Legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto recently sat down with 4Gamer and openly discussed the state of the Japanese video game market. He sparked some controversy by saying that Japanese gamers can’t overcome the level of difficulty found in western action games and therefore they no longer want to play them. Miyamoto said American gamers throughly enjoy the challenge found throughout western action based titles, but the Japanese quite simply do not.

“I’ve been making action games for some 30 years, and I’ve been thinking about the difference evident in how their popularity has been gradually declining in Japan whilst in America it has been maintained. The issue is that Japanese who cannot overcome the level of difficulty in an action game no longer want to play them. This perception then spreads to all games as a whole, and people avoid them because they see them as difficult.”

“In the case of America, there are a lot more people who enjoy a challenge and will stick with it for you and try to overcome the initial hurdle. Yes, it’s action games which really demand a certain level of skill. Right, some players just enjoy playing, some prefer to finish it, and some prefer greater challenge. People looking for a challenge will dismiss an easily cleared game as “easy.” But by making things too difficult, the people who just want to play get driven off. I always wanted to accommodate both types.”

Source: http://mynintendonews.com/2013/07/14/miyamoto-says-japanese-gamers-are-quitters-and-dont-enjoy-hard-games/

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.

There are Japanese games that were made easier for the US too though.  Blaster Maste for example.  Most people will probably quit at level four.  I would.  The part you cross from level four to five on the Japanese version is ridiculous. 

Final Fantasy 4 wasn't made harder for the west.  It was made easier.  Heal potions were cure alls, many items were removed, enemy HP was reduced a little bit.  Final Fantasy 4 Easy Type or Easy Game was then released in Japan afterwards.  The game was even easier than the US version keeping some of the changes from the US version and further reducing the difficulty, including a new last boss.  So the Final Fantasy 4 that people call "hard type" is just normal FF4.  There's FF4, FF4 US, and FF4 Easy.