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Father of Sony Playstation Steps Down
Raver32 wrote with a link to a CNN article about the end of Ken Kutaragi's time at Sony. His departure was announced back in April, and now leaves Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) headed by Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCE) former president and COO. "Though no longer a board member, Kutaragi will hold an advisory post at the gaming unit, according to SCE official Sayoka Henmi. The departure of Kutaragi, an icon among gamers, marks the end of an era at Sony Corp. that saw the company long dominate the video game industry with its flagship PlayStation consoles. But it also highlights troubles at Sony amid a series of blunders over the rollout of its PlayStation 3 and intense competition from Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii console and Microsoft's Xbox 360."
Is this post a joke? Maybe my sarcasm-radar is on the fritz, but if you're serious, you and that developer are off your respective rockers. Maybe different consoles have different standards for games they licence; I don't know, I've not developed for a console before. But to think that their different standards have something to do with the country they're based in is ludicrous. The forum thread you linked to discusses differences in Resident Evil 4 between various versions; one poster noted: You got it wrong. The japanese version has bouncy tits, the american don't. And its the japanese Playstation 2 version. Look at the textures. I suspect that the difference is the console the game is on, not the country the game is released in (which, according to that post, is backwards from what you describe anyway, assuming that poster is correct).
Just to put things in perspective, the primary console (not including the PC) that the AV and H productions publish their games on is the Dreamcast, what you would consider a Japan-based console. People also like to reference the Dead or Alive series when talking about bouncing tits, a series that lived until recently primarily on Sega's and Sony's consoles.
We need to stop obsessing over and searching for differences between cultures. There are so many more similarities than differences, obsessing over what sets us apart only serves to keep us apart. I, for one, am glad at how much international collaboration happens in the game industry as opposed to other media; we need to keep this train rolling forward, as we still have a long way to go.