mario, or Zelda?  How come no developers are rushing out to copy them these days?  This is why Japanese developers have been falling out of favor with many gamers lately... because they and many of their franchises are stuck in the past.

Here's an explanation Pachter.

Employ game designers that take pride in what they do, and you help them to produce the best game possible.

I know it differs greatly from the (general) western model of:

Employ game designers that take pride in having money, and you force them to produce the quickest game possible.

I'm not so sure about that. 

If you make an engine that will look good for 5 years and then need to be scrapped, you can make 5 CoD games using that engine, or just a single Final Fantasy.

Making engines only really makes sense if you are going to pump out a huge quantity of games.

So that means that Pachter does get Japanese developers.


Or am I doing this wrong?