Just a quick look at each platform's market distribution (i.e. what percent of each console's sales occur in each region)

Looking at this, we can see where each console gets most of its support from.

Realitive to home consoles, Handheld consoles seem to tend to have much more balanced in distribution. This is probably helped by the fact that handhelds tend to cost less to manufacture, are cheaper to mass transport to sell, and don't require a TV (in regions where that may be a larger barrier to entry).

We can also see that consoles released prior to PS1 had a weaker presence in europe (with handhelds being the exception). Obviously, the PC market had a larger presence in those days (the console scene was still niche there), and it was Sony's marketing efforts that really changed the outlook for Europe.

We can also see that Japan has been a large presence for NES, SNES, and Saturn surprisingly. After Saturn, Japan's sales played a smaller role in the global market for home consoles. Handhelds consoles have always done well there as well.

What is most interesting, is to see the expanding market role the rest of the world is playing as each generation goes on.

Again, it is Sony who has been the most proactive in these efforts to reach these markets, and it has been paying off well for them.

I think China has potential to still offer a lot growth to the industry, if they can properly market to that growing upper middle class.

What are your thoughts on the regional distribution of the gaming market of consoles? What are some other contries that have untapped potential? more growth in Australia, perhaps other pockets in Asia, any opportunities in India??? What say ye?

Wow other planets need to get it together, Earth is taking 100% of the market share for every console, talk about domination. Especially for a console called the 'Saturn' you'd think it'd do much better there.

But yeah on a more related topic, I think rest of the world territories have a lot more potential, especially on the Nintendo side, which has what has been their target with their mobile developments.

So, Sega is to Japan like Atari is to the US - it killed the console market?

China is going to be huge at some point. But, I'm not sure if they'll be home console buyers. That's going to be very interesting to watch.

I remember reading something recently about MS looking to push XB in China.....

I don't think it's a surprise that the Saturn was more popular in Japan, I think that's pretty well known. It was selling very well from 1994-1996, until the PS1 took much of its steam from it.

Hmm, I guess I assumed that a lot of people knew that, but I guess non-retro gamers may not be familiar with that information.

Not sure about the growth in Australia it's pretty limited with 24 million people , but I do remember that Sony AUS boss Michael Ephraim proclaiming that Australia was by per capita the biggest market by a fair margin for the PS1 in both hardware and software , not sure today .

China is not the only one who has the potential. India and the Southeast Asia region also has a chance to be the next large market thanks to their immense population. So far, only PlayStation has its foot here though. Nintendo are having their own little market here thanks to their success in portables while Xbox is only for a gaming enthusiast.

Mobile, Tablet and PC gaming seem to rule those markets though.

The market is huge, open to western games and expanding rapidly, but not necessarily for console gaming.

Sony has reigional electronics support in place around the world that... doesn't have much to do these days so they use that. While someone like nintendo needs to invest millions to do so.
Just look at what happened when they expanded to korea...NoK shrunk from a couple hundred to a DOZEN staff, and the only reason thete ATE still 10 people is pokemon which is huge but mostly due to merch and TGC not 3ds games.