According to the creator of Mega Man, the Japan gaming industry is "finished." How do you feel regarding his words?

Personally, I feel that the man's heavily exaggerating. While it may have seen better days, I definitely wouldn't say it's "finished" by any means necessary. However, Inafune may be on to something here...

Think about it for a second. Obviously, Japan isn't the "top dog" of the gaming industry anymore, as gaming has grown in popularity over time and there are more Western game developers now then there were 10-15 years ago. Maybe Inafune is realizing that what used to work 10-15 years ago, back when the industry was still young, just doesn't work anymore. I think the Japanese companies need to step up the game a bit here and start to make new and inventive things again, rather then continuing to make spinoffs of franchises every couple of years, true sequels of said franchises that take 5-7 years usually to release, and the occasional brand new title that actually looks promising coming around. By no means am I insisting that spinoffs/sequels are bad, but when that's all you're really looking forward to regarding games now, there's definitely something wrong here.

The Japan gaming industry, in my opinion, is far from finished. Some of the most popular gaming franchises are, in fact, from Japan. However, I think Japan needs to start getting new and creative again and start making more new stuff while still working on the stuff we've grown to love and appreciate over the years.

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The Local Video Gaming Lunatic

Recent stuff I'm into:

Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing

Meh, I really don't think the Japanese gaming industry is dead. Most of the games that interest me are still either Japanese or independent western. A lot of what were major players in the game need to start coming up with some new IP or die out though.

No way dood. It's far from finished. Japanese games are still way better then the shit coming out here though overall they aren't quite as good as they used to be.

The only reason Japan isn't the "top dog" anymore is cause the market has changed so much. There's so many normal people playing games now that the hardore gamers are no longer the target audience. So all these western companies make games that appeal to these casual players' needs. All these shitty games that offer no real challenge where you get infinite lives and can continue a few seconds away from where you died so all these whiny people that suck at videogames will be happy. What kinds of games are those?

I prefer a lot of niche genres/titles too like shooters that arent first person, RPGs and I only really like JRPGs for the most part, and Puzzle games and the western companies don't do that so much (or not well). It's 75% FPS and Racing shit.

I'd rather play the spinoff titles and wait a few years for the Japanese sequels anyday then play the 19 millionth version of Call of Duty or Need for Speed, even if it isn't actually called Call of Duty or Need for Speed, that's pretty much what they are.

If anything its not the Japanese industry that's finished its probably closer to being the entire industry cause games overall just aren't as good as they used to be. This is what I've been saying over and over. The casual gamers are ruining everything for us.....

By the way, I like how he said - Every one except Capcom of course, whose games "kick ass!" *thumb up* Overall they're still one of the better companies out there.

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Fixed.

But yeah, I agree with what you said. The casual gamers are really kind of hurting us because all they "play" are FPSes, sports, racing, and the Wii (insert title here) games. And unfortunately for us, it's what sells.

I feel that the main problem with the industry today is that it's all about business now. Not many companies are willing to make games that are new and different, since most companies would rather make something that they know will sell , even though it may be redundant, overdone, and most importantly boring to those of us who are really passionate about our gaming. They say money makes the world go 'round, and unfortunately the gaming industry is no exception to this.

Even though they make up a very large portion of the gaming population (as much as it pains me to say so), it's the smaller fraction, the hardcore gamers, that actually give a damn about the industry. It's really kind of ironic when you think about it.

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The Local Video Gaming Lunatic

Recent stuff I'm into:

Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing

Wii "Steal car and shoot people" would probably be the highest grossing videogame of all time cause all the casual gamers would ban together and buy it. You got all the "interactive" loving Wii gamers and all the violence jacks playing their shooter games together.




Come on Nintendo let's do this!



Money! Money! Money!

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I don't know about how well the Japanese industry is doing in general, but I always hated how people would say that Japanese games are always better than games from other countries. There are a lot of good non-Japanese games, and a lot of crappy Japanese ones.

Oh yeah, I'm sure there are quite a few good non-Japanese games (and same goes for crappy Japanese games too). However, from my experience, the Japanese games happen to catch my interest much more often then the Western ones. Honestly, I haven't seen that many good-looking Western games lately. All I've ever seen the West make (that does well) are either FPS games, racing games, sports games, or GTA games, and none of those exactly appeal to me. If they do make another type of game, it's either not well made or just doesn't appeal to me at all.

That's not say I don't think the West can make good games. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a really good game, and that was made almost entirely of with staff from America (the only people who worked on it from Japan were Yuji Naka and the composer). However, again from my experience, Japanese games appeal to me much more often then Western games.

_________________
The Local Video Gaming Lunatic

Recent stuff I'm into:

Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing

presumably if there are simply 'more' casual gamers that western production companies are selling to, the sales to 'hardcore gamers' wont exactly fall. These games are selling into a slightly different market of tastes as opposed to displacing the old one

When I referred to non-Japanese games, I also meant older ones. First game I ever played was Commander Keen, and it's one of the best platformers around in my opinion.

I don't really differentiate between countries... to me, if I have a positive reaction to a game then it is either "alright" or "great", and there aren't that many great games.

That'd put you in a fairly rare group of people, people who actually experienced and remember the old dos games. Far more old school console gamers then old school PC gamers. Prolly cause there was more of a financial burden to join the PC owning community. I'm probably one of the youngest people who even remembers growing up with text mode phone in BBSs, and the (localized to region) shareware (and pirate) gaming cultures that went with that. I only wish that I fell into the Amiga (or for that reason C64) communities, that's where the real action was at ;P.

See, I grew up without game consoles, for much of my childhood. We had a DOS computer, and my brother, my father and I all played Commander Keen. We had some other games like Hugo 3, but Keen was incredible to me. Growing up we upgraded our computers of course, eventually my brother and I played emulated games and I got hooked on Bomberman starting with Super Bomberman 4, but that's another story.

In any case, I still hold to my opinion that Japanese games are not the best, nor are Western games, and that really location does not equal great games.