Sony, in previous generations, came guns blazing in Japan with Playstation designed for Japan first and the rest of the world second. Now, there are very few first-party Japanese titles from Sony compared to the PS1/PS2/eary-life-PS3. This has lead to abysmal performance for the PS4 in Japan, and it is doubtful that the PS4 will come anywhere near the success that the other consoles did.

Hell, they even jumped ship on the Vita, which is doing relatively well in Japan. Sure, we have Freedom Wars coming, but very little from Sony past that. They just don't care about the Japanese market. They focus completely on western games, most of which are your copy-and-paste Zombie or shooter or zombie shooter, with little to no JRPGs and other Japanese games that they built their legacy on.

You may say that the Japanese market doesn't care about home consoles, which may be true. However, there isn't much there for them to care about. Little games dedicated towards the Japanese market at launch, with a bleak outlook for the next year as well. 

Sony really messed up in Japan.

Japan has abandoned Sony ;)

Because Sony abandoned Japan. The PS3 was selling just fine in Japan, as was the Vita, but now Sony just doesn't develop Japanese games. I completely understand their frustrations with Sony.

It was Sony's fault that home consoles died quickly in Japan. PS3 was overpriced; despite being sold at loss. People and developers were reluctant to abandon PS2. They stuck with PS2 for a long time. Eventually they got fed up. It damaged developers and they were struggling in the HD era. Now people like to play handheld and mobile.

But honestly I think that Japan prefer portable systems these days, every console maker has hard times in japan right now ;)

Nintendo ain't doing shit on the console side either. They both killed consoles in Japan.

You should list the Sony japanese titles.. its not Sony's fault that all the other japanese developers went for the Western Audience and the leftovers with no budget went handheld/mobile

True that cause I do think most of their first party is more western targeted than Japanese targeted but who knows... Maybe TLG will still show up at some point in the next century and with the ps4, they might potencially change their attitude... but if not, there is always FF/KH/MGS/Persona and other third party to pick up the pase but granted it wont be like back in the olden days

They're just late with quality exclusives that appeal to the common Japanese gamer. PS4 doesn't have the Japanese blockbusters yet like Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Kingdom Hearts, One Piece, Hot Shots Golf, Dragon's Dogma, Tales of game, Souls game, the popular JRPGS, etc.

When these games start coming I'm sure the PS4 sales numbers in Japan will improve. Wait til after TGS to conclude whether Sony has abandoned Japan.

Perhaps I'm ignorant, or just have a really bad memory, but what first party japanese games did they use to make?

According to the wiki, SCEJ made more games for ps3 than ps2 and ps1 combined

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCE_Japan_Studio