Japan dropping the game ball?!

So I was talking with a buddy about some of the latest releases as we were sweating our balls off in the Japan summer when he said to me "Yeah, Japanese devs have really dropped the ball with game releases over the last few years" and while we moved on from that point fairly quickly at the time, it got me thinking about if that's actually the case or not?

Sure, if you're a fan of Japanese games and you live in the UK or America, you may find that the latest releases from the land of the rising sun have been a bit lack luster, and sure, you're probably right there, but to say that the Japanese aren't producing good games anymore is a bit unfair.

You see, the problem is that Japan actually has a shit ton of good games.  Walking around the various game stores I always find something that piques my interest and has me wishing my pay day would come sooner.  Plus you see all these booths for stuff coming out soon and it looks like there is some quality stuff on the way too.

So really, it's not a case of Japanese developers dropping the ball, but it's a case of Joe Bloggs westerner just not being aware of most of the quality Japanese titles!  That's not a case of me being "oh the uneducated masses aren't aware of the gems to be found in glorious nippon", it's more the fault of the big companies here than it is the consumer.  You see, Japan makes all these really cool looking games, then gives them no exposure or no mention in the west at all, and it's a bit bullshit really.  It's a shame that there is this huge selection of games to be found that most people will never even hear of due to this fact.

So why is it all like this?  I'm no industry expert, but my guess is that they just don't have the staff for put this stuff into English.  I mean, it's not like it wouldn't sell, I think the whole Xenoblade Chronicles thing proved that there is a market for Japanese games, but I think the amount of people who know enough Japanese to translate these games for a western audience are just far too few.

I mean I studied Japanese for 4 years, and right now, the best thing I can think of doing with that ability is to come here and teach English.  The work isn't too taxing and the pay is pretty good and I think this is the view that a lot of Japanese language students end up having, but the reason for that is something else entirely.  The people who do decide to push themselves into more language heavy work, aren't going to use those skills to translate video games, they will want to work for big companies as interpreters or whatever and earn metric craptons of money that way.

So to sum it all up, Japanese games are as good as they always were, if you enjoy the kind of stuff that comes out of this country, then you'll still love it now, but the people willing to bring you that stuff are a minority, I think.

As a disclaimer, this isn't really based on facts I've been looking up, this whole post is me basically musing to myself, but you never know, maybe I'm right....but I could also be completely wrong and the above text just makes me look retarded, but whatever.