Nintendo's Dev Teams Rival Western Counterparts In Terms Of Skill, Claims Miyamoto

@A01 with the start of the xbox360/ps3/wii era western devs were putting out high quality (graphics) games and were seeing high volume of sales. Many Eastern games still looked last gen.. Lately Eastern devs have been making a comeback and many western devs have settled for complacency. Most of Ps4's killer lineup has been japanese games as of late.

Considering a lot of developers said the wii u was hard to develop for it makes a lot of sense using different engines, but do think it's a bit biased them saying that but then again they do come up with very good ideas and concepts other companies don't think of

Talk the talk let's see them walk the walk. Hopefully 3rd party support will be better now to get a decent ports onto switch with ease. Nah I don't hold much hope for many AAA 3Rd party

I don't know, but I think their QA departments kick most of the western world's butt, even Blizzard these days(Anybody who was there for the "priests can be invincible and pick up flags" oversight in wow pvp can attest to that)

Was there ever doubt that they did?

The thing that I always notice about Western games as opposed to Japanese games is the feeling of control. When you play Mario or Street Fighter or Bayonetta or Final Fantasy, there's a unexplainable satisfying connection between a button press and an action. Stuff like Rayman or The Witcher or Mortal Kombat have always felt... off. Like it doesn't respond fast enough, yet still connects the action awkwardly. I've always wondered if this is a programming style difference between the Japanese and Western devs, or if it's the engine itself that causes this sensation?

@TomJ was he meant to say Japanese developers are rubbish?Get real bud

If I gave a toss for Unreal engine (for example) I wouldn't buy Nintendo hardware. However, Unreal engine is not a term for quality, playability or fun, rather a bundle of tools. Many (if not all) my favourite games this gen haven't a whisper of Unreal about them, and all the better for it imo. In an ideal world all Nintendo hardware would posses every game game utilising every engine...this isn't an ideal world.

So, if engines such as Unreal are a priority, both PS4, XB1 and PC exist for you. If you value Nintendo preferring it's own development tools (as I do), let us be.

I don't really doubt that for a second. Give Nintendo the same cutting-edge tech that many of the other Western developers are using, i.e. Xbox One and PS4 or even high-end PCs running games created on Unreal Engine 4 and CryEngine and the like, and I'm more than sure it could put out games that compete with them on basically every single level. In terms of the things like the core controls and gameplay, it's not even a debate—Nintendo is as good as any company on the planet (and better than most).

This should make an interesting comments section

@Ootfan98

I don't really think it matters if its a Western Development Team versus an Eastern Development Team. It really depends on the developers and their skills. There are gorgeous, amazing games coming from both. For example Horizon Zero Dawn and Zelda Breath of the Wild. Both the West and the East make great games and it shouldn't matter where the dev team works /originates from. (Although I'm looking forward to the debate that will arise from the topic! grabs popcorn XD)

For me, it all depends on how skilled the dev is with the engine he or she is using. If they can push the engine to the limit, and not break the game or leave it full of bugs, we're talking about cultivo edge. And for me, some Nintendo studios are right up there with western devs - EAD Tokyo and Monolith Soft for examine.

Nintendo has some of the best QA testing in the industry, but seems too stingy most of the time to make games that challenge the AAA Western games' usual higher wealth of content. Basically, Nintendo games are often more expensive, but with less game to play.

I just want HD Cute games like Animal Crossing or Animal Boxing with Full Dynamic Camera angle, deep robust gameplay, tons of features and I will never get bored.

@RainbowGazelle
I don't think so. Some Nintendo games are affordable, well... not all. Only some of them got price cut.

I'm just happy that they are embracing things like UE4, Unity, Vulkan etc. It will make the Switch a developer's dream, and as long as they can realise their vision to a satisfactory level, there will be a wealth of games that will make it over.

I don't think this is bias in the slightest, more Miyamoto pushing the thinking that talk of Japanese developers 'falling behind' is utter bunk.

@DonkeyKongBigBoy No profanity, thanks.

I don't think anybody has ever doubted Nintendo's first party teams. The output on Wii U was lower than normal, or so it seemed to me, but they still had some hits. It's the greater Japanese market that has me concerned but 2017 has given some hope. I've played three great games from Japanese developers so far this year (Yakuza 0, Resident Evil 7, Gravity Rush 2) and by all accounts Nioh is also great. Persona 5 probably will be up there as well. The Japanese are still capable of making top notch games, and Nintendo itself has really never made anything less than that.

Maybe had they mastered Western engines sooner, BotW wouldn't have taken 7 years to develop and could have been powered by Unreal.

Even if they are skilled as they say we need to see it to believe it. Give me games and glory or pack up and go home!

@Xaessya I could stare at that Gif all day.

@gatorboi352 7 years? Skyward Sword came out in 2011 dude. I don't think they started proper development on BoTW until 2012/2013.

Even so, they're not afraid of delaying to make it a fuller, richer experience.

I'm glad they developed it from the ground up with their own engine tbh. Unreal is too generic for me. Nintendo sticking to their own dev tools is best.

You couldn't really prove that with the Wii U and it's inferior hardware to the competition at the time.

Uh huh.
Show, don't tell Miyamoto.

@gcunit what you on about?

Kind of a silly comment, of course their dev teams are as good as western teams. Probably surpass a lot of them in many ways but the business models differ as do the hardware.

Name a company that consistently puts out the number and quality of games that Nintendo does, then name a company that has the man power and development teams that Nintendo does......so it is all relative. Still for my money Nintendo makes the type of games I want, so I hope they continue with what they do.

@DonkeyKongBigBoy Our community rules require that users 'don't use profanity'. You used a word on our profanity list. Please don't.

Nintendo are as talented if not more so than Western developers.

And here I am just wanting to know what Retro is working on!

I love Miyamoto but this is such an insecure and unnecessary thing to say. Letting the games speak for themselves has always been the Nintendo way. This is something Trump would tweet at 4am if he worked in the games industry.

I agree. Western devs are talented, but Nintendo is definitely world class.

Their skill in design, optimization and quality control is unparalleled.

Bold statement, that one.
Unless the Switch will be a third-party game magnet and will suck 'em up like a black hole, those are just mere words.

@Xaessya
That gif is from a Satoshi Kon anime, isn't it.

@Mush123 my 7 years comment was kind of tongue in cheek but the point still stands.

"Unreal is too generic for me." you clearly haven't played enough games utilizing the Unreal engine. Yes, many of the bigger named franchises tend to steer more hyper realistic than anything else, but the engine is capable of just about any art direction one cares to take it in.

It's about time they started using engines like Unreal. It sounds like they only started getting good at using it recently, if Miyamoto felt the need to mention it. I suppose their past systems have been too gimpy to utilize it, though.

@gatorboi352 You're probably right about that, but I just associate Unreal with the "gritty" dull and bland looking games. Don't get me wrong I've enjoyed some games that utilise the engine and it is very capable indeed, I just haven't seen a game that has the same kind of style and pizzazz as BotW. Even some fan made Zelda projects in Unreal look rather generic to me.

I just haven't seen something that uses Unreal with a stylistic art style. I do believe you that such games exist though!

EDIT: Scratch that! I just remembered/realised Borderlands 2 runs on a modified version of Unreal Engine! That game was beautiful.

Okay, I was wrong, but I still think Nintendo can do a better job with their own engines, even if it takes longer to create a fully fledged experience!

Japanese is "generally" better us is mostly cod and cod rip offs and sports games that get boring in less than an hour

I think it's the wisest move Nintendo have made for the Switch, enabling these dev tools. From any creative standpoint, having the right tools is quintessential. I'm excited to see what the Japanese can do with them.

@gcunit no I didn't look again and stop harassing me

Nintendo's dev teams greatly outrank western devs from an analytical design point of view, but the graphics tech might be a little behind yet.

That doesn't really matter to me, though. I'd rather see a good focus on solving problems related to art style, than trying to have the highest detailed textures or most "realistic" faces.

@impurekind Totally agree with you. I was going to say that there is some technical challenge of working with new graphical paradigms and shaders and such that Nintendo lagged on during the Wii era (on purpose) but we already see this mastery on the Wii U. Games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3D World look way better than they ought to and show a mastery of control and polish that I forget many third party games that look amazing often lack when I sit down to actually play them.

Of course he wants to toot the horn about it a bit. Whether he is truly correct doesn't mean he doesn't honestly believe what he is saying here. I tend to agree with him.

I'd like to point out that Nintendo stands to benefit immensely from the ability of modern third-party game engines to scale to meet different capabilities in game hardware. If Nintendo Switch can get enough attention and sales, publishers will have to take a good hard look at what games they hold developed using Unreal Engine or Unity. Publishers don't like leaving money on the table when the risk is low.

I really haven't played much of the. Oh N outside of the 3ds, but I have had a lot of fun with some Nintendo games. Just imagine the quality of games with more power behind it...

I'm not asking them to change what they do. By how can anyone think Nintendo devs being more skilled at using unreal engines and I assume others to be a bad thing? Give a skill and devotion more tools, and the results can only be better in my opinion.

@shinpaku Western developers make far more than just CoD and sports games. A lot of the greatest games of this generation and past generations have come from Western developers.

@PorllM Or it sounds like something you'd say if you were asked a question about it in an interview and didn't want to dodge it giving an unspoken answer to the opposite effect.

Also, this is far from empty bragging. Saying the development team has mastered using Unreal Engine is one statement. No hint of superiority in it. The other statement "their skills can now be compared with those of Western developers". No hint of superiority here there either.

He's essentially saying that there has been talk of Japanese developers not matching Western developers technically and he is saying that his own perception at Nintendo is that currently that is not what he sees.

Pretty level headed and in response to criticism.

I'd say there is a bit of a trap for many AAA Western games in that there is the expectation of photorealism in everything. Certainly not always true, but it is unfortunate and has become a burden on the industry to some degree.

A dev team can be 100% capable of creating large amounts of photorealistic content but choose not to because what a waste of time for most games except for the marketing need.

@shinpaku This is about software technology not the quality of the games

@aaronsullivan "He's essentially saying that there has been talk of Japanese developers not matching Western developers technically and he is saying that his own perception at Nintendo is that currently that is not what he sees"

But that criticism hasn't been made since the Wii days. Wii U while being a failure of a console was generally accepted as being a masterclass in software development. Super Mario 3D World looking like it did in 60FPS is nothing short of a miracle with the specs they had. There is nobody in the West outside of Rockstar that are comparable from a quality standpoint. It's redundant information.

Besides, my point was, Nintendo have never spoken on this before and have let the games speak for themselves. It has worked for them from the NES until now. I appreciate your point that he didn't avoid the question. But he avoided questions like this for 20 years and it never caused any harm. Why is he so worried about the reputation of his developers now? That's what I meant by it seeming insecure.

I don't know.....I worry that developers are going to have a hard time making a "unique" version of any game for the Switch, and eventually the stream of third-party games will dry up and the Switch may become like the Wii U. The Switch would be much more successful if it relied more on power than gimmicks.

@Seamoose If it relied more on power than gimmicks it would be another PS4/Xbox One. Xbox One is barely surviving on being too similar to PS4 with less good games. Throwing a third contender into that already dodgy situation, instead of creating your own market like Nintendo do so well, would be a pretty weak decision

A lot of games from Japan tend to have 'lowere quality' graphics compared to the hyper realism in a lot of populair AAA games like CoD, AC and fifa. Japanese games tend to go for more stylized looks and presentation and that is what I like about a lot of Japanese games.(until the wave of 'let's all try to be western-like and forget what we are actually good at' hype that started years ago.)
I think he is trying to say that Nintendo's team is as capable as Rockstar to make an open world game for example.

What I look forward to the most on Switch are exclusive games unique to the system. This is where the Switch can truly standout potentially if more of Nintendo's partners focus on that. Not just the unique option of playing console games on the go. The HD rumble and other tech built into the Joy Con has to be utilized as a primary.

Ports are fine based on demand of whatever the game is. But Nintendo doesn't need a lot of them imo.

We'll see what happens.

I've never had a Nintendo title that I felt was so buggy it needed patching. Can't say that for a multitude of American made titles.

Say what you want about Nintendo as a company - but their developers DO make the highest quality games.

@mrgawain

There's an interview where miyamoto uses a Japanese word that describes "feel of play" and he says he doesn't know how its be described in English. So there's something to what you're feeling

@DonkeyKongBigBoy I must be dream reading and editing out four letter words that get replaced by 'rubbish' again. My bad.

I can't remember the last time a Japanese game blew me away in any department, Nintendo especially.

Most eastern games are putrid garbage.

Off topic. High quality Graphics = Superior Skills?

This makes no sense to me. Isn't it western devs just use new gaming development platforms? Utilizing more power for graphics handling.

Gameplay wise, I don't see recent notable innovations is western developed games. All they make are FPS, Sports, FPS, Racing, FPS.

My point is, Graphics is not all there is to a game. I'd give gameplay priority over graphics. And this is where Jap devs excel at.

Fires up Nintendo game. Game runs, stable, for endless periods of time.

Fires up game from Ubi, EA, Activision, Bethesda: Crash, freeze, long squealing sound and freeze, have to unplug console, crash every time I complete That One Mission Objective (oh like 200 other people complaining about it on GameFaq's too.....suggestion is to delete save data and start again. Tried it, didn't work.)

Hmm, I wonder why Miyamoto thinks they should be duplicating the "superior" Western dev skill? Or is this a mistranslation? Seems a little odd that he can say "Nintendoʼs software developers have mastered state-of-the-art technologies such as Unreal engine, and their skills can now be compared with those of Western developers" because they're now using an engine made in Virginia?

The translation isn't sound like it's the most accurate.

Based on what? Compared to who?

"Western Developers" isn't a single group that's all the same.

Ummm.......For my money MGS5 (ps4) and MGS4 (ps3) are two of the best looking games ever and they came out of Japan. Capcom has done some really nice realistic graphx work as well with recent RE games.

Honestly I value art direction and graphx style so much more than pure horsepower. I have been re-playing some NGC games lately and even nearly 15yrs later some of them look excellent when running on my WiiU in 16x9 with Nintedont. Seriously SartFox Adventures looks like it could have just come out on a current system and Beyond GE, as well as the Metroid Prime games still hold up very well.

I think Eastern devs should just keep doing what they do and not worry to much about what comes out of the West as so much of it is just eye candy and gameplay.

Solution? Nintendo needs to create new dedicated development studios in the EU and America.

Same Nintendo quality, but with a different perspective.

I believe the talent is evenly matched. I may be a bit biased as I tend to prefer franchises from Japan (with a few exceptions).

It's weird, MGSV and Final Fantasy XV look stunning then there are loads of other Japanese studios where their PS4 games all look like PS3/Vita games. The 3DS hasn't helped either.
This is solely visuals of course not the games themselves but it makes a lot of Western games look more appealing and higher 'quality'.

@Tyranexx Agreed- more soul, less flash

@Tyranexx The thing with a lot of Western franchises is they're absolutely generic, and they go to Hollywood film for their inspiration. Some of those are ok, but not the amount there is. When I think of Western franchises I like: Assassin's Creed, Rayman, (a number of other Ubi titles), Bethesda's titles, Bioware, Uncharted, Deus Ex I realize most of them are made by developers that were directly inspired by Nintendo's games (Ubi & Bethesda), or are overseen by a Japanese publisher (Squeenix, Uncharted.) Bioware's probably the only "true" western dev on that list, but of course I remember them back in their glory days as an independent studio, not part of the EA behemoth that's taken their still good games and knocked them down a few notches in quality.

Even in this post I'm hard pressed to think of western games aside from those franchises/studios (excluding some old 90's era PC games) that make a big impression on me. It amazes me that they're the #1 sellers. Box art sells I guess.

@HappyMaskedGuy You mean like Retro and Next Level?

It's a hard feat for them though, Nintendo Quality comes from that top-down control of the process. Spread it too far out and it's difficult for them to manage.

This whole "Western vs Eastern developers" argument is ridiculous. A good development team is good no matter where they originate from. Western and Eastern developers may have different ideologies when it comes to software development, but that doesn't automatically a game from one is better than another.

@QuickSilver88 No profanity, thanks.

Personally ive been playing Nintendo since 1984, never had the need to play any other consoles, until about a year ago, when I got a PS4, purely because I was sick of Nintendo constantly delaying Zelda. Anyway, what Ive found and seen is the controls and cameras etc in games like Zelda and Mario are second to none, the western developers cant seem to come close in my eyes in that sense, ive played loads of western games and they just don't come close to the silky smooth controls and cameras in Zelda etc, if anything, these western developers just seem to be obsessed with graphics and power, which is a huge shame really. Also the stories in the Japanese games are way superior too.........

@remag You're very right about the cameras and controls. One issue is a lot of Western devs focus on PC and thus assume free-form mouse input. They used to tack thumbstick controls on as an afterthought. Sadly I think they stuck with the afterthought controls even for consoles.

I'd have to generally go 50/50 on story though. Lots of Japanese games have incomprehensible stories, and/or are formulaic anime tropes. Lots of Western games follow Hollywood action blockbuster tropes. There's probably an equally good number of stories from both.

Graphics, I blame id & Epic. Even on PC graphics were secondary. Then came Quake and Unreal, and everything changed. Those two kicked off the graphics eye candy race in gaming, and it's never let up since. Japan skipped the early PC gaming era almost entirely and thus never fell into that abyss until much more modern times, and the falloff in quality showed it.

As I've read before: Realism = convenience.

Much prefer less literal presentations that require good art direction and execution

@remag It goes both ways. Some Western developers can make games with truly amazing stories, such as Red Dead Redemption, while some Japanese developers make stereotypical anime garbage, filled with unintelligible characters with no real personality and oversized breasts. I think they're both pretty even in that regard.

@NEStalgia

True, the stories are a personal thing, ive played good games from both sides with good stories but for me, a good Japanese story has the edge.
Really cant wait for the Breath of the Wild stories, the old and new intertwining, seeing Beedle again, using the slate for your dungeon map and binoculars etc, keeping horses in your stables, be strange seeing them get killed tho?......yellow hearts??? Think its going to be a visit to Game at midnight launch for me

@KirbyTheVampire

Totally agree
I think gaming needs a mix tho, be boring otherwise. Theres certain genres of games I just wont go near, even tho they look and sound amazing, just because they are not my "thing", but I totally respect that other gamers love them, its all good

Mario odyssey does have some visual flair that you get from unreal 4 so this sort of backs up my theory about that.

@TromboneGamer

I think odyssey is looking really interesting, cant wait till they reveal more......

@remag Yay...Beedle...uhm...uhuh. If they're bringing back Beedle maybe they're bring back Fi! "Master, are you SURE you want to switch to your blue tunic? Master it's very cold, you should probably switch to your blue tunic. Master, did you know that you can ride the horse you're next to? Master you should take this horse to a stable. Master, your stamina is getting low, you should probably prepare a meal. I recommend bringing a pot of water to a medium rolling boil, lightly salted....Master are you even LISTENING to me?!"

– Horses can be killed by enemies
– Aonuma “wanted players to choose their own path”, so no companion character in this game
– Stamina meter encompasses sprinting, paragliding, climbing
– Meter can be upgraded, but Nintendo won’t say how

Nintendo........ I ACCEPT your challenge!!!!

@NEStalgia

Sorry, NO companion this time .......

@NEStalgia

But yeah, I cant wait to see what goodies Beedle has for sale

And I certainly cant wait to kick Wind Blight Ganon's enormous butt hahaha......

I would be really happy it's Nintendo made games and worries less about engines. Having one 3D Mario game per generation is very sad

So that's why Nintendo were on about the wind mechanics in the game the other day?....... Hmmmmmmmm

@remag "Master, are you sure you don't want to bring me along? Master I highly recommend you take me along. Master you've chosen not to take me along, is this ok? Master are you certain that not taking me along is what you would like to do? "

Actually I think I'm one of the few that actually really liked Fi. I just hated her interruptions as much as everyone else.

No one can ever beat Midna though, so I'm fine without a companion. Because a companion that's not Midna is no companion at all.

@NEStalgia

Lol, I have a feeling Midna will appear tho at some point in Breath of the Wild?..... Has to really?....

@NEStalgia

Fi was cool

I hope it doesn't change in the future. One of the biggest reasons Nintendo games are so distinctly 'Nintendo' is because they are built from the ground up within programming environments designed specifically to make them shine on their own unique hardware. Even if Switch is using a less-unique architecture than previous Nintendo systems, I think that using their own bespoke development tools is still a critical ingredient if they want to capture that warm and vibrant Nintendo essence.

@BAN You're really right about that, and Nintendo's hardware designs have typically been designed to force that ground up creativity.

However, the WiiU is the result of that philosophy in the modern age. HD 3D games are just too complex to spend that much time and money re-making the tooling over and over again. It's matured to the point that there's a handful of vendors making sophisticated toolkits. It's become more like making the 3D models. Every studio didn't make their own version of 3DS Max, they just bought the tools from the company that specializes in it. Epic doesn't make many games anymore. They're an engine toolkit company mostly.

It's the end of an era to be sure, but it's also a key step to a steady stream of first party software. The custom tooling is what ground WiiU software to "2 a year".

@NEStalgia Eh, kind of. The teams at Nintendo that make their development software aren't the same ones that make their games. They're completely separate entities, and most of the tools they create are made well before the hardware even launches. What really dragged Wii U's release slate down (at least for the first year or two) wasn't waiting for dev tools, it was waiting for their internal developers to get through the agonizingly slow and painful process of becoming proficient in developing games in HD for the first time. This would have been problematic regardless of the engine being used for a given game.

Moreover, Nintendo are far from the only studio that creates their own tools. It's just as common to find a big triple-A game that uses an engine created in-house by the developer than otherwise.

@BAN Mostly good points. Though as with every case of "WDIIH" (We Didn't Invent It Here) syndrome at big software companies, it always ends up leading to reinventing the wheel. All the troubleshooting and bugs randomly popping up in the engine had to be identified mid development, then troubleshot by the engine team, then resolved, and retested in game development. Where prefab engines have all that sorted out by everyone else that's used it. I'll miss the Nintendo-engine era, but it does make a lot of sense.

Yeah, 3rd parties sometimes have a habit of in-house engines. There's a few reasons for that though. Some of those engines started for specific franchises back before the industry consolidated behind a few engines. Back then competing for graphics meant building the engine for your game much like Nintendo, and some of them stuck with it to present on x86 hardware. Nintendo's engines can't do that with the hardware architecture change.

Some stubbornly do it out of WDIIH syndrome of their own. EA going out of their way to use Frostbyte for everything isn't because it's amazing as an engine. It's because they spent a fortune buying DICE and the purchase happened to come with its own engine, mostly complete, so they zeroed in on that so they didn't have to pay Epic. It's a painfully inefficient engine from most reports (proprietary so we'll never know for sure.)

Ubisoft, seems focused on their engines. In part because they need to due to the nature of their sandbox games and the requirement for large spontaneous population movements. But that engine is and always has been awful. It's not terribly visually impressive, bogs down often on all platforms, texture clips and brush clips constantly, and tends to be unstable.

Bethesda, I believe still uses Gamebryo, or whatever the new name is that's going by, I forget, modified somewhat, which is a 3rd party kit (almost as bad as Ubi's in practice, but still a 3rd party kit.)

Activision....not sure what they're using. They used to use the Quake/Q2/Q3 engine almost exclusively (and they were the original publishers for id), so I really don't know what they're using these days. Probably modified Q engines. Warner I think uses mostly Unreal, as does THQ/Nordic.

Edit: Also remember a lot of "custom" engines out there are just customized versions of the various GPLed Quake engines. Even Valve's Source engine is just modified GPLed Quake 1 engine code. id really left a legacy on the whole industry. Shame what they've become in recent years despite the good reception of the Doom reboot.

@NEStalgia: Agreed. Crazily enough, many of the companies you listed are actually responsible for a lot of my favorite non-Nintendo franchises.

Many of the top franchises that tend to chart are kinda samey/generic to me as well. Many of those games (CoD, FIFA, etc.) are little more than roster updates and contain minor graphical improvements over last year's version. Yet people still eat that stuff up. I mean, where's the meat and potatoes? All I see is the skeleton of a game that pretends to be the edgy new thing. I can at least see how a game like Minecraft tends to stay in the charts, due to its sandbox gameplay/unlimited creativity.

I'm not saying that all games from the Far East are perfect, but they at least seem to be trying out some new ideas in many cases.

I like how there are all these "grabs popcorn" comments at the top, and then everyone pretty much just ended up agreeing.

Apart from the 'deleted for profanity' comments. I don't know what they said, but I assume they weren't as balanced.

@NEStalgia Thanks, but just to spare you the trouble of writing anymore example articles for gamesindustry.biz, I'm very much aware of the inner workings of development studios, games-related or otherwise

@PorllM That sounds like your own impression and estimation of Nintendo and Japanese developers not the industry or gamers-at-large.

I do understand your sentiment and I partly agree, but Nintendo has been ignored more and more by gamers over the years. The proof is in Nintendo's inability to bring people to their console with those games that you and I may hold up as such shining examples of their skills.

Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself with actions and words.

@gatorboi352 3 years, bub!

@Tyranexx Definitely. I can understand the popularity of sports games. They're generally "casual" games that aren't really selling to people who otherwise play games (or are purchased by people who play games to play with people who don't play games.) So I always just kind of ignore it in the charts. Yes, FIFA and Madden top the charts, but it's kind of like saying Candy Crush tops the charts. It's just a different market.

But yeah what the "gamers" tend to like that tops the charts. COD, Battlefield, etc. etc. It always feels like different companies takes on the same game. Even there I get it a little. Multiplayer, people want to play with their friends, so they all have to have the same games. But then when we look at the popular single player experiences. Gears of War, the 50 different zombie apocalypse games coming from Sony, there's so much sameness in all of it. And more importantly, repeated themes. You can sort it out between "zombie invasion, zombie escape, soldiers in modern war-torn area, soldiers in future war-torn area, soldiers in historic war-torn area, and the old favorite that's vanished in the last 5 years, space marines, and the new one that's replaced it medieval-super-gladiators-in-Norse/Romanesco/Persian setting." There's little deviation from those themes. Heck, they don't even do James Bond and 80's action flick type themes anymore. The Bond/60's spy movie & film noir ones in the early '00's felt refreshing. Max Payne was really creative with the film noire motif. They made it TOO dark half way through, but it was very memorable. Then for MP3 they turned Max into "Semi-soldier in modern war torn setting."

So little creativity, so much sameness, and so much emphasis on replicating camera techniques from cinema (a failing industry all on its own, no less.)

That said, Japan doesn't get a free pass. The beauty of being a Nintendo gamer is that Nintendo curates our walled garden for us, so we get spoiled with only the good stuff coming (no matter how much we complain about X, Y ,and Z not getting localized.) Sony gets a lot of Japanese titles different from the ones Nintendo gets. And all of them scream "stay away" very loudly. They also all look the same, with the same anime covers, same vibe, feel, and recycled storylines (and are usually poorly made.)

So I think both hemispheres produce their share of rehashed generic, poorly made games. It's just that the "good" Western games tend to be highly experimental and overambitious, making claims they can't really provide, while in Japan, the good ones are well polished finished products.

Bethesda and Ubi make really good games....but they overextend themselves, push their resources too far, have on the box claims that are really infeasible and the game doesn't really provide, and they tend to be riddled by bugs because they expanded the scope farther than they should have to build a cohesive experience. The creative ambition is commendable, the lack of self-restraint is not