What truly catapulted the Western game industry to the top and replace Japan?

Instant Gratification Design. In other words Western Games are just easier.

I believe it's a combination of a lot of things but because I don't feel like writing about them all right now I'm only gonna mention a few...

JPN devs could never adapt to the increased budgets. Their tech fell behind and their writing heavily inspired by anime really doesn't help their case either. Mobile games are bigger than PC and Consoles in Japan, so they focus more in creating that kind of experience. Etc. etc. etc.

Many Japanese developers, apart from being swallowed by a truly global industry and not being able to hold their own against the tide, refused to move with the times. Many games coming from Japan are noticeably old fashioned. And not in a good, old school gameplay kind of way. Publishers like capcom and sega are nowhere near as significant as they used to be, and Nintendo, well the problems they are facing with the modern industry are plain to see. I don't need to go into why I think they are falling behind.

I do think its a little unfair to expect one country to hold it's own against the rest of the world but it used to be able to do it and now whilst there is still a great deal of good developers they are no longer the trend setters.

I think there is a stubbornness too. Look at Final Fantasy. Once the pinnacle of console story telling, XIII came out, was hated, for its boring gameplay, dour, stupid characters and the way they rolled back any semblance of true role playing (should have just released the thing in movie form) what do they do? Distance themselves from it? Vow to take on board criticisms and make the next FF as good as it can be? No. They release two others in the series, both of which are full of the same bullshit. And it's not like Square are far removed from the rest of the world, they have invested in developers across the world. Deus Ex was a fine game.

Thank christ for the likes of From Software. The graphics of the souls series have been somewhat underwhelming (not the atmosphere or world's they've created, the actual graphics) but in every way else that truly counts, fantastic games no one else is outdoing.

Nothing since western games are still largely mediocre at best while the majority of good games still come from Japan.

It's not that the West became so much better but it's because Japan became so much worse than it was.

We moved generations in consoles, but many Japanese developers are still stuck with gameplay from generations ago. I would love to have an open world game like Skyrim with anime graphics :D

@TheFlush

Gameplay has been stuck Globally.

The internet, First Person Shooters, and RTS.

@Heirren

But Japan has freakier Porn........ I say thats a big plus. :p

not that I'm into that kinda of thing ;)

xbox

The demand for large Penis?

Guns Pew Pew

lots of money and conveyor belts of milkage

For me the shift was gradual, and I think I started leaning more towards western titles because they catered more to the adult gamer. Overall, this would happen mostly with RPG games.....Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, Oblivion, .....these games spoke to me far better than games like Final Fantasy 13 did, which is unfortunate because I loved and grew up with the older FinalFantasy games....oh well.

I don't think its the games themselves. It moreso has to do with the economy. Much of the market started in Japan but it realized it could profit much more if they marketed to America. But Americans are more interested in guns and soldiers than dragons and swords.

Indie games are nice (not sure if Japan has caught on with them yet) but they don't have a big impact.

That's true though I do admit that Japan is doing well in handheld gaming but not as much as console gaming. Maybe that is one of the reasons of why the Japanese gamers are mostly playing on the 3DS then the consoles these days.

You asking what truly catapulted the Western game industry to the top and replace Japan?

One of the main reasons is the obsession of Japanese developers to "westernize" their games. Too many action , shooting and western oriented games... Westernization didnt work for Japanese developers as intended. .. Its one of the main reasons in my opinion why console market struggles in Japan too.

When Japanese developers go back to their roots and start all over again to make those original , fun and why not CRAZY Japanese games ...something might change... till then ... West took over.

The United Kingdom shall Rise ! :p

seriously though..... Europe is where its at !

I'll put it this way. If you were a developer.

Would you make a game in Japan that could sell 500k copies or make a game in America that could sell $5-10 million copies.

When people grew tired of scarecely clad under-age girls being protagonists.

I can name you countless of Japanese "western" like games that sold miserably last gen or even failed ... Japanese should return to those fancy great original games they once developed

Good games.

This. And the colossal amount of funds spent on marketing for some of these western games.

Time. It was inevitable, from budgets, to innovations and growth of the market and Sony/Microsoft enterting the market, everything always was poiting to Japan falling from top spot on consoles.

The fact is japanese devs never dominated the whole industry, just console one. They were helped by the fact that western devs for two decades stuck mostly to computers. When they finally started to expand to consoles Japan had to be swept away.

Western games has teh shiny realistic graphics but very shallow gameplay, Japanese games are still unique and has creative gameplay

Everyone wanted something different to play other than a plumber and his brother.

I think it was diversity. The Japan that we know of is very stagnant and are stuck in a couple genres. J-RPG, bullet hell and digital novels. And this leads to Japanese gamers slowly becoming more interested in western titles.

And now this is what the western industry is copying. We want to grow as stagnant as possible just like Japan to maximise IP profits. Which will of course make it lose much of its potential userbase and leads to an indie resurgence. Kickstarter + Indie + greenlight + easier Indie tools. We have sort of re-entered the C64 era of gaming: experimental gaming. But with generic blockbuster titles that steal away most attention of the casual market and System Wars from the games that are more interesting.

With this we see eastern Europe suddenly becoming more dominant in making games. I wouldn't be surprised to see China to become more dominant in a decade from now. I don't think the 'western dominance' will be there for very long, unless you count everyone but Japan as 'western'.

I tend to think it's largely cultural, and as the industry grew this has become more apparent.

The fact that not everyone wants to play, or even likes: male characters that look like girls; turn based combat; characters with huge eyes and tiny mouths; effing Mario

Mostly high budget games. Indies didn't do much of an impact.

This is a failed attempt at being clever, right? I feel bad for you if that's all you think Japanese games are.

Severe lack of progress and advancement in the Japanese game development industry. The Japanese have never been the most creative of people but they are absolute masters of making everyone else's ideas better.

And JRPG's

100% this. Its like when the console kiddies think Nintendo saved gaming.

Two reasons: Japan dropped the ball, and a growing distaste for consoles in Japan.

Kiddie games (Mario), metrosexual fantasy (Final Fantasy), and Anime (Ni No Kuni) games do not appeal to western tastes (in general) as much as real-time, gritty, blood and guts games.

Hand helds are taking over in Japan. Consoles sell less and less each gen there.

Although don't be to hard on Japan. Square Enix, Konami and capcom have stayed competitive to the big budget titles of the west.

Also the ps4 is made by Sony, who are Japanese.

@Aljosa23: You're like the dark knight detective for seeing how serious that post was.

Your polling options are not the reason OP. Western RPGs are what's beating JRPGs, not shooters. I think it's because Western RPGs have more features people enjoy. Like open worlds and darker stories.

Xbox. You think it was a coincidence that the rise of western devs follows the rise of the xbox? Western devs were mainly on PC. FPSs, wrpgs, online MP were big on PC. MS was familiar with this because it was happening on their OS. Xbox comes out and you have Halo, Kotor, ME, a focus on online play. They brought the PC mentality and devs to the consoles and because consoles have always been more mainstream western devs started making much more money.

Japanese games got stuck mostly on the Playstation. Western games moved on to the Playstation 2 and so on.

There's a ladder. Western countries are on the top because we are the innovators, we get there first, and we continually reinvent. Japan's still stuck in the 90s with their ridiculous anime magna porno-games. The latest Final Fantasy game, Lightning Returns, is just a great example of how stagnant Japanese developers have become. A Japanese game always means outdated graphics, poor gameplay mechanics, terrible writing. That describes every Japanese game released since the 2000s. They are utterly incapable of developing big budget quality games and only can do simple, small games like Bravely Default or some other cutesy Japanese game.