Japanese game folks have been down on themselves as late. Sony Computer Entertainment exec Shuhei Yoshida is the latest to enter the fray:
The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe... There are also talented people, engineers… in the US and Europe, and it’s relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games... That’s not the case in Japan. Because they don’t have a large base, like the movie industry; there aren’t [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. That’s making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress.
Yoshida went on to state that Japanese developed games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are the exception to the rule, not the rule. Yoshida: Games tech power “has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe” [VG247]