I thought this has always been a well known fact. At least I've known it since I started reading videogame magazines back in the 90's. I remember that some japanese games localized for America had their difficulty dialed up because they were just too easy.

Ditto. I like difficulty SOMETIMES because it can be a fun challenge, but I want to be in control of it, not it of me.

There's something to be said about difficulty settings.

actually you bring up a goo point. That was done religiously for SEGA games. Alot of the Classic Final Fantasies did that too. I believe FF4 was made harder when it came over here.

Dark Souls, anyone?

Seems like ol' Mr. Moto is butthurt that his crap isn't selling like it used to.

This doesn't explain why arcade games are still so popular in Japan. Bullet Hell games are harder than my morning glory, and that's like fuckin' diamond.

Shigbert is going senile!

I wonder how much influence this mindset has when Nintendo is developing their games. Those tutorials in Zelda are obnoxious and hopefully this isnt the reason for it.

Wait what really?

I thought it was the other way round with how a lot of the western "action" games pretty much play themselves. I mean if you play Call of Duty or other single player campaigns, you actually have to put effort to die while playing on normal difficulty. I mean you can just run into a hailstorm of bullets and sponge it up like spongebob squarepants.

miyamoto makes action games?

Oh, what a different gaming world we must live in than when we didn't get the real Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was 'too hard' for Western gamers XD