Inafune: Japanese games are dead

We may not be out at the Tokyo Games Show this year, but that doesn't mean that we can't share in all the juicy gossip - including the fact that Capcom's R&D chief, Keiji Inafune, has claimed that the Japanese games industry is dead.

"When I looked around all the different games at the TGS event floor, I said, 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished," Inafune said, according to Destructoid.

"But, just so you all don't think that the game industry is finished, Capcom is doing our best. I wanted to [have] this party and show you there are still some kickass games out there coming from Japan."

Inafune is best known as a major collaborator in the Mega Man series, as well as a producer on the Dead Rising games, among others. He's also long-held that the Japanese market is falling behind the times and needs to adopt a more global strategy to survive in the modern games industry.

"Five years ago Capcom was at the very bottom of the videogame industry and it was left up to me to think about how we were going to get ourselves out of this pit," Inafune said at a Capcom press event last year, captured by Eurogamer.

"At the time I realised one of the key words we had to focus on was 'globalisation' and being able to sell our games on a global scale - not just Japan - was going to be one of the things to help us out of this pit."

Is the Japanese games market falling behind? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.