For those who are tired of Western vs. Japanese discussions...
...because of speculation, I found a research paper that is very thorough and details cultural differences between tastes as well as other things. It mentions for instance how Western games suffer from poor localizations in Japan just as much as Japanese games do in the West, the attitude of game magizines like Game World and Famitsu, expectations based on country of origin, and so forth: http://www.fdg2013.org/program/paper...gal_tomuro.pdf
As a person who is trying to understand Japanese views on Western games better, this is particularly fascinating and shows that we're not alone in some of our concerns. It confirms some people's thoughts that there are indeed some japanese who find yo-ge (western games) novel in the sense that we do for their games. In the end, I hope this clarifies some of your questions.
