Males and Females in Japanese games often look the same. Except for the 'gruff older man' look.

^But that doesn't seem to be a problem for Japanese gamers, and this is, after all, a thread about their tastes.

Wow, two very bad and wrong stereotypes in two posts.

Dude, is this for real? I love Japanese games as much as your average otaku but I see things objectively. This gen at least, the west has been more productive than Japan. This is a fact. I too have been saddened by that fact because less variety is bad not necessarily because Japanese games are inherently better. They just have a longer legacy. The West is more like the infant in the industry. Violent cinematics aren't unique to the west either. If anything the whole "M" label thing supposedly costs the companies profit. "T" is the apparent target for most games.

You may think shooters, sports games, etc are lame but whatever sells is what developers are going to make. You sound like the western devs created the audience whereas, they only catered to the audience that was already there. Japan is just as guilty as the west regarding sequels. S-E and Ninty use the names "final fantasy" and "Mario" in front of many games with no connection at all just to sell more copies. At least western sequels tend to make more sense.

The biggest irony about your post and perhaps the saddest is that JP devs themselves are starting to copy the west while the west remains comfortable in its own skin. Resident evil 5 is a GeOW clone down to the main character design. Nier Gestalt? Quantum Theory? Some Sega shooter called "Stormrise" or something like that so who's the better side at the end of the day?

This is a lose-lose situation.

Agreeing with Wada means that it is acceptable to let game companies tell you what is fun. As long as they make the sales projection they anticipated, your opinions are worthless. Culture, tastes, preferences, etc. do not matter.

Disagreeing means that it is acceptable for gamers to hype and dismiss games based on personal impressions and bias. The best marketing wins. A game that not very many people know or care about will be a bad game even if the reviews are favorable and same is true vice versa.

Okay which one of you just said that Western game development is in its relative infancy

Step forward

They are just giving people what they want, and people vote with their wallets.

Games might be high quality and get great reviews, but who gives a shit if no one wants to play it.

This.  Japanese developers are making games to cater to western tastes not because western games are 'superior' or because they're 'copying' them, but because the western markets are 4-5x bigger than the Japanese market and they're trying to increase their marketshare in the west.

But as we've seen with some companies such as SquareEnix, Koei, Konami and etc, this strategy is flawed as mostly what they're doing is just alienating their strong Japanese fanbase and the limited western fanbase they already had...which liked the games they were already making.  In other words, Wada should shut up and stop complaining that games like Infinite Undiscovery and Blue Dragon didn't sell and instead focus on improving the popular games his company already makes better.

Haha, someone doesn't get a joke? =P