Why is it mainly Western developers that specialize in shooters?

[standtrip]

Does this have to do with culture, most Japanese devs only exclusively make third person shooters and their market usually doesn't like shooters but they also admit that Western devs do them best (Nagoshi, creator of Yakuza said) and it's funny how superior melee combat can be found in Japanese titles while stuff like Skyrim and Witcher do them so badly.

 

[Dietsoap]

Suzuki dabbing on the western devs once again.

 

[Zoltor]

It has to do with even more of how business work in the west. It really doesn't take long to make a FPS(or sports game for that matter, which is why they are common as well), thus leaving them plenty of time to waste on overhyped graphics. Then you have the fact FPSs appeal to the lowest common denominator, which western corporations, especially the bigger don't care at all about putting out a good product, they can be proud about, they really only care about mothey, nothing else matters.

 

[SCQ]

Does this have to do with culture

Most likely. FPS games don't tend to do that well in Japan so there is no real incentive for Japanese devs to make them.

 

[shredingskin]

You can do the whole "in america the gun is a symbol of liberty and is taken as a tool, while the katana blah blah".
It's an oversaturated market that mostly only big players can take a shot at, which have years of experience making the stuff.
It's not as prevalent today.

 

[高野和泉]

Based on my own observations...which I'll throw into the mix here:

Depends on what your(company) talent pool consists of ultimately.

Each company/platform usually has a genre specialty they hire for and becomes their identity once they've struck gold. Then slowly branches out.

Nintendo = Platformers
Sega = Racing
Square Enix = JRPG
Sony = Action games
Xbox = Shooters
EA = Sports
etc,etc.

Then everbody else just copies them and their goes the pool of clones causing the perception your seeing. Currently, Openworld and FPS are the trendsetter atm. When another genre disrupt these we'll see a slew of new copycats/clones of w/e that new trendsetters genre happens to be(Like how RPGs was/used to be the prevs). Rinse and repeat I guess. But every blue moon we'll get a visionary who will create brand new genres by introducing new ways to play and then...yea you get the point.

 

[Riku Rose]

Because it makes them money.

We like to think of game companies as like Santa and the elves in the North Pole making us our favourite toys but the reality is they're a business with employees who need paying and some with shareholders who want their share price to go up.

 

[shadowman16]

I really wish more Japanese devs would take a stab at shooters. Two of my favourite third person shooters - Binary Domain and Vanquish are both by Japanese devs, and were way more fun than most Western released examples of the genre.

Though I find myself playing less and less FPS games each year. Most focus on online/multiplayer and that's something I personally have 0 interest in taking part in. I prefer a good single player campaign - probably why I still enjoy something like Darkness, Halo (1 and 3), and the Doom games. I did enjoy Destiny though when I had a friend who was playing it non stop, played it once or twice a week doing the activities and had a blast with it.