Both are good. My collection is probably 40% Japanese, 60% Western. Not bad, considering Japan is a single country.

Also, both have "outdated" mechanics. The only difference is whether you like those mechanics or not. Yes, Japanese games have elements from the 90s, but so do Western games, I honestly don't see the difference. Let's not forget a majority (or at least a huge portion) of Western games revolve around the super-mega-hyper-"outdated" mechanic of shooting stuff.

People can argue about what games they prefer but objectively speaking western developers have ran circles around japanese developers in terms of number of quality games made this gen. A western game has won the majority of GOTY awards every single year this generation. Looking at metacritic scores, there are 10 western games with 90+ scores for every Japanese one.

There are plenty of Japanese games I've enjoyed this gen. Heck Dark Souls and The World Ends With You are probably in my top 10 favorite games of all time. But when you compare the amount of quality western games to japanese games there is just no contest. I see people listing 10-20 good Japanese games to try to prove there are plenty. I could easily list 200 Western games from this gen that are considered good by the majority of people who've played them and have sold well. Heck even by just grouping franchises into one name I could list 60 ips that have at least 1 game with an 80+ meta that has sold over a million copies. And this is just off the top of my head from ips that I've personally played or looked into. There are probably 60 more.

Halo, Borderlands, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, God of War, Uncharted, Bioshock, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Batman, Left 4 Dead, Portal, LittleBigPlanet, XCom, Civilization, Fable, The Walking Dead, Killzone, Resistance, Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong, Need for Speed, EA/2k Sports games, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Forza, Ratched and Clank, Saint's Row, Just Cause, Sleeping Dogs, Dues Ex, Tomb Raider, Dishonored, Lego, Motorstorm, Dirt, Far Cry, Burnout, Walking Dead, Guild Wars, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Infamous, Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, Crackdown, Splinter Cell, Max Payne, LA Noire, Rage, Crysis, Rayman, Darksiders, Total War, Viva Pinata, Last of Us

Not to mention hundreds of amazing indie games for every gaming taste imaginable, mostly western developed.

Now obviously most people won't enjoy every single one of these IPs. But the same could be said with the far smaller lists of Japanese developed ips this gen. The point is there have been a staggering amount of western developed IPs this gen that many people have enjoyed. Japanese developers are still making plenty of good games. It is just that western developers have jumped way ahead in the number of games.

The fact that 99% of Metascore-applicable critics and of reported journalists' GOTY picks are Western-based could POSSIBLY have something to do with that. I mean, the most high-profile video game award show is hosted by Spike TV. How many Japanese reviews do you ever see being talked about? There's Famitsu, and.......................... well.

The amount of hate in this thread is palpable.

From my point of view:

· Not all japanese developers are better than the western ones.

· Not all western developers are better than the japanese ones.

I was putting a little more thought into this and in my opinion, I can see where there are issues.

In my view, it's not about whether the games are good or not, Japan is one country, yes it has more games studios than most but compare country to country and you'll probably get similar results. However, it's a matter of what they have put out and how their industry is developing in Japan which may mean for western markets, what they produce is no to our liking. Here are some examples:

1) Development costs have gone up, especially for home consoles, Japan is pushing for handheld market, this is evident with Dragon Quest IX being on DS and selling exceptionally, while Dragon Age X on Wii hasn't.
2) I'm currently playing Valkyrie Profile 2 and Front Mission 3, both games have storylines and styling that are, in my view, grown up themes. The story telling is good. In FFXIII, story telling was bad, it felt more like all characters were there had teenage angst and issues yet they weren't teenagers.
3) Questionable character interactions, see Star Ocean 4 for that... seriously, I know she was meant to be like 15 but Limmel (sp?) was like a little girl and having some sort of romantic relationship forming was cringe worthy. It put me off the game.
4) JRPGs traditionally have a lot of character interaction (or did), with modern voice acting I feel a lot is lost as characters no longer keep talking, voice acting takes time and sound files and a lot of story telling can be lost in that time. So story is left to short scene and 'datalogs', usually you learn about the world via the characters talking in text boxes.
5) Abandonment of some traditional RPGs, where is Valkyrie Profile 3, Persona 5... heck looking back on games I've liked, what the hell is tri-Ace working on?

This said, all this is about JRPGs, it's just wasn't the JRPGs gen at all. If of course we were talking about fighting games, well, Japanese developers have no problem there. They make the best and will probably always make the best fighters.

It's a shallow argument at best, and obviously something painted by a person's personal tastes, nothing more.

To me, personally, I think Japanese developers still make some of the better games in the industry.

While it's true that companies like Capcom, Namco, Konami, and Square, all of whom once upon a time made games that were almost always golden, have now all fallen by the wayside and are shadows of their former selves (which is very sad), and the same thing could also be argued about Sega. That does not however mean that ALL Japanese developers are falling by the wayside. Nintendo, for example, is still inarguably one of the best game developers in the world, and they still manage to pump out interesting and creative, and most importantly fun games on a yearly basis.

But beyond big developers, the point many are missing here, is that a lot of smaller developers, such as Team Pixel, such as Nigoro, such as Good-Feel, and Vanillaware, and Team Ico, and Platinum Games, and Grasshopper Manufacture, and HAL Laboratories, and Monolith Soft, and Atlus, and Treasure, and Camelot, Intelligent Systems, and skip LTD, and Mistwalker, and Dimps, etc. etc. etc., all still make anywhere from good to great software, and to my mind, much of it is vastly superior, at least in the "interesting and fun to play" category, than a lot of western software.

That isn't to say there isn't great western games too. But this notion that somehow Japanese gaming has been "redundant and inferior", is both ridiculous and disingenuous.

Sorry, but there is nothing whatsoever "objective" about claiming that western developers have "run circles around Japanese developers".

And using a site like Metacritic to gauge what is "the best", is not indicative of what actually is. Critics are just gamers with their own tastes, who are paid to give their personal opinions. That's literally all there is to that.

I think the problem of most japanese games is their style, it's hard to take them seriously, they are or overly over the top in a bad way, or like most jrgs have a style that many people dislike.

Japanese devs are just as good and even better in some cases to western developers.

If we are guiding ourselves by Metacritic, The legend of Zelda Ocarina of time has a 99 and is the highest rated game of all time. This gen there where 2 super mario games with a 97 score on metacritic. That, is quite impressive if you ask me. Also they deserve it far more than GTA 4, seriously 98 on metacritic? That game was really bad compared to the older ones.

I've been saying for quite some time now that most of the major japanese developers now create extensive tutorials with games around them.

I know, there are still a few good games, but the major franchises I like have taken that turn. And it's really annoying.

That is why I think Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are a really nice breath of fresh air. It doesn't hold your hand. It gives you a system and it's up to you to find the proper way to use it and maximize the results.

The newest games in series like Final Fantasy and Zelda are now really long tutorials where the joy of discovery is lost compared to their older titles.

So while I don't think their games suck, I do agree with what Jonathan Blow expressed in that indie thing video that was circulating here recently.