American video game OST releases are more plentiful than ever? Games like Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV, Gears of War, Halo, Borderlands, Alan Wake, Mirror's Edge, etc. all have American OST releases (or at least digital releases).

Meanwhile, it feels like Japanese OST releases have been declining for a while. No full soundtrack to Twilight Princess, no soundtrack for Super Smash Bros. Brawl and other recent major Nintendo titles, etc. Not that Japanese OST releases are not plentiful, but the industry doesn't seem as passionate as it was in the N64/PS1 era and before.

Just thought that was interesting.

Well, you are talking about Nintendo here, who's never exactly had the best track record for album releases, period.

I have an impression the number of VGM releases in Japan are growing year by year. Partly because some of big companies are now able to independently publish their musical assets (e.g. SQEX, Sega, Konami, Capcom) and I guess it results in a longer printing run and a lower break-even point than 'real' publishers like Scitron, NTT publishing, King Record or Sony would ever maintain. Companies like SuperSweep, Falcom and Cave also do a really solid job in publishing soundtracks, although customers sometimes suffer from their limited distributions. So while the overall sales of CDs are hugely declining, the condition of VGM publishing in Japan seems to be fine, even if a couple of lazy companies such as Nintendo and NBGI constantly disappoint us (I don't care about Nintendo, but NBGI's in-house sound team is full of talents).

Nonetheless, both Eastern and Western will rely on even more digital and promotional approach (bundled in with a collector edition of the game or such) to release their music, for certain.

i agree. i'm also surprised we get so many quality arranged albums nowadays. i can't buy everything i want and sometimes special orders in exclusive stores will kill your budget.

but i can't say i'm disappointed with the current VGM situation.

American game soundtracks are popular because American games are popular...

Personally, though, I find the soundtracks for many Western-developed games to be much of the same droning, tuning orchestral music of which so many cinematic scores consist.

Bleh.

I pretty much feel the same way. American games usually opt for bombastic, orchestrated scores anymore which is just boring to me. It can be fitting in a game but it's the last thing I'd want on disc... I'll take my "bleeps and bloops" thank you very much.

Also, I don't think one should overlook how many racing game used licensed music anymore - something that is also overdone.

I like my racing/sport games with licensed music. Nothing beats listening Pachelbel's Canon and driving a Viper on Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Though, they should start adding proper bands and stay away from some crap-rock bands.

Always handy to use STATS and numbers, rather than just "impressions".

Here. http://vgmdb.net/db/statistics.php?do=release_year

There were declines from 2000~2003, but officials have picked up steam again after that.  Meanwhile, dounjins are exponentially going through the roof since mid-2000s.

This is like the one, single complaint I have about VgmDB since it has come out...When I go looking at the upcoming release calendar, there are piles of doujins to look through, most of which frankly don't look very interesting (and even if they did, are probably hard to come by). Is there a way to separate the official releases and doujins/fan releases that I'm missing there?

I was actually aware of the stats, but was now sure how much those "milking releases" (e.g. endless character song series, drama albums) contributed.

Yep, you're.

This page at JGML has very nice pre-2000 statistics which shows percentages of the officials broken down into the main categories: Originals / Arranged / Drama / Vocal. http://kosiro.hp.infoseek.co.jp/db/gmdb.htm

Look in the "Sale Count (Kind)" section

38.6% Original
18.4% Arranged
20.5% Drama
14.7% Vocal

Back to the original poster's question regarding Domestic officials increasing or not, I suppose doing some custom vgmdb searches for albums which are priced only in USD and then sorted by year of release might yield a rough estimate.