The video games media like Nintendo Power, EGM and Gamepro didn't focus on the behind the scenes to much. I think the first magazines really focused on Japanese development was during Final Fantasy 7's hype train. For a full year, we got previews and massive amounts of coverage for Final Fantasy 7 and it's predecessors. Most notably, they focused some attention on the Final Fantasy games that never made it to America, like Final Fantasy II, III and V.

I don't know when the whole Western made vs Japanese made flame war started. When I was a kid, we would have arguments over PC vs Console, but we never focused on the countries that made these games.
Looking back on that, it was mostly Western developers that made PC titles, and Japanese developers that made Console titles.

When the original Xbox was released, I remember a lot of rumbling against it from the PC community, complaining that the Xbox will take away their precious PC titles. That the Xbox would limit their PC experiences. While that is somewhat true. Microsoft did one thing during that generation, and that was the first successful Western console since the original Atari 2600.

What the Xbox brought to the scene was good Western developed games for consoles. Before the Xbox, most Western console games were cheap cash-in license games, terrible PC ports, or really generic games poorly mimicking successful Japanese games like Mario. For every Rare, there was 100 terrible Western developers making bad console games.

Microsoft bridged that gap, and brought most of the good PC developers on board. Would Halo been nearly as popular if it was a PC only title? Or Elder's Scroll? Probably not, but Microsoft gave these developers a new platform to work on to reach a new audience.

I can't give Microsoft 100% credit for mass marketing Western games. Blizzard deserves credit for World of Warcraft. Who knew this spin off RPG of a niche RTS would capture the world?

This is around the time I started noticing the Western / Japanese flame wars. You couldn't bring up Final Fantasy without someone chiming in about WRPGs. No matter what message board I lurked on, these flame wars shot up everywhere.

It seems that Western games have taken over America since the Xbox 360 was released. I can see this reflecting in the media as well. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and it seems most of the writers on these podcasts just don't prefer Japanese games. 1up.com seems to be the only website that has a diverse set of writers among their staff.

I noticed a lot of these writers complaining about Japanese aethetics and Japanese gameplay mechanics. They like to call these Japanese games generic and outdated. I always find this funny when they hype up generic looking Halo clones and playing their 300th Tower Defense game on their Iphone.

The media isn't alone on this. I like to think that Western developers like to only focus on the tech behind their games, rather than actually perfecting them. For example, Fallout 3 might be a technical achievement, but it looks like crap and has more bugs you can shake a stick at.

What I'm getting at with this is, Western developers don't support the Wii. There isn't a single Western developer out the size of Bungie, Take2, 2k, Bethesda, Blizzard, etc that will take the Wii seriously. All the good games on the Wii are Japanese developed, and the biggest reason the Wii is such a black sheep in the media is because of the games on it. The media doesn't cover Japanese games, and it's a shame. Why is Wanted: Weapons of Fate a much more deserving title to cover than Rune Factory: Frontier?

Most media writers also complain that Japanese developers don't make games for them. I would highly disagree with that. Japanese developers almost always think of the Western audience first. Heck, most Japanese games star white people! Look at Resident Evil or Madworld.

No one gives Western developers flack though. I can't think of very many Western developed games with Japanese audiences in mind. Sly Cooper? Sudeki? Gladius? Ratchet and Clank? That's about all I can think of. Most Western games released in Japan don't even come out fully localized. The most recent example of this is Mass Effect, which is hardly untouched from the American version.

I just don't get the Japanese hatred in the media. Most people say that tastes are changing, or that Western games are the only ones advancing anything. I disagree with that. The only thing advancing in Western games are the tech behind them, and not actual gameplay.

Japanese developers might be just as stale as Western developers, but Western developers only been producing good console products since 2001.