Don't mean to bump this, but it is an interesting topic...
As far as "east vs west" goes, the gaming industry is kinda up in the air now... Some asian companies are now taking a few ideas from the west in terms of "listening to the players/fans" and giving feedback... Square-Enix is a big example of that... When FFXI was released, they had a certain set of rules in the game that the players had to follow. There was no real way to solo to level up or complete certain missions, as the game was primarily party oriented. Now, years later, they've changed the game so much that any player can at least hit level 40 in about a weeks time. There's a place called Abyssea that increases the amount of exp you get in conjunction with having a plethora of buff items that just seem unreal, and the minimum level to enter is 30. If you have a party that can accept you, you can level up from 30-90 (level cap has been raised a few times, too) in about 10-18 hours... Anyway, what I'm getting at is that they've been listening and making drastic changes to this game and FFXIV which didn't do so well...
On the flipside, you have MK9 developed by Ed Boon and his team over at WB Studios, and they've been listening to their fans, but the game sorta doesn't feel as "American" as it did in the previous versions. What I mean by that is that there are things in this game that you don't find in most American (or non-Japanese for that matter) fighting game systems that are in a ton of Japanese fighters systems like just-frames, a solid poking system (other MKs had pokes, but were so limited imo because it consisted of hp, lp, and run + some character specific moves), and a few other things. Sure, there's still fatalities and blood and gore, but it seems more like a love-child between SF4 and Gears of War (strangely enough they were inspired by the later and to a small extent the former). Plus it doesn't seem as floaty as MKvsDC or any other 3d MK did, and I don't mean floaty in a MvC2 way... If you've executed a jump kick in a 3d MK (or simply jumped) you know what I'm talking about...
One thing that kinda affects the gaming development (and was kinda mentioned indirectly) are the game reviewers. I know they have to be unbiased and blah blah blah, but like in Game Informer's case, none of the writers' lists of current favorite games has 1 game that's not considered "mainstream" (or is considered a niche game)... Not saying that they don't have any, but the lists speak for themselves... I personally don't think they're as "hardcore" as they try to make the reader believe, because as with most (not all) "casual" gamers, they follow the crowd, whatever that crowd happens to cling to. In the rpg realm, it was Final Fantasy, but some kinda veered into the FPS/RPG realm (Borderlands, etc) or MMORPG (WoW, WAR, GW) realm or for the majority, its the more "Western" rpgs that are being clinged to. For FPS players its been some rendition of Call of Duty, but yeah before that it was Halo... But there are other games out there that are good though, and might get good reviews, but because game reviewers hype (or over-hype) a particular game, the other good games might not get much love... I prefer Battlefield over Call of Duty any day. I felt that Mistwalker made some good rpgs that were more rich in story and had more depth in the system than some Final Fantasy games. I feel Guild Wars requires more skill than WoW, or even FFXI, and I play FFXI... Anyway, these reviewers can affect the game developers' mindset as to how they want to portray their game... FFXIV was supposed to be a combo of WoW, WAR, and some other MMO with a hint of FFXI... In the end, it was garbage... Instead of sticking to what they knew worked in FFXI, and listening to the fans, they decided to take a bunch of good points from each "major mmo" and threw it together hoping it would be perfect and fun... They obviously missed the fun part... And it sucks, because for one I wanted to get this for the ps3 for both me and my wife, and it sucked so bad that the ps3 version is on hold indefinitely til they make drastic changes and the playerbase is satisfied with the game... On top of that, the game reviewers gave it a reasonably bad score, but because mmorpgs evolve, and don't always play like they did on release day, it still gets shunned if it stunk from jump, and their game score doesn't evolve with them... I do think that games that get major overhauls should get re-evaluated... Sure, some games may also be popular now, but when reviewing, one shouldn't always rate a specific game because its not "Call of Duty" or "Final Fantasy" or "God of War"... There are a ton of good games that get rated low because of that it seems, and that's not fair at all... I remember back in the day when Gamepro used to give away 4.0s to 5.0s for games just because it had a cool title... I think now they're more realistic with their reviews, but even still, there's still some bias involved...
I will say that from my personal experience, it seems that those games that the reviewers hype are somewhat easy in difficulty (or in some cases the level of skill required to be cometitive online was low)... Call of Duty made sniping easy since part 2 imo... People didn't like FFVIII because of the battle system, which from my personal experience I felt it required the player to actually know what they're doing and not rely on an uber materia setup (FFVII)... I noticed my friends relying heavily on summons all the time too, but if you knew what you were doing, there was really no need for the summons at all. In fact, you eventually do more dmg than the summons... I know people who play Gears of War that only need the chainsaw to place high in matches (not sure how it is in part 2 though)... That isn't to say that all high reviewed games are easy, but there are quite a few that are very casual in nature, which in turn makes people buy it...
Ultimately, as I stated before, they're kinda even... Where both East and West are listening and giving feedback, and some companies are trying to make new things, there are some that are about churning casual-friendly games covered in a bunch of crap making it look like a great game, but once broken down, come to find out it's not as great or as fun or innovative of a game as the developers make it seem... Kinda lost my train of thought, so I'll just end it here...
