Discussion of the Japanese Gaming Industry... there will be cake...

[Croyles]

Well I can actually think of a lot more examples where the west has been creative and innovative.
Yeah the west produces too many FPSs. The same can be said of japan of making too many RPGs. While different RPGs may offer more variation between each other than FPSs between each other, the west still does a lot more than FPSs while the east in comparison, while doing things other than RPGs, not as much. I am not including the Wii into the equation here because while things like Wii sports and those sort of inhouse games are innovative in a way (though they dont appeal to me a lot), thats only nintendo and the rest of the stuff they produce, like Mario, Zelda etc etc is MOSTLY using the same formula, thats if you count SSBB and mario kart already as old school, which I do (great games btw, but thats not the point).

And that thing with budgets, im not sure if that is really all that truthful. If your comparing little east companies with little west companies then yeah the west has all the kaching.
Yet Japan has Konami, Capcom, Namco, Square Enix and others that all have huge budgets and probably all fall into the top 10 biggest publishers/developers in the world, not just Japan.
Oh and what about Nintendo? By now every single employee must be about as rich as Bill Gates lol, I think they could be doing a lot more than they are, despite whether or not they are already great.

Yet with that much manpower/womanpower and money, they hardly ever look to the west for inspiration while the west does take inspiration from the east, that was my main point.

This is probably because of the japanese market, where most people rather play smaller games. This brings me back to the market variation point.

I love Japanese games. Patapon, RPGs, etc etc are all great.
Their game design is flawed in that it doesnt take inspiration from the world, but only from itself, while the west does it differently. If they could look at more games for inspiration, their games would now not only be slightly better than most western games, they would probably tower over them and urinate on them while up there.
Thats what I was TRYING to say.
I dont even know if im bringing my point across well, but it makes sense in my head.