I am pretty sure that Japan makes a shit load of “indie” games, you just don’t see them because they are “indie” and from a foreign country.
Edit: What the guy above me said.
Did Capcom JP hand over SF to Capcom US? Was it after ST??
Yeah choose your own path rpg’s are not for me.
So what do we have for American games?
FPS, Action games/platformers, the aforementioned RPG’s, Strategy games…etc
Really, FPS chould not be hard to emulate it is basically what is done in the west everybody using a similar formula. I’m starting to hate action games like God of war though…i prefer games that focus a little bit more on the gameplay…like sly cooper and such.
this is just my opinion.
really I still prefer jrpgs to western rpg’s. I feel the stories in western rpg’s pale in comparison to the jrpgs.
lol
Okay then, list the games coming out and who they are developed by (east/west) that you are interested in:
Project Dark (Demon Soul’s successor) - East
MK9 - West
Diablo 3 - West
Dragon Age 2 - West
Dungeon Siege 3 - West
Medal of Honor - West
I can’t really think of anything else right now. I’m sure i’m missing a few though…
There’s definitely indie developers out there, I don’t know how hard it is to make a name for themselves though.
My stupid predictions from a few years back are actually coming true-- Nintendo 3DS is really powerful, and although it might not be more powerful than Wii, it’s doing graphical stunts (like normal maps and shading) that actually makes Nintendo’s new handheld look a bit better than their console. I’m interested in seeing how 3DS and PSP2 perform in Japan, and (since we already know what 3DS looks like) I’m especially interested in how close PSP2’s guts and design (a second analog stick!) tries to mimic the console experience.
What I’m saying is, Japan’s shifted their attention to handhelds, and the sales reflect that. Why? My guess is unlike today’s consoles, the gaming part of a PSP or DS isn’t overshadowed by everything else. I think the home console has just gotten too bulky (in more ways than one… but especially physically speaking) and too complicated-- PS3 and 360 were designed to be your household’s entertainment hub, instead of just a game machine. I don’t think a home console that ‘Only Does Everything’ is really compatible with the average Japan household or lifestyle.
If 3DS and PSP2 are as well received as everyone expects, that’s gonna be the next generation, for Japan’s gamers and game developers… which will really screw things up when the Western world is waiting for a console from established Japan companies.
Get out of Here! Most of those old WRPGs have less focused stories and I can’t speak on recent ones, because I haven’t played any, but the old ones I did play, felt more like FFXII’s to me where I didn’t have a connection to the story and forgot what it even was. Compare those to FF’s, ToF, CT, ALTS, and etc.
I wish more western companies made JRPGs. Right now here FPS’s are flooding the market. I haven’t heard of one majorly hyped Western JRPG game coming out this year or next year.
Yo, 3DS is going to cause riots and destroy lives.
Yeah, Graphics and raw processing really has been proven to be less than good gameplay and fun during this gen…
the part i liked was where nobody read the article.
The big thing in the USA seems to be games with branching story lines(Good vs Evil). With the added gimmick of throwing in some kind of first person style. Not THAT revolutionary if you ask me.
I agree Biolink.
I just hope these game lose there flair trying to join with all these western developers…
Every genre has gotten stale. Capcom’s referring to how far behind Japan is on milking us with DLC. Capcom only barely keeps up by selling us costumes that are already on the disc we purchased.
western RPG’s make me want to puke, such a lazy game mechanics, sad atmosphere’s, boring characters, stupid/slow enemies. I don’t understand what’s so great about the stories either? they are usually so uninspiring that it put’s me off wanting to come back to it, though I stopped playing RPG’s altogether nearly 10 years ago. atleast the system in Demon’s soul’s makes you feel like your actually in control of your characters, it make’s you fear combat with certaibn enemies, not because they can kill you with boring movements and hard hits but because they are battling you with a successful tactic
western RPG’s are only cool because they’re not eastern RPG’s I suppose, can’t see any other reason why 
I think japan is behind only because they aren’t using their talent to innovate, western game innovations are good but are’nt their own real innovations, they are all inspired by japanese games. I think japan is just farming for more money and letting the western companies try out new things. we just have to wait a while till they are ready to start innovating again and they will have to eventually
It’s funny because it’s true. The bottom line is that they want to be able to charge people for map packs and other shit like all the Fps’s.
Also
Demon Soul’s is the exception for an RPG game outside of Japan. What other J-RPG can you quote that’s great??? There’s nothing i’d waste my time on. And DS had to claw and climb to get the attention its getting today because it was cast aside as an inevitable failure which it didn’t. It became very popular in Western and European markets. The game is BADASS!!!
Still a much better experience than Japane offers. Take all the CG scenes from an Japanese game and play them in order. That’s the whole game minus pressing X to confirm and O to cancel a bunch of times.
As far as DLC, any of American’s DLC is much better than SFIV or Blazblue.
In previous generations, I just played games. They all happened to be Japanese except Need for Speed and Grand Theft Auto. Since this gen, it’s opposite.
Just wait until the SF4 Map Packs drop.
Inafune is full of shit. There are some JP studios that still produce great games (Capcom isn’t one of them). The problem isn’t the companies themselves but the Japanese market. The JP market is so set in its ways (look at JRPGs as an example) that companies aren’t really able to do anything else that strays from the norm (don’t use FF13 as an example, cus that game is NOT an attempt at being different, but rather Squeenix just being lazy). The market doesn’t change very much, and I think the western market is starting to get there too. We have sports games that barely change aside from an updated roster every year, our action/fps games usually star some big, burly, rough looking white guy archetype, and our RPGs are always open world action-RPGs. The western market is really in the same situation as the eastern market; it’s just that the tastes of the consumers are different.
With very few exceptions, Japanese game developers have been shit for many, many years now. At best, they make potentially good games with questionable design decisions motivated by either unfounded tradition (the overvaluing of physical dexterity in certain fighting games) or just plain nonsense. That Japanese developers don’t care to hear feedback (very few exceptions, again) only adds to the frustration this former fan of the Japanese game industry feels when wondering what happened to the Kirby Super Stars, the Super Metroids, the Final Fantasies that were actually good (4, 6, 10, Tactics, and very little else, and no 7 doesn’t count), and the Mario 3s (NSMBW is a poor substitute).
Hating on Halo is fashionable, but foolish: there’s more bang for your buck, more enticing characters, more gameplay variants, and more all-out fun in a single copy of Halo Reach than there is almost any combination of TEN Japanese games. Blur does things Mario Kart wishes it did; the next Mario Kart would do well to steal ideas from Blur. David Sirlin’s HD Remix displays more thoughtfulness than you ever see out of Capcom’s Japanese fighting game devs, who make ludicrous claims like “parry was too hard” (when the opposite was actually true) and “we like the feeling of 1-frame links because, um, well, we just do.”
98% of JRPGs have garbage storytelling and even worse gameplay mechanics.
JRPGs are, except for that 2% that’s actually decent, chock-full of one or more of the following: gratuitous fanservice that adds nothing to the overall product but makes fanboys lie out their ass about how “the game is more than just about the boobs” (Ar Tonelico, Agarest War), overuse of ambiguity as a storytelling mechanic, forgetting that ambiguity must be used carefully and with a solid plot base in place (Chrono Cross, Sands of Destruction, basically anything written by talentless hack Masato Kato), games trying really, really hard to be clever, but failing miserably (Disgaea games), and games with actual interesting premises RUINED by the introduction of nonsense later in the game and/or poorly implemented gameplay mechanics (each and every Tales game, Persona 4).
JRPGs are trash.
You’re an idiot.
Hmm… you’re making me think, good sir, both about why Karin isn’t in SSF4 and about stagnating game consumers.
Dr. B games manage to redefine genres every time while simultaneously improving upon whatever genre the last game was.