I think it also has to do with just the sheer deluge of games we have coming out now. With so many games per year, we're retreading the same ideas almost on a monthly basis and people are always looking at the next big thing wherever they can get it.

"Wada said this in a recent interview, where he also calls out publishers and developers for not changing things up enough"

Does he mean the tedious mini-games that were in No More Heroes?

I hate statements like this. These action game developers are all acting like Itagaki now.

What's with the header image?

No More Heroes was one of the few original games of this console generation.

Magnalon clearly doesn't understand the significance of the side jobs in No More Heroes. There's more to them than just them existing to make money. They are how Travis sees the regular part of the world. You will notice that as Travis gets deeper into the ranks and things get crazier, so too do the side jobs until he's getting paid for just flying his motorcycle off the dock. It's just one of the many many points of the game that make it as great as it is.

Besides, Marvelous put out Little King's Story. They're allowed to say blue is red for all I care.

@EggmaniMN
I believe the mini-games are being taken out in NMH2 because people didn't like them (or are being made optional if I'm not mistaken). Also, Little King's Story looks great, but it didn't get perfect 10s.

It was also just one example of how no one is perfect. I liked NMH, but I hate when producers mouth off and talk about how every other game sucks but theirs: it's pretentious. There's plenty of original titles nowadays just in the downloadable arena. To name a few off the top of my head: 'Splosion Man, Shatter, Flower, Echodrome, and Braid.

Elsa is right. People keep hearkening back to the "golden years" because no one remembers all the shovelware like ET. I think Jonathan Holmes had a great blog about this same point: games nowadays are just as good as they were, if not better. Wada is essentially saying in the above statement that "he's the best thing since Playstation".

I don't think I can speak for everyone but here's my take on it. I definitely miss the nostalgia of the games right around when the first Playstation came out. But I also miss the days of super nintendo as well. Granted, it's probably through rose-tint...

...but I feel like game makers have fallen into the same trap that many film-makers have as well. I think they've come to rely too much on technology's advances and not enough on niche-gaming and storytelling. If you look at older movies, they didn't have the Special FX that is available now. They were required to try and sell the movie on the acting and the story... not the huge explosions and special FX. It's the same now, many companies are relying on fads and trends to sell their games. There's not enough originality and chances being taken... they feel like "Oh if we have this feature in there that's all we need." Then they rush the rest of it without developing it fully.

One of the biggest things I miss from that generation was the ability of games to take one or two focuses and attempt to perfect them. The graphics were important, but not the most important thing. Now a lot of times games take on more than they can chew and focus on throwing as much filler BS in it as they can just to say "There's 100000 hours of gameplay." But what's the point if it's formulaic and not even fun?

There's definitely still great games being made, and I feel that we are in a golden age of indie gaming. With all the medians to grab small-company games now (Steam, XBLA and community games) I think we'll just see a shift to that as the large companies try to leech every character, franchise, and poinntless gimmick dry and churn the same games out over and over.

/step off soapbox

gaming is still pretty big. It's hard to innovate when so much has been done now... just gotta keep growing and gaming, that's all we can do.

I think some people just love to bitch, I don't think its THAT bad.

We have borderlands and brutal legend coming out. I think a bigger

problem is the over saturation of games decreasing the quality of games.

Most of the games I see are shovelware

@DeusPayne - Saying "there's gonna be another game crash" is as old as the game crash. People were saying it with PS2, Xbox and GameCube, despite the fact that game sales are still going strong.

@Elsa - I think what needs to be considered is where these games are coming from. Wada is specifically talking about games in Japan. Sure, there's a lot of new things and IPs coming from the West, as a lot of companies have been certain for the past few years that new ideas need to be tried. Even if they are subtle changes, such as Dead Space's limb removal system or Assassin's Creed climb-anywhere, as well as Mirror's Edge taking a different take on a similar idea, to more extreme concepts like Too Human replacing button mashing with stick waggling and Alone in the Dark...needing a team that knows when to cut other ideas out and refine others, and games like Scribblenauts.

What was the last new IP you saw announced from Square that didn't have Final Fantasy or something similar tacked on? I think maybe there were a couple this generation, but overall...empty. And that's the point, developers in Japan need to start taking chances, and the ones that do, such as Capcom, are trying to combine elements of Western development with Eastern.

In America, the games industry is strong regardless of how many people complain otherwise about the good old days (news flash, there was a lot of CRAP on the SNES. In fact, the crap to good ratio was a much larger margin than today). In Japan, it continues to decline. I believe this is what Wada is discussing, though.

Most of the games on the PlayStation and Saturn were utter shit. This should be a demonstrable fact. You can throw a trainload of "innovative" ideas at a market and the behavior of people as a whole will continue to stay the same -- most will play the holy shit out of the few games that are good, and leave the rest to the obsessives.

he's right. i'm tired of the same old new awesome great fps and old new awesome great rpgs and sports games with action tru stick action! the only game i've played this month is kz2 and that was just for 2x experience. but i've been studying my ass off trying to make money grow from trees. yes, trees.

Character focused-ip franchise? Not every franchise has the same characters in every game. Final Fantasy doesn't have the same characters in it's games. I can think of more, but I'm too lazy.