In an interesting interview published by Gamasutra on Friday, Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski gave some advice to Japanese developers: add more multiplayer.
"My advice to Japan is that in a disc-based market right now, you cannot [ignore multiplayer]," he said. "I'm not saying tack multiplayer onto every game... there's a billion different ways you can do some sort of 'players interacting with other players.'"
Bleszinski pointed to Sega's Vanquish and Grasshopper's Shadows of the Damned as two Japanese games that could have been improved with some sort of co-op or other multiplayer mode. Neither game sold very well in the U.S.
"And if you're going to make a third-person shooter... the fact that Vanquish didn't have a multiplayer suite was a crime," he said.
Check out the full interview for more of CliffyB's thoughts.
Japan's game devs must not ignore multiplayer, says Cliff Bleszinski [Gamasutra]