agree with this man here..japanese characters/ anime usually have poor/lazy/ similar facial and body designs.

i love anime but...its so lazy....lol

butt... the japanese have amazing airship, mechs and clothing design.

I did some math recently with `violent western games`in Japan. Looking at sales of western games in Japan and analyzing the overall home console market in Japan, it appears that western gamers are more popular there than it may seem on the surface. The home console market in Japan is more than 4X smaller than in North America (that may change some with FF13). Taking that into account, CoD 4 selling 350k across Ps360 in Japan is equivalent to a Ps360 game selling 1.4m+ combined in North America. And GTA4 is even bigger than that. 420k across both plats in Japan. That`s equivalent to 1.7m+ combined in NA. That`s pretty damn f`n good. Considering how small the home console market is these days in Japan, `violent western games`are probably more popular than they ever were (Vice City sold 470k on the PS2 but home consoles were a lot more popular and the PS2 install base was huge).

I need to bring up this math whenever there is a discussion going on about `violent western games` in the Japanese market.

I could see how Square-Enix could be misled by the numbers. But if you crunch the numbers and analyze the situation in more depth, they should be pleased with how well Call of Duty 4 sold over there. Hopefully Modern Warfare 2 is going to top it over there. But after comments made by Square-Enix, they might dissuade a lot of Japanese gamers from buying the game. These western software figures in Japan also give hope for Microsoft`s efforts in Japan.

Its not so much that SquareEnix is mislead by those numbers.  Its that SquareEnix is no longer happy with any game selling less than 2 million.  Heck, they've publically come out and complained about games like Chrono Trigger DS and Final Fantasy IV selling 'badly'.  When both sold a million units.  So when they publish one of Americas best selling games and don't instantly see it sell multiple millions, they get angry because they think the fans should buy anything with the Square label just like in the past.

All they care about now adays is short-term huge profits.  And making 20 'big budget' games hoping one will be their next 'Final Fantasy VII' or 'Kingdom Hearts' so they can milk it to death.

Yeah I heard about them complaining about Chrono Trigger sales. It was a straight port with not that much extra content. And it was priced at $40 US (!) at launch. Square-Enix is very arrogant. Not to mention that this is their SECOND Chrono Trigger port. They did it before on the PS1. And they still sold about a million worldwide with 400k+ coming from Americas. I didn`t hear them complain about FF4 but if they did, that is absolutely delusional on their part. FF4 is their THIRD port (in Japan I think it might even be their fourth. Square had one on the Wonderswan Color too I think). PS, GBA and now DS and it still sold 1 million (400k or so from Americas once again). Even if FF4 was an enhanced remake, that`s still very good. Square-Enix can`t expect the fans to accept rehash after rehash during a period of jrpg oversaturation on the DS. Even if the DS versions seem to be the definitive versions (especially when their PS1 ports are plagued by bad load times and FF4`s GBA port was based off FF4 easy type).