Do you guys remember when there was an article saying how Kojima was watching someone play COD4 to get some tips, but got sick and kept on trying just to learn something new. That shows how he is dedicated to bringing the best material to his fans. Much respect to Kojima

I really don't agree with the title this story.
Because both Western and Eastern devs have their strengths and weaknesses. Here in the west Graphics and Physics reign supreme, but in the east Style and Scope seem to be the order of the day, with Story being a stalement and greatly varied by the talents of the writers.

Out here (West) we have Gears, Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, Fable, Mass effect, Drake:uncharted, Call of Duty 4 plus PC great such as Starcraft, WoW, Fallout, Diablo, Doom, Quake and more, these series and games show off to great credit the strength of our devs.

Out East they have given us Okami, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Blue Dragon, Lost Odysee not to mention fighters that have never been riveled by any western dev, such as Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken, Viruta Figher and Dead or alive. And who can forget the Big daddy of them all Metal Gear more importantly Metal Gear Solid 4.

Both sides of the pond have their own skill set and have used it to great results, but I guess to make it a story somebody has to be a winner.

Did I miss something here? When the fuk did Western Devs Surpass Japan devs? Gears Of War is the only Super Hit we have. Mass Effect, Halo, Oblivion, Orange Box are all ok but they aint no master pieces.

"Japan Was Surpassed By Western Devs", quite the opposite actually. In my opinion, Japanese developers are more worried about content quality vs. western graphical quality. Nintendo clearly has made a cash cow out of the Nintendo Wii showing that are were more successful than their competitors in their strategy(innovation vs. technical improvement).

This story to me mostly refers to the amount of money western devs are making in todays world compare to 10 years ago. All that was in help due to FPS and great engines. Back in 97 what ruled the console earth. JRPG, fighting style of games, from street fighter to tekken, and all those Japanese devs where laughing at western devs saying ohhh look at them with their piss poor PC sales, quake, to diablo. FWD to today 2007 and up. What where the best selling games for PS3 and 360, HALO3, and COD4 where are the fighting games and jrpgs.?? And now in 2008 its so far GTA4. While the japan devs are still making money but they are no longer on top of the Console world. All that was in help of western PC style Engines. Now look how many companies have licensed and have already used the UT3 engine. Even Square Enix is using it. Just wait till MMO's are huge on consoles, we will see another gaming revolution (waiting for halo 4 MMO. Face it in todays world FPS rule the consoles market, just like when they where doing back 10 years ago on the PC market, is just that the pc market dollar by dollar can never compare to console market. Every genre has its times and for the 360 and ps3 is the FPS. While no genre will die completly, but no genre will stay on top forever.

I'm American and I prefer games developed by the Japanese.

I used to be a big JRPG fan, and I still like them, but Oblivion really opened up a whole new RPG world for me. Oblivion was so refreshing that every JRPG got downgraded a little bit in my eyes after playing it. I still like a good JRPG, but Oblivion awakened me from my dogmatic JRPG slumber.

I would get some PS3 japanese rpgs if they would actually come out with one.

Japan makes games that cater to japanese gamers. The characters are all androgynies, every plot line involves love, every plot line goes off on some tangent, every j-game has some insanely unrealistic unbeatable weapon/enemy, every j-game is linear and offers no character attachment , the fantasy worlds in thier RPGs are more like a bad acid trip than a well thought out developed environment.

Japan used to be the gaming mecha it's not anymore and japanese developers haven't come to terms with that yet.

modesty is the Eastern way the majority of the time. Some aspects of gaming may of been passed by Western developers but they have totally disregarded the influence of their own work on the Western devs. This just makes me think on the graphics vs gameplay level. Games will need more than just great graphics to be considered a truly great game and maybe some of the Eastern devs dont focus enough on graphics but of this gen the games most people pine after are from the East. I suppose its down to the individual as always. I can gaurantee you this article could be flipped with Western devs saying how they feel they are yet to reach the the greatness of their Eastern counterparts if the same question were asked. One thing is for certain though. Eastern devs have raised their game and the technical bar in many aspects just not every aspect.

This article is just a point of view and a wrong one at that, Japanese devs have better graphics I mean look at MGS4 the level of detail is worth both Gears and Resistance together SE RPG look almost CGI, GT5P looks better than any other racing game and FFVII CC is second only to GOW on PSP. There devs are just modest about their work, while western devs brag a lot.

You can name a bunch of Japanese developers criticizing their own development teams...

Or you could name a bunch of western developers always talking about how great Japanese games are.

See, its all about perception. The article fails horribly by being biased and making it somehow a patriotic event when the reality shows a different picture.

When the best games around, are all made in Japan, this article really doesnt have any ground whatsoever.

The only 3rd party teams pushing PS3 to the limit right now are all Japanese based and the best games around are all made in Japan (MGS and FF).

Bottomline, good developers can be found around the world and is not limitted to nationality or east vs west like some people like to think.

And to claim how "western developers" have surpassed Japanese developers when the best games are still made in Japan, proves your lack of understanding the world and your one sided vision.

...then you've horribly contradicted yourself about how awesome the Japanese developers are. What? Did you just read the title and respond without having read the article?

This was meant to illuminate Kojima's recent statements, which are being echoed by numerous other Japanese devs from a variety of game houses. If you click on the red text scattered in the article, you'll see that the Japanese devs feel that they've lost the lead in using high end graphics. And I wholeheartedly disagree that the Japanese make the best games.

Tell you what... if you find a Westerd gaming legend that says "The Japanese have surpassed us in graphics," I'll write one about that.

The Japanese are ninja developers they say something & do something else. They always invent a new style of gaming & im pretty sure that the recent words spoken from japanese developers are to keep the spies guessing on what is the next game so that nobody can steal the idea, rush it to the market & whether the game is good or bad recieve praise for being innovative. Just like a company I know of that practices in dirty business. Yeah thats right microsoft I'm talking about you!

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It is future proof. I haven't played a game like Crysis since and probably never will. Wasn't the greatest FPS but certainly it was special

Crysis looked MINDBLOWING in 2007 (at least the few frames I could render on my PC did), still looks good today, which is an amazing feat. But has definitely aged when you consider the wow factor it once had. Braid is a game from 2007 that's future proof bc the graphical style is so simple. Looked good then, looks as good now.