I'll just leave my words from the "other" opinion thread right here:
It's isn't the fact that they "suck"...it's the fact that the Japanese money to make them isn't there and isn't as widespread as it used to be in the cartridge days. If there is a shortage on games from Japan leading to a so-called paranoid shortage on quality, it's because we had our pick in the 8-16 bit days since big corporate money went into them - this is why.
In the 8-bit and 16-bit days, almost EVERY Japanese company had thier hand in the game development and publishing business, they in turn opened up office in the west, from Taxan (Japanese computer peripheral company), Toho (Japanese movie studio), JVC Musical Industries (Japanese electronics manufacturer/music label), Meldac (another Japanese music label), Seta (Japanese pachinko electronic company) to Electro Brain (an arm of Toei Animation studios), Data East (Japanese electronic component company) to Fuji TV (Japanese TV network). Every major Japanese company with money had their hand in the video game jar in hopes of making money, plus also having strict Japanese control of the end product. Well, that ended when more hardware competitors got into the scene and technology got expensive and the risks got higher.
People like Phil Fish interpret the loss of all these companies and all of this product as the END of the Japanese video game industry. That's bullshit. The money just ran out and the game designers just got older.
Why doesn't Konami make great games anymore? Because they prefer the financial safety of their fitness center and casino gambling equipment subsidiaries. They're going to put more money into that than games.
When Keiji Inafune said "Japan is finished", this was his personal anxiety and exhaustion speaking - he's NOT speaking for the entire Japanese video game industry. Inafune is a 47 year old man who is probably speaking more about himself, and his exhaustion with being at the same company (Capcom) for 23 years. The gaming press, consisting of those vetern 8-bit and 16-bit gamers in their late-twenties and early-thirties, took his quote and made a field day with it, (inserting upset that their cartridge playing days are over) and its readers did the same in a "sky is falling" manner.
Fast-forward to now, if you're a Japanese game developer and want your game published, you don't have to open up an office in the west, you just go to Aksys, Atlus, Xseed, or Sega to help you out. These companies have loyal customers and publish great games, but they're fighting for a piece of the market to get their titles in stores along with everyone else that have more "pull" with retailers, marketers, along with advertising power.
People (like Fish) are not upset that that Japanese games are bad, people are upset that their cartridge childhoods of coming home from school without a care in the world to play the enormous Japanese pick of 8-16 bit titles are sadly over. I'm missing those days too! The funding isn't there anymore, and the very creators that brought us the very innovative games from the 8-bit and 16-bit days have either retired from the game business, moved on to another line of work, or have sadly passed away. The Japanese investment bubble burst and no one wants to take risks anymore.
Japan has its game design schools just like every other country, I look forward to what their graduates have to offer. It isn't over yet, it never has been!