From CVG:

The Metal Gear Solid creator says West is " more passionate and energetic" , blasting narrow focus of Japanese developers - plus, Rockstar alliance revealed!

18:12 " I' m personally not really interested in the Japanese videogame industry right now." Those were the damning words of globally acclaimed games developer Hideo Kojima, voicing a growing opinion in certain quarters of the industry that Japanese games development is in a state of decline.

Speaking to CVG during E3 2004 in Los Angeles last week, he said: " There aren' t really that many interesting [Japanese] games right now, not like there are looking at the Western games industry," supporting our suggestion to him that Japan was no longer the games development superpower it once was.

In a damning indictment of the output and practices of his countrymen, Kojima-san said: " I' m not going to name any names but I don' t really enjoy talking to Japanese videogame creators that much. They don' t have fun stuff to say anyway."

Kojima-san' s own Metal Gear Solid series has always enjoyed greater popularity in the West, not by accident one suspects and one reason perhaps why he has maintained his status, while other Japanese developers have struggled to adapt to an evolving market where the biggest games in the increasingly powerful West are no longer Mario and Sonic, but Grand Theft Auto and first-person shooters.

Explaining his feeling that the games industry should be viewed as a global entity by the development community, and not carved up by territory, Kojima said: " I don' t think we should really look at it like different markets, like different industries. It' s like one global videogames industry and it just happens to be that it' s more happening in the US and Europe right now.

" So I like to present to these areas where it' s more active for what I' m creating, and these places that accept and like my games, so I' ll do my best with my games so that people in these areas, like the US and Europe, enjoy my games."

While it appears there may be some small degree of resentment on the part of Hideo Kojima that his titles haven' t enjoyed the same soaring success in his home country as in the West, he is certainly not alone in his views on the perceived insular, stilted state of Japanese games development; Sega' s Toshiro Nagoshi echoed these thoughts when we spoke with him at this year' s show (check back soon for that interview in full).

When asked what he thought was required for the Japanese industry to evolve, Kojima explained: " I think it is evolving but I don' t see the heat, the passion there - it' s more like a business now. I guess that people of my generation and Mr Miyamoto, who is not of the same generation you know, but videogames creators who have been around since the beginning of the industry have had to create everything from scratch.

" There was really no established job position called ' videogames designer' [in the beginning], but now the younger videogames designers, when they joined the industry, videogame designing was already established. I guess in that sense the aura that they exude is really a totally different dimension from ours I think."

But this mood of disillusionment was quickly dispelled as Kojima' s revealed a new-found friendship with Rockstar President Dan Hauser: " I actually talked to Dan Hauser from Rockstar Games a couple of days ago and we had a great chat," Kojima said.

" Western videogame creators like him seem to be more passionate and energetic so I hang out with him." This relationship was seemingly cemented by the arrival of a package from Rockstar during our interview, which contained a " San Andreas" t-shirt for Kojima-san. Metal Gear Auto? Maybe not.

Check back tomorrow for the full transcript of our interview with Hideo Kojima, where the development legend gives his thoughts on Nintendo DS and talks on Metal Gear Solid 3 at length.

Johnny Minkley

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So what do you think of Hideo' s rant?

What a bitter bitter man, LOL!!

First he blasts the Japanese games media. Now the Japan games industry. I smell a defection ;)

At least he' ll be on the winning side. LOL.

It does seem kinda interesting that the Japanese game developers (with the exception of Square-Enix) didn' t seem to have as great of a showing at E3 this year than in years past. And if you look at it, it seems to me that none of the major Japanese development groups have really been putting out the kind of goodness that we once saw regularly (I' m thinking of Sega in particular, but even Capcom and Nintendo haven' t been doing so hot lately), while companies like BioWare, UbiSoft, and (hopefully) Lionhead have been creating all sorts of masterpieces. So Kojima certainly has a point.

Your forgetting Pandemic (spelling?). They went from making mediocre wrestling games to creating a lot (and I mean a lot) of anticipated possibly " AAA" titles. (Full Spectrum Warrior, Destroy All Humans, etc.) But this does seem to be a disturbing trend. IMO it seems that the eastern developers are content to stick to the " tried and true" (traditional RPGs) and not do much toward inovation. There are exceptions but as I' ve said a hundered times before, I' m tired of the " level up, save the world, and get the girl" cliche RPG. But at least the companies you' ve listed are bringing a lot of great quality titles (Bioware and Ubi in particular). Here' s to hoping that both sides of the Pacific can reach their Nirvana of game development at the same time.