I really don't know what's up with Japan this past month or two. I'd say that the Japanese were just shifting to handhelds, but keep in mind that the week after SMG's debut, FFTA2 on the DS - a game that was almost guaranteed to do at least 200k first-day based on the Final Fantasy name and the huge install base of the DS - didn't even break 100k first-day.
Maybe we're just in a slow season and SMG launched too early.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
