Why Japanese games are breaking up with the West

1UP.com has posted an article about why despite the international push of 2007-2009, Japanese gaming companies are returning to primarily making games for Japanese consumers. It touches on the idea of moe, and how it has changed the Japanese gaming industry, despite there being very few genre-defining or redefining games which would qualify as moe.

It also discusses how in the early days of video games, PC-based videogames (considered by many to be the West's strongest subsection of gaming) were not available, leading to early Japanese gamers to only be exposed to Western console games, which were typically not very good. This increases in potency when you realize that the console crash of the 80s was by-and-large driven by Western gaming companies refusal to provide any form of quality assurance requirements for games released on their consoles; Atari in particular is a notable offender. This is one reason why the "Nintendo Seal of Quality", despite seemingly being meaningless in today's market, was actually a big deal. It did not guarantee the game would be good, or fun, but it guaranteed it would work.

http://www.1up.com/features/japanese-games-breaking-west