Handhelds Are The Cause Of This 24% Japanese Game Sales Drop
NEWS:
This generation has seen some amazing things and everything has literally become unpredictable. Here’s a few examples below
1. Sony In Last Place
2. Xbox Getting Final Fantasy amongst plenty of other RPG’s before Sony
3. Nintendo Coming from the bottom and rising to the top with motion
After seeing what’s been done so far this generation something very troubling is going on currently and that’s the turn around of the console market in Japan. Japan once was a major factor in a console generation since forever but now it’s at a all time low for hardware and software sales. Ironically the handheld market is healthier than ever and that actually explains the lack of growth in the Playstation , Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft.
1a – Microsoft was released first in 2005 and now it’s 2009 nearly 4 years later since launch and they are still under 5 million sold in japan which is horrible. The price is cheap the RPG’s are there and still no penetration into this region why?
1b – Sony the leaders in this industry can’t penetrate either in Japan. They are high priced, lack of RPG’s but everyone knows that final fantasy is coming to the platform which is the premier platform for this game, also final fantasy 14, along with versus 13 are all going to arrive on this system. Games like Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 5, which always had a major presence on the Sony console is now just considered another title so what has happened.
1c – Nintendo Wii is doing the best out of the bunch in this region but considering Mario is like the Michael Jackson of videogames when it comes to popularity along with the new motion system not even Nintendo has been performing at a rate that is expected from them.
THE QUESTION IS WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE NOW
The answer is the hand held market. The Japanese market has clearly voted with their yen and PSP alongside the DS has shocked the industry. PSP and DS combined makes up more than 50 percent of the Japanese gaming market which is hurting the consoles badly. Games like brain age, and final fantasy dissdia , are taking over and if this trend continues how will the next generation of consoles handle this.
Sony , Nintendo , and Microsoft have to think of a new strategy moving forward if not, we may see a major stripped down version of consoles hit the Japanese market in order to be more successful and appealing to that community.
Yeah… Japan has almost always had a big impact on the console market, but the reason why I think it’s not that way mainly now is because:
JRPG’s this generation haven’t been as plentiful as they were during past generations, especially the PS1 and PS2 era because JRPG’s were EVERYWHERE and there was more Japanese studios making them… but now-a-days big Japanese companies like SquareEnix are trying to appeal more and more to the West, and smaller Japanese studios that were around last gen. making JRPG’s aren’t really around now.
The 360 has plenty of JRPG’s, and yet it’s still selling like it has no JRPG’s at ALL and the Japanese are totally ignoring it. The 360 would need at least ONE major JRPG per month to have pretty decent sales numbers for an American console at the end of the year in the Far East.
As far as the Portable consoles go, I don’t have a DS, but I’ve been hearing that a LOT of RPG’s have been released on it (something that I never knew since I don’t keep up with DS related stuff), so that alone contrubuits to it’s massive success, and there have also been some key games released on the PSP that gave it big success in Japan as well.
PS3 sales in Japan on a monthly basis were a lot higher than they have been recently because during the beginning of this year there were big heavy hitter games that appealed to the Japanese like: Yakuza 3, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4, and the Final Fantasy XIII demo with the FFVII Advent Children PS3 bundle… but since then there hasn’t really been a game released in Japan that got them really excited, PS3 sales have been low, and Many Japanese gamers are just waiting for FFXIII to get a PS3 anyways.
I don’t think that Handhelds are the cause of the Game Sales drop, I just think it’s because there’s not as many Japanese studios making games that appeal to the Japanese… and the reason why I stress “Japanese Studios” so much is because if a game isn’t published and/or developed by a Japanese studio, the Japan market pretty much just ignores it.
I will break this down. Handheld systems are easy to make because of the budget. It like PlayStation one. All you need is a million dollar budget and there you go. The Nintendo DS is very interactive and is portable. It attracts a different type of gamers, the casual gamers, so the sells are remarkable. Games like Final Fantasy Dissidia is a big hit, but do not have the sell as Monster Hunter in Japan. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (Monster Hunter: Freedom G2 in Japan) has sold 3 million just in Japan alone.
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