http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/79983-Silent-Hill-5-Producer-Says-Japan-Developers-Lagging-Behind-The-West

Interesting...

I think he may have a point as Japan is probably more concerned with developing for the Wii as it is THE console this gen for that region. But still, I don't think DMC4 was too shabby on the technical front...

What do you think?

Interesting, but since most games are still developed in Japan, I have to disagree with him. I do agree that the American market is the hottest of the markets with 50% market share where all others equal 50%. It should be interesting how development shifts with the HD consoles.

I'm actually fairly impressed with American devs and western devs in general this generation.  They've come out very strong and are doing quite well.

Totally agree in terms of gameplay advancement. Japan have been making the same games since the first playstation.

NA will be fine as long as eventually they can learn to do something besides FPS games.

I've been saying this for years, particularly in the RPG and MMO genres. Japan is largely making the same game over and over again while western devs are trying new things all the time (the openness of KOTOR & Oblivion, the cinematic feel of Mass Effect, the market-busting WoW, etc). Not everything they try necessarily works that well, but at least they're trying new things that don't solely involve using the WiiMote in new and interesting ways.

Really, it comes down to choice and part of it is culture, part of it is the conservative attitude of many Japanese developers. A few notable exceptions being Nintendogs and some of the other radically new DS & Wii games but for conventional gaming, little progression has been made in the past decade by the Japanese.

All you have to do is look at the rise of the sandbox, MMO, shooter, and WRPG genres to see just how deeply western developers have impacted gaming in the past 10 years.

I reckon they are fairly equal to be fair.

Well the Japanese big guns for this gen are yet to be shown (FF, MGS), and I think Japanese designers tend to use creativity over graphics...

But I think its becoming clear form the sales in Japan that they don't necessarily award interesting level design, multiplayer evolution and good story telling, not by our standards anyways.

For example, the 2007 game of the year just about anywhere... Bioshock... sold really poorly there but I doubt it will sell any better if released on PS3.

I think the complete package of GTA4 will be so far ahead of anything coming out of japan (technically) that they won't be able to make a similar product for many years to come. Wether that makes a better game (being technically advanced) I am not too sure.

See, that's where I disagree. FFXII took a lot of its control system from MMOs and MGS4 looks to be a straight rip of Splinter Cell's control scheme (as was RE4).

I'm sure they'll both be good-to-great games but it's hard to call anything creative when it's leaning heavily on things western developers were doing 6-7 years ago.

I love some of the stuff Japanese developers are doing in new genres but their traditional stuff is starting to seem like they're nothing more than a 10 year old franchise with controls ripped from western developers (FF, MGS, RE, etc.). 

But what MMO did you think FFXII took it's control scheme from? Because I would imagine it took alot from FFXI controls, which it seems fairly similar to when I play it. I'm just not sure you can count the FFXII control scheme as being taken from Western developers. Can't debate with you about MGS4 since I don't know enough about the subject though.