I'm around japanese people 10-12 hours a day. I teach portuguese and english to people who had been transferred from japan to brazil for whatever reason. From time to time, the game subject arises. They love RPG, but they've never heard of Elder Scrolls or Baldur's Gate. They all know final fantasy and dragon quest. Some of them own a ps3 and I ask them about god of war, uncharted, assassin's creed. They've never heard of these games. From what I've noticed so far, it is not only pc gaming that's niche in japan. It's because in japan, they have an array of games aimed at japanese people (which are in japanese of course) and surrounding japanese culture. Western culture does not appeal to them that much. Also ad it to fact that the average japanese has very poor command of english language, the result could not be different.
Regardless of culture and language, even design choices are completely different. They like their rpg turn-based with anime-like graphics. Whereas most of us like them real-time and more realistic.
Just the other day, this guy asked me in what ways final fantasy and witcher are different. Among all the differences I explained, I remember showing him pictures of cloud and geralt and saying: "this guy has 'bad-***' written all over his face, while this other dude just looks like a girl". He stood in silence for half a minute and then burst into laughter, agreeing with me.
I've had the opportunity of inviting 2 or 3 of my students to my house to play the witcher 2, since it has japanese subtitles. All of them say something like this: "Sensei, thank you for this awesome experience, but I don't think japanese people would enjoy this".
