Because...why develop for the Japanese market when you could develop for the much larger Western market.  Also, it is naturally easier for Western developers to make games for Western gamers then for Japanese gamers.

Lol @ thread, come on people, just let it go already. There are good games coming out of Japan, and good games coming out of the rest of the world, just let it rest. Pay the games you like and don't whine about it.

Geez, they could make a South Park episode out of this thread. :p

Well film-makers do,video games developers don't.  Americans don't care about great script/story writers and directing.

American games need better scripts and scenarios (Sci-fi and WW2 need to take a break), better character designs and styles, WAY better face expressions.

GTA did a good job with their script/dialogue but character designs needed help.

If they fix these things then I think Japanese people would American games more.

What game have you played that had emotions?  Maybe you know something i don't.

@Farmland: I always thought that GTA series had a japanese entry on consoles only in the later installments, but apparently it isn't so. When in the west, GTA became popular on PC, it definately didn't happen in Japan.

The two first GTA games weren't that big on consoles and the series picked up only after going into 3D. On a side note, the GB and GBA versions sales would be interesting to know.

@Soriku: No, it's not. Even if the japanese market would interest some western devs, it would require to hire new artists to make different type of visual art for the games, which is expensive. Then again, making games free of cultural context would be a solution, but it would eat away some of the western sales.

Because japan has a very different culture (and a better one imo) and have not become 'globalised' thank god.

I blame tentacle rape hentai.

It's not only SE just look at anime/manga - how many of those feature grown adults or at least 17+ characters ?  And that's without starting about more questionable aspects of their taste - like Hentais.

I'd say Atlus is more of exception than majority.

People in Eastern just got different taste from Western.

For example ,i'm a cartoonist with Manga art style.(As you can see my Avatar and Signature.)
I can say that someone'll hate it ,but there're someone like it too.

You can hate something but what you hate doesn't mean wrong/bad for someone.That's what i want to say. :)

About the side topic... I could name one series of japanese games that features a fat guy, who's closing his middle-age and his goal in the games is to get to bone a certain high-class blonde.

Admit it, that the "japanese games" in question are limited mostly to JRPG:s and manga style games.

@ Madanial and Cheebee, your responses are the most sane out of this whole ridiculous thread.