It's still not a joke. But you can call it whatever you want. I don't live in Japan, but yes several games are praised. Off the top of my head:

-Gravity Rush: favourite psvtia game from psvita fans

-Soul Sacrifice: Also praised by a whole lot of psvita fans and did well in Japan

- Freedom Wars: It hasn't even lauched, but looks incredible (getting praise from several sites)

- Last Guardian: Again, hasn't even launched and it's all you see people talk about before and after each e3. Shadow of the Colossus is that highly regarded by the gaming community.

-Rain got a lot of praise

- Puppeteer is considered a great game that didn't sell well

-Tokyo jungle did well in Japan and got a lot of praise from reviewers for being innovative (yet not thrid party. Crazy huh?). I'm sure there are more.

Do you by any chance game on ps consoles? I'm asking because even games like Knack have received praise here despite the negative reviews. (you ask if I know anyone. Not from real life, but there were multiple threads here and on other websites with reviews from the point of view of children who enjoyed it).

You seem to miss on the entire point. Who the fuck cares about reception. Nintendo games gets recieved well, but systems still sells shit. 

They have 1st party games, yes, but it's not like the biggest sellers are the 1st party games. My thoughts on PS is irrelevant. I can see how the PS is popular in the West and don't have a problem with it. You can't seriously think that most Japanese gamers will say "I can't wait until Uncharted releases", "Killzone is gonna kill it", etc.

The Last Guardian gets mostly mentioned here, I have no idea of what the Japanese thinks of it and it's irrelevant to the discussion if you don't have anything to support it.

It's a reasonable point of view, but the numbers posted by tbone disagree. (the comparative graph comparing MK8 with previous MK entries' first week and lifetime sales)

The fw sales of MK are in line with massive lifetime sales (2 to 4m units), and to sustain those lifetime sales, consoles need to be sold. With a typical attach ratio of 33% (as posted by Michael-5 earlier), we have that 6 to 12m U's should be sold in japan to make sense with the numbers.

So that's why I believe the HW-selling ability of MK will have to be less front-loaded for the U, but it's eventual.

I also could be wrong, but we will keep following the numbers to see what's true.

"Who the fuck cares about reception" Apparently, you do: "Have you heard anyone say anything positive of 1st party games in Japan?"

This was your question and I answered it.

You can't seriously think that most Japanese gamers will say "I can't wait until Uncharted releases", "Killzone is gonna kill it"

Most Japanese gamers? Of course not. Never said that. My point is that first party games are not a joke. Even in terms of sales, they still find an audience; just not a large one. I'd still not call it a joke, because every little helps and the sales of several western games show that Japanese gamers don't only buy Japanese games.

By the 2nd bolded statement, I meant in terms of interest. There's no major interest, the Japanese wouldn't make it as a deal breaker. Maybe a small amount, but that doesn't change much. The only thing that has driven the last few Sony systems has been third parties, with GT being the only 1st party to have done something of attention.

The way I see it, we don't know. What we do know is that there is no major interest in them (as you said). What we don't actually know is just how important these titles are. For example, I bought a 3ds primarily for the exclusive naruto games it got and to a lessser extent for Pokemon x/y. The naruto games didn't sell well in the west at all. So it would appear that it was pokemon that pushed sales (I bought one when poekmon laucnhed), while it was both of them. Most people don't buy consoles for one game, but for their entire libraries and 1st party games can make the library look good while people end up not buying these games. I had similar conversations with people about to buy a console and they would list a great number of games, in most of which they had no actual interest. If you add up all the sales of first party games and look at the critics reviews, it is a possibility that they do help sales even indirectly. Not saying that that's the case, but that saying that first party games don't help at all may not be the case.

Optimism is good. But don't set yourself up for disappointment.

I get more of what you've been trying to say. I do believe in the end that from the 1st party sales we have seen, I don't think that they have had a noticible impact on hardware. However, there's no definite proof to that. But if we would sum the 1st party sales together on the for example PS3, we would probably see something lower than 60% of the total hardware, I don't have any numbers but that would be my guess. By joke, I meant their impact in sales in the Japanese market, maybe I wasn't clear enough.