He's right though, the Japanese, or east Asian culture in general tend prize conformity and is an accepted norm.

The Wii has had even fewer new games as the PS3 in the last few weeks. Hasn't seem to hurt sales...

Yeah but it has two killer apps...  WII SPORTS & PLAY!! Combined they have sold over 2.5 million so far.

Very smart of Ninty to not include Wii Sports with the system over there.

Honestly, the performance of the Wii and Nintendo DS in Japan is less about "Trends" as it is about the traditional Japaneese gaming market's love of new (simple) ideas like DDR, and that the Japaneese gaming market has expanded far beyond their traditional gaming market.

This could just be hype, but we keep hearing about how the DS has become popular for both Women (and teenage girls) as well as older men who traditionally have not been gamers in Japan; this is why it has been selling at such a rapid rate and will easily pass the Lifetime sales of the PS2 in a fraction of the time. Now, the Wii (with Wii Sports) is following in the footsteps of the DS and (if Nintendo could supply the units) could potentially see sales similar to the DS.

Agreed. Japanese society is very big on conformity. Actually, despite the fact that PSP has only about 20% of DS's same, the surprising thing is that it has even that much and is holding on.

[quote=HappySqurriel] Honestly, the performance of the Wii and Nintendo DS in Japan is less about "Trends" as it is about the traditional Japaneese gaming market's love of new (simple) ideas like DDR[/quote]

Um, that's pretty much the definition of a trend

The death-knell for the PS3, in Japan and globally, will be the impending announcement that FFXIII (the main game) is moving to Wii, and the PS3 game (what's done of it) will be some spin off (that'll also get ported to 360). I've been saying this for months but I'm increasingly sure of it.  

Talk of Japanese conformity in this respect is way overblown: the rule in Japan is for a very segmented video-game market: last-gen with the PS2 was an anamoly, as will be this gen' with the Wii.

The Japanese bought plenty of Saturns, TurboGrfx, PC-Engines, etc. where the West didn't.

Official hard MC numbers are :

Hardware - This Week | Last Week | YTD | LTD
1. NDS - 133,471 | 110,935 | 2,174,697 | 16,180,376
2. WII - 75,759 | 52,583 | 1,170,417 | 2,090,060
3. PSP - 24,850 | 31,503 | 740,904 | 5,273,033
4. PS2 - 12,872 | 14,234 | 285,807 | 20,440,666
5. PS3 - 11,948 | 14,520 | 380,291 | 837,849
6. 360 - 2,900 | 2,963 | 84,876 | 349,578
7. GBA - 1,297 | 1,357 | 32,165 | 15,330,244
8. NGC - 167 | 255 | 5,936 | 4,175,404 

Wii sold more than expected ! 

Next week, with SPM launch = 100K ?