Do you think Japan is still God tier?

Unfortunately, Japan is simply not as good as before. Sure there is random gem like final fantasy, metal gear solid, dragon's dogma and the tales series to name a few, but then there is so much crap like bayonetta, demon or dark souls, persona, dragon quest, residence evil and many, many others.

Persona series guys ; ; its good stuff

I used to. I remember wanting to learn Japanese so I could play some untranslated games. Now I tend to think that everywhere is about equal in terms of games. You see gold and crap come out of almost everywhere these days.

If we're talking about measurement tools (calipers, depth gauges, etc...), yeah they are god-tier for sure.

This.

I like games from both regions, and this gen is no different.

They deliver some of my favorite games. I especially like their more arcadeish games.

But the number of japanese titles I do enjoy has shrunk. The indie scene has been blooming however, and I am interested to see where it takes off. Especially since more and more of their gems are being translated and made available to western audiences.

It has its strengths for sure.

But really not my cup of tea.

16bit era is the last time Japan was dominant in the gaming market. Since then the West has overtaken them, and where you find the developers who have moved the medium forward, making gaming the immersive experience it is today.

And just look at one game TC referenced; Dark Souls and you can even include Dragon's Dogma - these may be made in the East, but are heavily influenced by Western design.

@AdobeArtist:

Other than theme/aesthetics, in what way is Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma western influenced? No western game has the gameplay/combat as Dark Souls/Bloodborne.

just because they don't look like typical anime characters does that mean it is western influenced. Is Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat eastern influenced? Or is Gears of War eastern influenced seeing as it copies so much from Resident Evil?

Also, what western game has moved the medium forward? Honestly, I can't think of a mind blowing revolutionary western game made in the last decade. Western developers just focus on making massive open world, high production values, graphics, voice acting and whatnot and that's due to having higher budget and resources than eastern developers. But their gameplay is still meh to awful.

Other than Witcher III (which is made by an eastern European dev), no western game has been innovative or pushed the medium forward.

Generally, I still feel Japanese developers are ahead of the west in terms of gameplay mechanics and design.

They still own the hack N slash and fighting game genre uncontested.

Very few developers are on the level of Nintendo, From Software, and Platinum games.

@emgesp: "Japanese game development is merely a shadow of its former self. Its kinda sad really."

Game development in general is no where near the quality of the NES-PS2 era.

I hate Japan they try to take credit for everything even if they were not behind it

Video games,cars,MMA you name it

Not even close.

outside of platinum and square's tomb raider, none of the japanese companies make good games anymore. games have gotten a lot more complicated and have more depth nowadays and japan hasn't caught up to that IMO

thats your nostalgia talking. nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

@darkangel115: "thats your nostalgia talking. nostalgia is a hell of a drug."

No it isn't. I think it's more of you being stuck in the moment.

not true at all. i loved mario, zelda, tetris, hell even playing snake on a nokia cell phone back in the days. they were great. but compared to games now they are terrible. Original RE was one of my favorite games, after the REmake was free on PSN+ i tried playing it again and it's badly outdated and not fun anymore. some games can hold up for a while for sure. I still loved going back and beating all the halo's remastered. they still hold up to today for sure. better then most of the stuff coming out. but games like that are few and far between. even he classic GTA3 i loved on my PS2 isn't good compared to GTA5 and i have franchise fatigue of it and barely played it.

@darkangel115:

I won't speak on Resident Evil much as I wasnt a fan of the PS1 games. But let's face it, those controls doesn't translate well in modern settings.

But GTA I will speak on. I mean GTA 4 sucked. GTA 5 I only play 5 mins of it so I won't judge that yet.

But GTA 3/VC/SA/LCS/VCS were good when I 1st played them. And that's my point.

I'm comparing these games when they 1st came out as opposed to you thinking I'm comparing a 2001 game today vs a 2016 game today.

We can go that route though?

All the gta games were one of the reason the ps2 sold so well

western games suck and the best games this gen have been japanese

As a whole right now, no. It really depends on the franchise or company. Konami, for instance, has been on a downward spiral whereas From Software has been on an upward trend with Bloodborne and the Souls games.

However, I much prefer Japanese games to Western ones so they will always be my preferred style of game.

I happen to like more Japanese games than western ones. So they're still up there to me. However,there has been a lot of niche/otaku driven garbage coming out as of late which might be clouding people's thoughts about Japanese devs.

of course you can, but there are huge difference bewteen 15-20 years ago and now in gaming. the cost to make a game now is dam near 100 times more. games 20 years ago cost like 50k to make. now games are in the 100 million dollar range sometimes. GTA 5 cost probably 20 times more then GTA3 was to make. plus GTA3 was kinda like a reboot. a brand new experience (GTA1 and 2 were completely different) people were more open to new stuff back then. nowadays it's hard to devs to take risks with games. people would rather play COD 20 then a new IP. and when you are risking 100 million dollars it's a hard call to make. Plus almost everything in gaming has been done, really isn't much new to do. There have been a few new IPs i really enjoyed but were thrown to the wolves because fanboy BS and critics being dumb. games like quantum break, sunset overdrive, ryse were good to amazing (ryse was just good, SO and QB were amazing) plus we have horizon, scalebound, sea of theives coming next year. there are tons of good games. IMO more then in the past. We just have entertainment overload now. we have so much entertainment available we become overwhelmed and bored. we didn't have thousands of games back then to choose from. for instance the NES had 700 games in it's lifetime. the PS4 and XB1 have over 1000 already. Even with TV back then you watched what was on. and there was like 10 channels. now you have hundreds of channels, DVRs to watch what you want when you want. netflix, amazon prime, hulu, on demand services etc. The problem is people are so overwhelmed with options that they just get bored and makes everything seem less special. When i was a kid i'd play the hell out of a crappy game because no money + lots of time + little options. now i have money, a ton of games, not much time so I'm super picky.

@darkangel115:

You can't compare the production cost of games today vs 2001. That's irrelevant because every generation is expensive. Hell I'd argue GTA 3 was expensive on the simple fact it was risky. GTA VC/SA/4/5 were sure to be hits. 3 was said to be ignored at E3.

And your Netflix/Entertainment argument is irrelevant too. Again, I'm comparing games (2001) vs games(2016).

sure it was a little risky, but if it failed it wouldn't bankrupt rockstar in the way that driveclub got evolution shut down, ryse got crytek in a bad situation, platinum isn't doing well, insomniac isn't doing well but those 2 at least get their games funded. Look at kingdom of armlaur. wasn't a mad game at all but it bankrupted the studio. that didn't happen 20 years ago.

The short version is, our standards were lower before then now. we were younger and there was less to compare it to.

Correct observations, for the most part. Handhelds are indeed dead at this point. Zelda is hardly ignored though - look at the upcoming BotW. Otherwise there are a lot of japanese games coming to PC now.

@SolidGame_basic: Pretty much, currently enjoying Final Fantasy XV like crazy.

Lol, not since the 16 bit days.

Japanese game development looks much better this gen than it did last gen. We're almost getting a revival of sorts. Obviously we'll never get the amount of games we used to but that's a problem with AAA development in general. With the rising costs, we'll be seeing fewer and fewer AAA games but more indie games to make up for it.

This gen looks very promising for Japanese games. They still have a few top tier devs:

Nintendo

Platinum

From Software

Kojima Productions

The games I will be buying in the next 12 months are mostly Japanese - Gravity Rush 2, FF15 and Persona 5 are the big three for me. Of course that will be balanced out a bit by Mass Effect.

Handheld gaming is not dead in Japan - it is bigger than the consoles over there. It is why the new Nintendo is focused around mobile gaming as much as the home console side.

PS VITA and 3DS have officially been declared dead and are not going to get successors, if you haven't noticed. Same as the Wii U.

Most Japanese games still focus on what matters and outperform their western counterparts. From Ninty to FromSoft to even anime games -- they all have excellent game design and are genuinely fun to play.

In the realm of Japan v's the rest of the world, Japan comes up very short. (no pun intended)

Hell no

They haven't been "god tier" since JRPG's started to fall off a cliff in the late 90's/early 2000's.

u do know most of the exclusive games sony are western developed surprised u left them out

I'm interested in japanese developers like Acquire, Access Games, Falcom, CAVE, Arc System Works, Spike Chunsoft and to some extent SEGA, and all of those happen to make games for PC these days.

@doubutsuteki:

The 3DS doesn't have a successor. Unless, of course, you don't ignore the Switch which is a portable console. You can also consider that if you use the little grey cells in your head that 3DS users will see the Switch as a successor to it just as the Wii U user will see the Switch as their successor.

So apart from the fact the 3DS does have a successor I take your point it doesn't have a successor.

You may also consider that Pokemon sold 1.5 million copies and Nintendo sold over 100,000 units in a week and regularly sells in the tens of thousands a week.

Not quite as dead as some would think.

Remains to be seen whether people "will see the Switch as their successor". I believe that a good way to alienate your existing user base is to kill off your existing platform and announce a new one which doesn't retain backwards compatibility with the old one. And the Switch is a new platform on a new architecture that is not backwards compatible either with the 3DS or with the Wii U. The 3DS-line of handhelds has been scrapped, and so has the Wii-line of consoles.

Nintendo sales have been soaring up for several years, and is not showing signs of improving. The market share for video game consoles and traditional handhelds is shrinking across the board. The Switch will be Nintendo's last attempt to reverse an irreversible trend. After it flops, it should be clear for everybody to see that video game consoles are dead, since Sony and Microsoft have already thrown in the towel with PlayStation Now on PC and Xbox/Windows store on Win 10.

FromSoftware, Nintendo's various in house studios, Kojima, Capcoms fighters have all done great things. Yeah Japanese devs are making some incredible games this gen and I've enjoyed them more than I have western games.