This is just business as usual for Japan. Is it a problem that Japanese developers, for the most part barring the genius of developers like Team ICO, lack the innovation or drive to experiment with gameplay? Yes and no. Japan’s lack of innovation and drive to create new, original products has been the main reason they pump out quality products. Other countries are able to create the base that Japan needs and they always improve upon it greatly. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder about the untapped potential that Japanese people’s imagination can hold. Games like Shadow of the Colossus are a testament to that idea.

Instead of building creative games from the ground up, however, Inafune is looking at the west and simply mimicking and not truly innovating. While no new gameplay has emerged yet, DmC certainly looks western. But this type of mimicry is exactly the direction that Capcom and other Japanese developers shouldn’t be going in.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9rW1jst7OE 480x300]

An attempt to mimic the west will only bring Japanese developers back to this same spot in five years, when they may be five years behind the rest of the industry again. Instead, developers will have to truly innovate and create new ways to game. Mimicry is not the path to innovation.