Does Japan still make the best games?

IMHO no.

During the 6th gen I would say it was a tie, but after the 7th console gen hell no.

The only genre they are still beating Westerners at is fighting games.

@GarGx1: Strongly disagree. You've listed a bunch of devs I'm not even familiar with, as I'm sure I've listed some you don't know about or care for. That's fine because everybody has their preferences that can be very contrasting because the game industry is worldwide and offers a lot to everybody.

Claiming one entire region's offerings "lose" is just preposterous and based on your own personal opinion because a) we all know sales has never reflected quality, and b) scores are regionally biased and purely subjective.

nope, next question

Yes, i think Japan holds the highest quantity of talented developers in comparison to other countries, there's no single country that comes even remotely close to the pool of talent that resides there, from my point of view. Nintendo and its subsidiaries should be enough, but then there's From Software, Platinum Games, Atlus, Capcom, Konami, Level-5 Inc., Arc System Works, etc.

It's actually pretty fucking incredible to me how some people are pitting Japan against the entire world. It's stupidly unfair and pointless. The entire world is going to have a larger pool of talented developers (=making the best games) than X country.

Japanese devs makes a lot of mediocre crap like western devs are doing now. The only real difference is the mediocre games fron don't seem to get attention and people buying them in droves for some dumb reason like they do with western games. It's really only the exceptional ones that get a lot of attention in the west most of the time.

Eh :/

Umm no. I live in Tokyo. I went to a lot of video game stores. Most of their games are anime games that just suck. Westerners who can't read Japanese and are living outside in Japan aren't missing out on that much. I'm seriously regretting that I'm studying game dev here.

As for the West you can name a lot of non-indie game companies if you take out all of the indie devs like Creative Assembly, Rockstar North, Eidos Montreal, Io Interactive, Blizzard Entertainment, etc. Apparently, a lot of people here only know Activision, EA, and Ubisoft when it comes to non-indie game companies. The Japanese have absolutely nothing for the RTS, CRPG, and MOBA genre. In the West, all genres are present. It's really funny that the Japanese don't know what an RTS is.

Most of the developers I listed legendary (or have legendary games under their belt) If you don't know the developer you will know their games. On the contrary I have heard of the developers/publishers you listed and am also aware of the fact that many of them have spat out extremely lack lustre games in recent years all the way down to non-existent. Team Ico for instance, when was the last time they actually released a game? (the answer is 2005 btw) Read the question in the thread title.

You say that a single country's offerings are better than the entire rest of the world because you're not familiar with them, that is, unfortunately, pure arrogance and nothing else. I suggest you have a look a the pedigree of these developers before you suggest otherwise. I'll guarantee you've not only heard of their games but likely played a fair few of them as well.

I also never mentioned sales or scores but listed a selection of developers from across all genres and systems, some of them are even published by Japanese companies, Creative Assembly and Relic are both in Sega's stable. Naughty Dog and Gorilla games are first party for Sony.

I could also easily double that list with a bit of research those are from the top of my head.

I was referring mostly to Nintendo. Most animoo games are rather bad, but they're no worse than most popular western games. Basically, all I was trying to say was without indies western games would be terrible. Trying to say that indies alone can oppose all Japanese devs (which is arguably true) is a hard case to make. This is coming from someone who plays Dota, Total War and Starcraft religiously.

I do find it funny that Japanese people rarely touch strategy games and go mostly for RPGs. Probably because PC gaming is almost nonexistent there and even then they likely only use PCs for MMORPGs. This is why Korea is bestest asians.

Rocksteady maybe, Retro's okay but they still wouldn't exist without Nintendo, never cared for Naughty Dog once they dropped Jak and switched to Uncharted (though TLOU was a great game), Blizzard's gone down the shitter, Valve hasn't made anything truly special since Half-Life 2, and Bioware is... lol.

Nah, Nintendo are still top on their day, so are Platinum, and they are still strong in the fighting and (obviously!) JRPG areas. But I think western devs have taken over pretty much all other genres.

I guess Portal, Left 4 Dead, and reviving TF and CS, turning them into massively popular games, aswell has DOTA 2 doesn't count.

Puzzle games, a generic zombie shooter, and multiplayer cash-ins aren't as monumental as Half-Life 2.

Don't deny that HL2 had a bigger impact, but then again, Portal is one of the most iconic games of all of last gen and will probably remain that way in the history of gaming.

Has for generic zombie shooter and mutiplayer cash ins...............sure, right

Can't wait to see what jp games you consider vastly better than Portal. I only meantion Portal because let's be honest, Japan sucks are making any form of multiplayer games, specially competative ones.

I don't like the cosmetic economy going on CS and TF2, but they remain great mp FPS'ers.

Japan easy. All western games as of late are broken on launch, release with half their content behind a pay-wall, have multiplayer shoehorned in just for the hell of it, and have the most uninteresting characters.

Don't even get me started on the gameplay. It seems like 90% of western games are half baked sandbox games trying to copy off R*.

Portal 1 and 2 are single-player focused games, so it's not hard to come up with a Japanese-developed game from last gen that's vastly better. MOBAs are terrible by nature, and even though DOTA 2 is the best of its genre it's still a "best of the worst" scenario. CS:GO I'll agree is fantastic, and TF2 was great for its time, but Valve is focusing on monetizing these games and DOTA 2 over developing a new single-player title like Half-Life 3. Newell even said it himself.

@princeofshapeir: So it's not hard,but you don't meantion one.

Ok? When the critically acclaimed, iconic and well received by both press and players, puzzle game from japan in the last five years?

After all, it's just a puzzle game

I said Portal wasn't very compelling as a game and there are lot of other Japanese-developed games from last gen that are better, namely the Souls games, Bayonetta, Super Mario Galaxy 1&2, etc. If you want to call it the best puzzle game of last gen that's fine but I don't view it as some great achievement on the level of Half-Life 1 or 2.

I wouldn't say they make the best games, but their games do have the best combat mechanics and bosses, and are usually gameplay focused. In terms of what I play it's around a 70-30 split western-Japanese. Still very impressive for one country.

This gen I'm looking forward to games from these Japanese devs:

• KojiPro - RIP after MGSV and maybe Silent Hills
• Platinum
• From Software
• Capcom - DMC5 from Itsuno
• Sony Japan Studio - got restructured in 2012 so Sony's biggest studio will finally get to pump out some games this gen, that includes The Last Guardian
• Level 5 - I might be interested in that "huge" PS4 game they're showing at E3

@princeofshapeir: I love the Souls series and Bayo, but wouldn't consider them better than Portal. Then again, they're different genres, so that comparison isn't even a good one to make anyway.

Regardless, funny thing is you used From software, Platinum and Nintendo's internal studios. Literally the exact same studios i point out earlier in this thread has the few remaining great devs in Japan. Only missing Koji Pro and ATLUS.

If you don't Valve's games, that's fine. But it's pretty obvious that they, and many more west. studios, are more well recevied by the press and the general communtiy (from my experience) then has many japanese studios.

What makes you hate mobas? If you only ever played LoL or HoN I would understand why you think they're terrible, but Dota 2?

Overall no they don't. This is coming from someone who thought Capcom at one time was the greatest gaming company on the planet. They still make great games but they have gone downhill over the past 7 years. Much of this has to do with there audience which has little interest in games and hardware that actually push for new things. Any game based off a anime no matter how bad it is will sell at least half a million copies over there. Whats the point of creating high end titles when they can just rehash the next Naruto or Pokemon game and watch it sell millions.

Stupid comparison as usual one country vs the world and when you think about it this country is supporting both handhelds and PC/home consoles while the rest of the world just focus on PC/home consoles. A better comparison is:

For consoles/PC

North America > Japan

Europe >Japan

Japan > any European country

For handhelds

Japan > the world

Shitty communities and I don't find the actual gameplay fun, I just find winning to be fun. I've played both DOTA 2 and LoL and while I enjoyed DOTA 2 more I still dislike the core game.

@bobrossperm: when I think of Retro, I think of a team that nailed an action adventure Trilogy and then went on to master the platforming genre with the two best Donkey Kong games ever made.

no, but they do tend to have some unique developers. I'd love to see a good from software clone. The souls series is so good but sometimes is a technical mess. For instance I'm loving bloodborne, but the biggest challenges seems to be managing the camera angle, enduring load times, and outright bad design with consumable items and the need for farming.

If the damage done to PC gaming courtesy of Nippon Ichi Software can be undone, then i'll say yes.

For me yeah. Most of the games I play are Japanese aside from the random games on Steam I have yet to play.

Japanese games tend to not be as technically sound for the most part, but they are way more fun.