Throughout this year I’ve been hearing from Japanese game developers who are concerned that their country’s gaming reputation, once the leading force in game development, has been surpassed by the work of game creators in America and Europe.

Last night in San Francisco, a handful of top-shelf Japanese developers working under the label Platinum Games announced that they have teamed up with Sega to put Japanese game development back on top.

They hope to do it with:

• A bloody black-and-white early 2009 Wii game called “Madworld,” that comes from a lead creator on “Resident Evil 4“
• A 2009 DS sci-fi spaceship-managing role-playing game called “Infinite Line” from a philosophical designer who helped make “Steel Battalion“
• A guns-on-her-hands-and-feet, witches-vs.-angels Xbox 360/PS3 2009 game called “Bayonetta” from the creator of “Devil May Cry“
• And a mystery game from Capcom pioneer Shinji Mikami.

They’re calling it a comeback for Japanese gaming, and they’re not afraid to tell me what they think has gone very wrong with the development scene in their company.

“Up until maybe 10 year ago Japanese development companies were at the top of their game,” Platinum Games CEO Tatsuya Minami told me. “They were delivering their all. Back then at that time 10 years ago, it was often said in the industry that Western developers didn’t have the level of detail and dedication that Japanese developers did. But they’ve come a very very long way.”

Minami declined to name any Western developers who helped him draw these conclusions, but said he had grown suspicious that there was an alternate way and learned he was correct. “What I really think made a difference is the way the development teams are managed. Japanese game development hasn’t really changed much,” he said. “But Western developers look at ‘what is the best way to develop a game?’ and change their style of development to match that philosophy.”

Platinum Games head of research and development and another former Capcom heavyweight Atsushi Inaba backed that idea up. “This is my opinion: The interest in games in Japan has been dropping,” he said. “In Japan there are so many distractions, so many different things you can do if you want to have a good time. Games are one option of many. As people start losing focus on games, they start losing motivation to make them.”

Said Minami of this alleged decline in Japanese development: “We wanted to break that trend.”

The Platinum Games team formerly worked at Capcom in a team called Clover Studios. They were responsible for the critically acclaimed “Viewtiful Joe,” “Okami” and “God Hand” games. But none of the games were top-sellers. They would give some creators motivation to change. Not so the Platinum guys.

“We can’t just make the titles that only we want to make and nobody else wants,” Inaba said. “It’s something I think about constantly: how do we make interesting games that will sell well. But of course sales aren’t everything. It’s not like we want to make games that have no inspiration or are not fun.”

Minami concluded: “The reality is that employees have to eat… but we didn’t make this studio just for money.”

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Check back by early next week for interviews with the developers of the three announced Platinum/Sega games.