Japanese game folks have been down on themselves as late. Sony Computer Entertainment exec Shuhei Yoshida is the latest to enter the fray:

The technology base has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe… There are also talented people, engineers in the US and Europe, and its relatively easy to form a large team that required to create this generation of games… Thats not the case in Japan. Because they dont have a large base, like the movie industry; there arent [a lot of people] in the high end of computer graphics. Thats making the many great developers in Japan make slow progress.

Yoshida went on to state that Japanese developed games like Metal Gear Solid 4 are the exception to the rule, not the rule.

Yoshida: Games tech power has shifted from Japan to the US and Europe [VG247]