tkjinak has a point. Indeed, a big part of Sony's success over the past several years has been opening up markets in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The "Others" category certainly has far more population than North America and Japan combined, but:
A) most of the population in these countries is not very wealthy, and
B) the industry has always focused more on the North American and Japanese market

The Japanese market isn't shrinking on the handheld side. On the home console side...maybe. I think it is going to depend on Nintendo's ability to bring some more disruptive games to Wii. DS wasn't built on Brain Training alone.

RolStoppable said: Is there really a rebirth of PC gaming in Japan?

Yes, more and mroe FPS, MMO, and RTS payers are Japanese.

Games that are effecting things greatly are:

Crysis

Command and Conquer 3

Age of Empire 3 (new expansion)

Final Fantasy 11 (new expansion being released)

WoW (its jsut there and new expansion coming)

NFS: Pro Street (PC version has a ton of Japanese gamers, I think more then Americans o.O)

 and a huge amount of indie games. 

ssj12 said: RolStoppable said: Is there really a rebirth of PC gaming in Japan? Yes, more and mroe FPS, MMO, and RTS payers are Japanese. Games that are effecting things greatly are: Crysis Command and Conquer 3 Age of Empire 3 (new expansion) Final Fantasy 11 (new expansion being released) WoW (its jsut there and new expansion coming) NFS: Pro Street (PC version has a ton of Japanese gamers, I think more then Americans o.O) and a huge amount of indie games.

 Those aren't very reflective of Japanese market, I thought you had better proofs instead of your perception...

ssj12 said: RolStoppable said: Is there really a rebirth of PC gaming in Japan? Yes, more and mroe FPS, MMO, and RTS payers are Japanese. Games that are effecting things greatly are: Crysis Command and Conquer 3 Age of Empire 3 (new expansion) Final Fantasy 11 (new expansion being released) WoW (its jsut there and new expansion coming) NFS: Pro Street (PC version has a ton of Japanese gamers, I think more then Americans o.O) and a huge amount of indie games.

 Yeah, none of those games are selling in Japan. Many of those games aren't even Million Sellers worldwide.

FishyJoe said: Avinash_Tyagi said: FishyJoe said: Avinash_Tyagi said: Sure its a small but still important branch of the market, but people are exagerrating the Wii's weakness, because they have forgotten the past (look at the PS2 in fall 2000) But was this a supply or demand problem? The current situation is solely due to demand. Selling 3000 one week almost a year after launch is not a supply issue, PS2 did that in november-december 2000 Are you sure? My understanding that supply was diverted to the other markets for their launches.

I haven't read the whole thread yet but;

Use the charts people seriously....EVERY YEAR the PS2 was down to roughly 30k per week for October and November...the first year may have been supply (where it went down to 3k in August...and back up to 20-30k until mid December)...the only time in November the PS2 was significantly above 30k per week was 2004 when the slim redesign came out...funnyly enough it caused a similar spike to what the white 40GB has just done.

The Wii is doing nothing unusual, the only unusual thing about the home console hardware market at the moment is the 360, which is doubling what the XB did.

Also software numbers are down a bit from last year, but still significantly up from the Autumns of 2004/2005 (this is not seperated into home and handheld though....but you can check for yourselves using the Japan - Monthly tab.

johnsobas said: well lets see here are ps2 sales for this time of year nov 12 2006 15.5k nov 13 2005 21k nov 14 2004 69k (must have been a price cut or something, there was a huge spike the week before with no big games released, was 20k oct 31st) nov 09 2003 23k nov 10 2002 40k nov 11 2001 37k nov 12 2000 20k after seeing this data, i gotta think many of us are overreacting here.

It seems i was too late, a number of people said on page one about it being the time of year....I was actually going to create a thread to try and dispell the rumour that because Wii is "only" around 30k at the moment it is doomed, and i had links to the comparison charts for each year showing the PS2 was in the same situation every year.

This here post shows exactly what i was looking at...every year the Japanese sales slowdown in Autumn, and in early December (just before the start of Winter) they pick up again with a seasonal spike roughly during the first week of January (2 weeks later than the American and PAL spikes) ...then the year begins anew.

(btw in November 2004 the PS2 slim was released...that is what caused the spike of 69k...a very similar spike to the PS3 with the white 40GB)

Also keep in mind that the systems are still rather expensive for Japanese tastes, even Wii. Nintendo will wait for Wii Fit and the holidays to roll around, but if sales start to stall again in January, then they may introduce a (likely small) price cut sometime in Q4 or Q1 08. PS3 and 360 will also have to further cut prices to get to the mass market there.

FishyJoe said: I posted these numbers on theSource's Japan preview, but I thought it's worthy of its own thread. Adding up the weekly numbers for all consoles, Wii+360+PS3+PS2: NA = 492k Others = 292k (UK = 73k) Japan = 111k These numbers kind of shocked me at how bad the market in Japan has gotten.  The UK could beat Japan soon. Holiday sales could literally swallow Japan. Right now Japan only represents 13% of the global market. With holiday sales, it could very well drop to below 10% of the global market, as Japan doesn't celebrate as much as the rest of the world.

The difference may grow even more in the future.  With the exception of the UK the rest of Europe is pretty much underdeveloperd when it comes to consoles.  A lot more next generation consoles have been sold in Canada (pop: 33 million) for example than Germany (pop: 82 million).

Also both Canada and the U.S. have positive population growth rates (both at around 0.8% per year) while Japan's is negative (-0.088%).  In ten years Canada and the U.S. combined will have 30 million more people added while Japan will have lost 1.1 million.

I really do think we're heading for a time when videogames will mirror movies and it will get increasingly more difficult for Japan to keep up simply because they won't have the population required to support big budget Japanese only games.  We'll see more games that appeal to North American and European audiences because their populations will be required for big budget games to be profitable.

Anyone notice that the software difference is even bigger than the console difference between NA and Japan? North Americans seems to be buying twice as much software relative to new console sales as their Japanese counterparts.

Legend11 said: FishyJoe said: I posted these numbers on theSource's Japan preview, but I thought it's worthy of its own thread. Adding up the weekly numbers for all consoles, Wii+360+PS3+PS2: NA = 492k Others = 292k (UK = 73k) Japan = 111k These numbers kind of shocked me at how bad the market in Japan has gotten.  The UK could beat Japan soon. Holiday sales could literally swallow Japan. Right now Japan only represents 13% of the global market. With holiday sales, it could very well drop to below 10% of the global market, as Japan doesn't celebrate as much as the rest of the world. The difference may grow even more in the future.  With the exception of the UK the rest of Europe is pretty much underdeveloperd when it comes to consoles.  A lot more next generation consoles have been sold in Canada (pop: 33 million) for example than Germany (pop: 82 million). Also both Canada and the U.S. have positive population growth rates (both at around 0.8% per year) while Japan's is negative (-0.088%).  In ten years Canada and the U.S. combined will have 30 million more people added while Japan will have lost 1.1 million. I really do think we're heading for a time when videogames will mirror movies and it will get increasingly more difficult for Japan to keep up simply because they won't have the population required to support big budget Japanese only games.  We'll see more games that appeal to North American and European audiences because their populations will be required for big budget games to be profitable.

disturbingly that makes a lot of sense, i hope this does not happen because the Japanese angle on games is what is keeping things interesting for me.....Maybe if the European market grows significantly there can be a new games focus that is neither Japanese or American...i would like that. though it might not work well with Europe being split up so much, I mean with the USA one game can target gamers scattered across the states, but a game that does well in Italy might not in Germany.