If games are low quality it doesn't matter if they release two or two dozen. 

The Wii was never that strong in Japan. The Wii was falling every year, from 3.68 in 07, to 3.02 in 08 (despite sales increased in Others and the US that year) and 2.02 in 09. The Wii was never doing that strong in Japan despite the DS did much better (7.21, 4.26 and 4 in their respective years). Both the DS and the PSP are are 6 years old, so they are going to fall in sales, and there are fewer big titles. Iwata himself said Nintendo needs to release more social phenomenon.

The PS3 did better in 2009. That's all.

Nintendo can only do so much on their own. Without the help of third parties that will be impossible, because they will have to go through long droughts and momentum is then lost and people just moves on to the consoles where the games are, like it happened after 2008.

Again, third party for the Wii has always been bad. The only titles that made a strong effect were the Mario and Sonic ones and Just Dance. Third party did not prevent Nintendo from selling insane number in 08 and they probably are not the reason for slow sales now.

@Smaschu: Wii was outselling PS2 until 2009, you can't change history to your liking. The fact is that without support consoles are of course going to be dying. The idea that people have that Japanese only want handheld games is because developers are forcing it that way, not because people don't want consoles. Wii showed everyone unitl 2009 that consoles were really on high demand, in fact it looked like this gen, there were going to be more home consoles sold than during last gen, but developers screwed up, first and third party alike. PS2 got support all the way through the gen, Wii didn't and PS3 has barely started getting respectable support last year. PS3 is doing better than 2009 now with better support.

Japan hasn't abandoned handhelds, developers have. Consumers will buy games and consoles that are good for them. That it is handheld or not means nothing.


@Darc Requiem: It matters, because not all games were shovelware. Some devs made Wii games during its first 2 years, now no one is even trying anymore.

Galaxy 2 did provide a 10% boost, by M-C figures. That enough to be outside statistical noise.

Trestres there is a big difference between selling 20k / week with 50% price cuts worth 30,000 Yen or whatever it is with a 5m base, and selling 20k / week with a single 20% price cut worth only 5,000 Yen and a base of over 10m. I went on record alot in 2008 / 2009 that it was possible that Wii / PS3 in Japan would end up similar to the DS / PSP back and forth of 2008 in Japan during some future point. Given that DS and PSP are very similar in terms of philosophy, pricing and demographics to Wii and PS3 respectively is it really surprising to see this:

            DS / PSP                            Wii / PS3                            DS: PSP            Wii: PS3

2004    1394k /476k         2006     957k / 473k                   3:1                        2:1

2005     4228k/2254k       2007      3674k/1219k               2:1                       3:1

2006    8404k/1884k        2008      2893k/894k                 9:2                        10:3

2007     7209k/3108k       2009       1974k/1767k              9:4                       10:9

2008      4017k/3671k      2010          ?? / ??                        10:9

2009      4037k/2302k                                                             11:6                                                

2010      ???

Basically, DS grew from 2004 to 2006 and has declined since. Wii grew from 2006 to 2007 and has declined since. DS had a high peak, while PSP had a low, but late peak - so 2008 was really close. Wii had a high peak, but PS3 had a late peak, so 2009 was really close. Without the PS3 Slim & FFXIII long term boosts this year, Sony needs to be something like 700,000 ahead of its 2009 pace to match it in 2010, or another massive price cut and game push at the end of the year. Nintendo probably doesn't have to be as far up heading into December since the price cut came later in 2009. My hunch is Wii will be right around 2m again, while PS3 will decline to maybe 1.6m and the gap will slowly grow again as it has with DS.

A few things though.. For one, it's not like Wii's 3rd party support is non exsitent in Japan. There are some decent titles like 2 Dragon Quest games, Last Story, Xenoblade, Line Attack Heroes, etc., and Red Steel 2 was just released, though with poor sales.. 

But also, it's not like PS3 has an incredible amount of 3rd party games being released their either. The amount of games coming out, last I checked, were barely more than Wii's. And of course, Xbox 360 is pretty much irrelivant in Japan.

It's not an issue of the Wii specifically, and its 3rd party support. It's more a matter of console gaming in general there, which has taken a backseat to portables and continues to decline.

Of course more 3rd party support couldn't hurt, but I honestly don't think Nintendo needs them to keep the Wii going in Japan. They got through it fine during the N64 days, and add this to the fact that Japan is a shrinking market, Nintendo could probably string along the Wii over there solely on 1st and 2nd party titles if they wanted. 3rd parties would just release more shovelware anyway, so best it's left off the console. 

Nintendo also has plenty of developement studios to keep the games coming, it's not like they have a 10 person team to pump out all their games..

Xenoblade, The Last Story and Line Attack Heroes are 1st party. Line Attack Heros doesn't even have a date there and I really doubt it will sell more than 50k judging by the sales of other smaller 1st party games.

PS3 does really have more games than the Wii, like 3 times more upcoming third party games than the Wii, I can PM you or post in your wall the list which BTW I update on a daily basis.

Like I said before, home consoles declined because of bad decisions made by the devs, not because users don't care for them anymore. Wii was a huge success during it's first 2 years, as was PS2 during all its life, but Wii's momentum was lost because devs ignored it for the most part and some are even labeling it as a dead console.

If Nintendo didn't need 3rd party support Wii sales would have never declined, but we know that Nintendo aren't perfect and 2 badly planned releases killed the whole momentum (AC:CF and Wii Music) there was no recovery after that. Had the Wii had strong 3rd party support they would have managed to get through relatively well, but reality is it was a complete disaster.

Nintendo has many tams, true, but they also have 2 (soon 3) consoles to develop for, and they even admitted they managed their resources badly and delayed a lot of games. Again, Nintendo isn't perfect, so one mistake they make and it all goes bad, simply because they are the only ones keeping the Wii alive.

Source, I'm not criticizing the preview, but perhaps you should consider that the store you use as sample may sell more Wii's than the average.

Why would the Wii stay flat and PS3 decline though? PS3 has been consistently up this year, and so has the Wii. Since the PS3 Slim launch, PS3 has outsold the Wii in total figures, and they are now head to head. I can't see how PS3 will start going down and Wii up all of a sudden, unless something big happens, and there's nothing big happening as far as I'm concerned. PS3 has a steady flow of medium to big games (100k-200k sellers) coming out for it until the holidays, while the Wii's line-up is empty outside a couple releases which are too few and inbetween (Wii Party, DQM:BRV and Xenoblade).

Then there's the wildcards for the PS3 like 3D games, Move, GT5 and FFvsXIII; meanwhile Wii still has Vitality Sensor, Zelda and The Last Story.

I think overall it's pretty balanced, so I see no reason why PS3 should be decreasing and Wii increasing. I think 2010 will be PS3's peak year, too bad we don't have graphs anymore, otherwise we could make a more accurate comparison.

Those are at least 2nd party titles aren't they? Nintendo certainly isn't developing them themselves, only publishing them..

Well whatever, if the Wii dies in Japan then I guess the fault lies with the 3rd parties, not Nintendo. Not much they can do about that then. When every other developer out there is going against one, you tend to be outnumbered. Maybe Nintendo will just have to ride out the West for the rest of the Wii's life (which is still going quite strong), and hopefully 3rd parties will finally get their heads out of their asses and develop for Nintendo's next home console.  

But really, one more NSMB (or a game of equal impact) and the Wii is on fire there again, so I really don't think 3rd party support is as important for Nintendo in Japan as you make it seem.

Look at September and December 2009 for PS3. It isn't going to match those numbers barring another price cut and a huge game. PS3 had its only weeks over 100k in that four month period - being up by 40-50% now isn't a huge deal if those weeks can't be matched. I think they'll be able to match a couple of them, but probably not all of them (not that they need to since they're up so much), but I mean week one in Sept was 150k or so.

It will depend on the holiday boost PS3 gets.