I don't think he's talking about sales, but about how the games in general are becoming very stale, and cookie cutter like, and that is hurting sales. Which is why western development is on the rise, and why companies are going for making their games more western-like.

It's hard to tell at the moment because no one has translated it yet. GoNintendo is just giving us a snippet. Can anyone get their hands on the full article in English?

I don't think it will outsell MGS or MGS2 but it will outsell MGS3 easilly ( a lot of MGS3 sales came late in it's life when it became a greatest hit).

I don't think the franchise is actually declining but MGS4 is suffering from the lack of dominance of the PS3 but otherwise I would say it's back to the level of MGS2 and the latest Opus in the franchise is actually quite refreshing...

Depending on wether they decide to make some add-ons to MGS4 or not my estimate is for MGS4 sales to be between 4 and 5 millions... I don't think it's unrealisting to expect MGS4 to keep a 10% weekly attach rate for new console sales in the next year or so which should easilly add 1 million units, more is going to depend on at which time it becomes a greatest hit and if add-ons are made or not...

What would work in its favor is the fact that the PS3 saturation is low enough that there should still be a decent percentage of new PS3 owners that will want to purchase the game( PS3 isn't at the point where new owners are casuals that don't know what titles are around and what good titles are out there).

One reason MGS4 sales declined last few weeks is that PS3 sales declined too. Still this last week the attach rate for new owners was still 14%. 

 There is also something called Platinum. And their is also that huge difference between the userbase when MGS3 released and MGS4 released though.

I agree with Kojima. Japanese games these days feels like they're not innovating at all. It's usually the same art direction, same gameplay with the same story designs. Even on a technical standpoint, it seems that Japanese devs do not take advantage of tools as well as western devs.

Either way. Kojima isn't the first one that said said this. Inafune, Wada and itagaki has said the same. Everyone is trying to migrate their target audience to the west. Right now, the western devs are beating japanese devs to the curb.

I would moderate it though.

Some Japanese developers are doing better than others in terms of creativity, independently of how well their sales are doing in their internal market.

I find developers like Koei or Namco Bandai are becoming particulary bad, releasing new episodes in franchises every year without innovating much ( at least every year in Madden you get the updated teams, you don't even get that in Dynasty Warrior lol).

Some others like Capcom are doing decently and have managed to export a few of their titles well ( DMC, Resident Evil)

yes, jrpgs are minors now they are mostly comming to portables.

not even the wii is doign stellar in japan.

The Wii is doing OK there but it's not reviving the console industry the way it is in Western countries...( total Wii + PS3+ 360 sales aren't a lot above what PS2+GC+Xbox were last gen in Japan, they are a lot in Europe or NA). And if you look at software, console software sales this gen in Japan are worse than last gen, that's not the case in Western countries.

i think he is talking about japanese games on an epic scale. back in the day big AAA games came from japan, with the exception of a few. but it has changed significanty since then. alot of japanese devs are making less AAA games. no offense but i see alot of DS/ wii games from japan are quick games to make an easy buck. but i am more than sure that they are still capable of making AAA games. they just dont see a reason to invest so much when they can easily make a ds/ wii game for half the price, but sometimes half the awesomeness. now dont get me wrong even games on the ps360 are sometimes lacking in said awesomeness, so maybe its just developers getting lazy and not working as hard as they once did....only time will tell with a few big releases coming out from japanes devs. if the likes of ffxiii and wkc dont live up to its hype then yes i do believe japanese devs are in dire need of help

Alright. Those arguments are fair enough. Let's revisit when the holiday season is over and that'll give us a better picture of the situation.