Gloom and doom time. Well, for Japanese game developers. While the country's game makers seems to be down on themselves of late, it's hard to separate that from stereotypical Japanese humility and plain old self-realization. Here's Genji developer Game Republic head and former Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto talking about whether Japan can catch up with the West:

It's almost too late. During the Famicom (NES) era, Japanese video games comprised 70 percent of all video games. And currently, it's like 15 or 20 percent, isn't it? Now, Western games are more advanced. For games like GTAIV, those guys are spending something like 5 or 10 years to make them. Even if we thought about catching up with them now, they'd still be making progress. But, not necessarily giving up, it's just not possible to catch up in a single lifetime.

http://kotaku.com/5047749/western-games-are-more-advanced-than-japanese

Japanese games > Western games, Yoshi. lol

 That was b4. They have really fallen behind this gen. Almost like they haven't moved on from last gen. Western games seem to be more innovative whereas its just mostly more of the same with the Japanese devs this gen.

Good Japanese Games > Good Western games
Good Western Games > Bad Japanese Games

This rule applies unless we are talking about Blizzard.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots :)

Well this is not big news, japanese games are quite crappy. Of course there are few exceptions, like some jrpg:s. :/

I have to agree with this. I love Japanese designed games, but a good majority really aren't pushing hardware or innovation much this generation. Metal Gear Solid 4 is an exception, so no need to cherry pick it as a counter argument people. Nintendo is exempt from this for the most part also.

I don't think japanese games are less advanced. Sure western games as well as japanese games have their goods and bads.
Anyway, it was interesting what he said about the percentages, since the high percentage during NES era propably was true on consoles (remember the crash), but the gaming computers had nearly 100 percent western games. Besides, considering the size of Japan, opposed to the rest of the world, japanese games are still overrepresented.

@Kurakasa: I don't know has anyone said this before, but your nick means "pile of mud" in finnish.

I have to disagree. There are many Zany Japanese games that are released every year but are not released in the West because the publisher feels that the game will not appeal to the Western Audience.

More importantly though, is that your statement can worded to reflect that Western Developers' games are just more of the same. So many developers want to make the next Halo that Platformers, Adventure games, and survivor horror games are left to be developed by so few developers and most if not all are located in Japan.

Technologically, western games have always been way ahead of their eastern counterparts. Not surprising, as western game budgets (and teams) typically outweigh their eastern cousins by a considerable margin.

I'm not sure I'd go as far to say that the reverse is true for gameplay, but... I'm tempted. Japanese games have really innovated in some areas... in other areas they've been a little stagnant (cloning of FF7 comes to mind).

The focus on high-tech shooters in the west is really lame though. There are rare few gameplay innovations, and when there are, no matter how minor, they are heralded as some sort of marvel.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the one of the big reasons there haven't been a lot of big eastern titles this generation, especially in genres that the eastern devs are famous for (eg: RPGs), is due to the same thing that has probably allowed them to innovate so much, in the gameplay dept.  Teams *need* to be big to tackle the modern HD consoles... and a lot of Japanese, etc. devs just don't want to go there.

Bring on the Wii and DS, and even the PSP -- they're very well suited to the Eastern-style development budget and cycle.  Convenient, since those are by far the most popular consoles in Japan.