Inafune on TGS showcase: â??Japan is finishedâ??

Prized Capcom producer Keiji Inafune surprised onlookers at TGS last week with a damning appraisal of the Japanese development sector.

After perusing the games line-up on the TGS showfloor, Inafune lamented the lack of high-profile Japanese titles.

“Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor I said ‘Man, Japan is over,’” he said, as quoted by Destructoid. “’We’re done. Our game industry is finished.’”

Inafune’s comments highlight what is a tumultuous period for Japanese game developers, with native publishers increasingly looking to western tastes to recoup investment.

The import/export-dependent nation has been a key victim of the global finance crisis; far more so – in terms of national debt – than the UK and US.

Analysts still fear that Japan could quickly fall back into recession. Japan’s new government has gambled by watching the Yen rise against the dollar, hoping that a strong Yen will stimulate native trade and lower the nation’s dependence on exports.

The tension for the Japanese games industry is that it needs international trade to fuel its ambitions.