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The X Button - Extra Seconds

All first person shooters are the same if you ignore equipment, items, story, characters, combat mechanics and character progression systems.

Japanese developers have fallen behind, I mean how many Call of Duty games have the Japanese put out lately? I can't remember a single one.

The problem is that 10 years ago you didn't need to sell 2 million+ to make a profit, you could make a game with variety and maybe sell 500,000 or even 200,000. Now unless your selling the game for 15 dollars on steam you have to make it as bland as possible to appeal to the average person. The result is that quality in mainstream games have plummeted with Robert Kotick and John Riccitiello becoming the leaders of the industry.

This has shown with E3 going from one of the most exciting events of the year (Christmas in the summer) to watching children give ieach other fist bumps while playing with a baby tiger named Skittles.

FPS.... Equipment? Items? Story? Characters? Combat Mechanics? Uh, if you say so. The only thing complex FPS do is little level up perks like "hold an extra grenade/ammo pack" or I guess picking if you want a shotgun or sniper rifle.

Also.. Amnesia isn't an FPS. Nor is Portal. They're first person games, yes, but they're not shooters.

Word has it that XIII Versus' delayed are directly tied into what Agni's Philosophy is demonstrating - the graphics potential of their new Luminous system. Square-Enix decided awhile back to not use Crystal Tools (XIII and XIII-2's engine, as well as the engine for the first version of FFXIV) for Versus, and have been working with the new graphics engine on it.

Video games still have a long way to go in the west. They can start with dropping the 'violent murder simulators' opinion in the media.

I'm looking a lot more forward to that, since they'll cover the JRPGs and other stuff I prefer to the murder simulators the West constantly puts out now.

It just comes down to personal preference I guess. Japanese like their RPGs and don't like the shooters since they're all the same.

JRPGs have so much variety, it's so hard to walk down a hallway and press the "a" button(or x button).

Yes, because every cover based third person shooter is Gears of War.

I think about J-RPG criticism this way: they're not all Final Fantasy,

Not to mention both games were great. Sorry if you didn't like them, a lot of people did though. Nice to see you take a mature approach at voicing your dislike of them, though.

If people are gonna rag on JRPGs when they always have different battle systems, stories, characters etc, then people have the right to rag on FPS for always being similar too.

Do the Japanese developers have problems? Yeah, but the American developers are in the exact same boat, they have just entered factory mode, and spit out games that look like each other.

Watchdogs looks like it's seeking to break a lot of new grounds

Japanese developers have fallen behind, I mean how many Call of Duty games have the Japanese put out lately? I can't remember a single one.

Do the Japanese developers have problems? Yeah, but the American developers are in the exact same boat, they have just entered factory mode, and spit out games that look like each other. How many games starring shaved head men do we need. The thing is that unless you really like shooters (and I frankly think the genre hit its peak years ago) or sports games then the only games that are available are independent games that have limited budgets.

Yeah, it's why I wanna slap Keiji Inafune for whining about Japan sucking when in fact the West sucks just as much, if not more. Western developers in general have been coming off as really arrogant and self-congratulatory as of late despite the fact that most Western titles are even MORE copy-pasted then Japanese titles. I mean, hell, Nintendo at E3 this year showed off more variety then most of what was on display from others. The Japanese tend to have more variety in setting, characters, and aesthetic. For the West it's "let's make a gritty, realistic shooter/RPG/open-world title that apes Joss Whedon in dialogue and character." It's getting OLD.

AiddonValentine wrote:

Yeah, it's why I wanna slap Keiji Inafune for whining about Japan sucking when in fact the West sucks just as much, if not more. Western developers in general have been coming off as really arrogant and self-congratulatory as of late despite the fact that most Western titles are even MORE copy-pasted then Japanese titles. I mean, hell, Nintendo at E3 this year showed off more variety then most of what was on display from others. The Japanese tend to have more variety in setting, characters, and aesthetic. For the West it's "let's make a gritty, realistic shooter/RPG/open-world title that apes Joss Whedon in dialogue and character." It's getting OLD.

Kenji Inafune's point is that the Japanese industry is creatively bankrupt, just because the western market can be just as bad, does not excuse it. They continue to ignore where the industry is heading and will suffer for it.

I mean look at the big developers in Japan:

Square Enix - hasn't developed a good game in years, they feel to realize that it's 2012 and that in this day and age, navigating a menu is not a proper combat system.

Capcom: instead of patching and balancing their games, they just release a new full priced version 6 months later. When they finally do DLC, they ship the game with all of it on the disc, losing lots of goodwill with the gaming community. They nonsensically ignore the PC market for their bigger franchises, Monster Hunter, for example would do extremely well on PC. It's a niche game, almost and MMO where you team up with friends and hunt monsters. The wii is not the system for that.

Nintendo: Doesn't have any original ideas left, it's all the same stuff. Nintendo refuses to create any new IPs and is content to ride on the coattails of former glory. Hell even the big announcement of pikman 3 is just an old franchise revived.

Nintendo may have had a lot of variety in their show this year, but what they showed wasn't what gamers wanted. This will be the first console generation that I won't be buying the Nintendo console, why? Because they aren't making the games I want to play. Nintendo spent this entire generation ignoring the hardcore gamer, and I'm not so sure they won't spend this one doing the same. Besides why would I buy a console that can only run THIS generations games, when my PC can do the same, have it control better AND look better graphically.

Don't get me wrong there are lots of really talented developers working out of Japan. Mistwalker and the guys over at Atlus do make some quality games, but they are part of a shortening list of talented people.

You are confusing actual innovation with just copying western games. Those have been miserable failures across the board.

Capcom is not going to bet tens of millions of dollars on a PC Monster Hunter game selling two million+ copies in America. They are not going to be able to cover the cost by having the Japanese buy it because of the difference in PC gaming in Japan.

What's your next suggestion? That the new Final Fantasy game should star a shaved headed guy with a gun and replace their current gameplay with cover based shooting?

You are confusing actual innovation with just copying western games. Those have been miserable failures across the board.

And western games have been a failure across the board? This a month and a half after Diablo 3 sold 6 million copies on PC alone?

I remember once reading an article where an anonymous Japanese game developer said that when they try to make games for the West, many of the people on the team don't even LIKE the game they're making... which is the biggest issue here. How can you make a fun and engaging game if you yourself don't even like it? Japan and America have different standards of what makes a good game, and its best for both to focus on what they like and make those types of games, instead of trying to appeal to different markets that have different tastes.

animehermit wrote:

And western games have been a failure across the board? This a month and a half after Diablo 3 sold 6 million copies on PC alone?

He's talking about Japanese games that try to copy Western games. See my above post for why that is a recipe for failure.

No, I want the next final fantasy game to be fun to play. I never mentioned making the games more western. I want them to retain the same visual creativity, but actually be entertaining for the player. Running down a hallway and pressing "x" is not fun for me. A lot of other gamers would agree. I long for the day when the next Final Fantasy is as good as the ones form the past. Final Fantasy VI is one of my favorite games of all time, I love that game, but Square should realize that you shouldn't be using the same battle system today(It's probably even less complex now, at this point). It's like they've advanced graphically but not mechanically.

Yet these are what sell in Japan. Mass Effect 3 sold like 30k and made the bargain bins within a couple months, yet Final Fantasy XIII-2 sold nearly a million in a month. Why should you make games you don't like just because foreigners demand you to make games for them?