The two topics below are something Al, Pete and I are going to discuss on the podcast this Saturday, but I wanted to spill my guts about it here first. I'd love to hear your thoughts about both, either in the comments or as an email to our mailbag (preferably the mailbag).

So here's the first. Recently on the front page of Giant Bomb, I saw this piece of news:

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/super-street-fighter-iv-wont-be-fighting-on-the-pc/2577/

This spurs on a topic that I find myself annoyed with. Basically, the "official justification" is that due to piracy, Capcom doesn't think it'll make money if it releases Super Street Fighter IV on PC. Piracy was listed as a major concern, so why not release it on Steam? The response to that was that they don't want to release it only on Steam as because it would be "unfair" to those PC gamers who don't have Steam.

I have numerous problems with this.

1) Steam itself is free to download and sign up for. It is also awesome.
2) Both Mac Users and PC Users can get Steam.
3) Street Fighter IV itself already forced an install for Games For Windows Live*, in and of itself a piracy preventive measure (which it really janked when you bought Street Fighter IV on Steam because you were loading GFW Live within Steam. Uh, what?)
4) So you're telling me that it would be better to be unfair to theentiretyof PC gaming bynot releasing it at all, than to alienate some folks who aren't on Steam but could easily get it? Even though, again, GFW Live itself is already an anti-piracy measure and you don't have to release it on Steam?

There has to be some alternate motivation for Capcom to not want to release the game on PC, and although in the end it really doesn't matter to me as a consumer, I'd still really like to know what it is. If the justification is simply that, "Dude, we just won't turn a profit on it; not enough people will want to buy it on that platform, period, the end," then okay. Say that. Maybe you'll annoy me slightly by saying that, but you'll also be telling me the God's honest truth and a reason that makes sense from a business perspective. Not wanting to release it just on Steam because of their reasons is both a bogus reason and also a moot point, and hearing what sounds like bogus reasoning frustrates me much more than giving me the straight-up business reason.

*Note: I have no idea if GFW Live has widespread and vicious hacks allowing for pirated copies to be played, but if so, then well, that kinda sucks.

The OTHER thing we want to talk about is regarding TGS.

Past seeing that Radiant Silvergun was (OMG!) getting a release on XBOX Live Arcade, I didn't really have the fortune of paying much attention to TGS last week, so I went to various websites to get my fill of information. Among the various news stories, game announcements and interviews as a little bit where Keiji Inafune, Lord of Awesome at Capcom, mentions that he believes that Japan is "5 years behind" the times when it comes to game making.

The main reasons?

1) Japanese developers stick to tried-and-true formulae.
2) From the business side, Japanese companies aren't willing to make the proper investments towards development and marketing.
3) Many Japanese aren't taking "globalization" seriously, specifically in terms of understanding foreign tastes (probably closely related to item 1).

Last week on the podcast (for which I was absent), Pete mentioned that he felt that TGS just wasn't as big of a deal in recent years. Either last year or the year before, this similar type of conversation occurred on the erstwhile 1up Yours a.k.a. 4 Guys 1up (I believe it was Mark MacDonald specifically who spurred this discussion). Year after year, it seems as if there's always some conversation about Japan becoming either less relevant, less in touch, or just... less, period, in the realm of gaming, with noted exception towards Nintendo and Sony's in-house development.

Personally, I find it interesting that taking a formulaic approach is cited by Inafune as a prime reason for Japan's supposed lagging status. Over here in the States, we've got Activision pumping out Guitar Heroafter Guitar Hero with little being implemented to shake things up. There's always a first person shooter here, a cover-based shooter there, and some open-world sandbox game in the middle. People here eat that stuff up. Over in Japan, people eat Monster Hunter up. They will flock to any Dragon Quest release, day one. Yet, like our shooters and Madden and Guitar Hero, those games barely change. Maybe it's just that the formula works for only very well-revered franchises, just like over here, but still, the first two reasons seem like reasons that plague struggling developers over here as well.

The third reason is the one I find most interesting. I was perusing Gamespot's TGS coverage when I saw that it had posted an interview with Deus Ex: Human Revolution's producer. The blurb for the blog post was this: "Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been a big hit at TGS 2010..."

Oro? A decidedly "western" game being a huge hit in Japan?

Now, I have no idea if they were referring to the press only, or also the public (TGS is traditionally open to the public after a few press-only days), but can anyone help refresh my memory with how well games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, and other similar games were received? I hear many people saying that the "balance of power" has shifted westward and that Japanese developers could learn a thing or two from western devs, but I never thought that the general gaming public would be ready to accept it. Is Japan finally ready for one-man, open-world RPG's with more action and fewer menu commands? Will games like Vanquish (which I am absolutely dying to try) succeed on both shores? And whether or not they do, is it time for Japan to stimulate its own indie games market such that it hopefully sees a boon in that area like we've been seeing here in the states?

I truly hope Japan "catches up" or does whatever it needs to do for Inafune to deem it "in touch" with games today in general. It and its culture have given us too many great things for me to see its own developers chastise its status without feeling sad about its state of affairs.

What do you guys think?