IDK if this has anything to do with it but didnt they have a hurricane over the summer not to long ago? IDK how much that could effect their economy but katrina set the US back at least a couple billion (40 billion? Just a thought.

Maybe they just dont care about anything other than handhelds cause more games come out more frequent but based off the software sales chart nohing has really stood out to me. Seems ass though software is always aat like 10k.

On a side note i kinda regret sellin y DS for gas money...

Put it this way:

The first day sales Hot Shots Golf 5 outsold Super Mario Galaxy by ~20k during a time when the Wii was outselling the PS3 roughly 4:1.

If you would have said that two months ago, you would have been laughed off the forum for either being slightly retarded or just crazy.

Well, if Wii is outpacing/matching PS2, but there was no equivalent to DS + PSP when PS2 launched, then that's a pretty strong argument that Japan's relevance towards gaming (and gaming's relevance in Japan) is growing.

I think we're just seeing a spell of reletively poor Wii sales, and nothing more. Compared to the 1+2+3+4 combo of Brain Training + NSMB + Animal Crossing + Pokemon that DS had in Japan, Wii has only had the first strike with Wii Sports, which is almost a year old. Mario Galaxy doesn't look like it will be the 2 for Japan, but Wii Fit might.

So maybe Japan won't be as important towards the Wii's success as it was toward's the DS's. But Japan is still a trendsetter.

Japan is far from being 'irrelevant',but Western importance has DRAMATICALLY increased over the last few years.

It would seem they are just moving away western perceptions of gaming. Things we think are awesome sell mediocre there, things we could care less about often times rule the charts for weeks or months there.

 if SE stops supporting japan focused games, sony consoles will be dead in japan, thats a fact

@ Erik Aston

Exactly! there is no need to post here anymore.

I think he does have a point:

Yes, the Wii was cheaper, but it also sells more as stof said. If Japan were indeed becoming handheld-only, wouldn't the Wii have much worse performance than it's having compared to the PS2?

There's his point I guess.

I would personally argue the opposite ...

Japan has been impacted far more deeply by Nintendo's distruptive strategy than the rest of the world and (so far) Japaneese developers have been better at adapting to the disrupted market ...

I may be mistaken, but hasn't this been one of the biggest years for VG in Japan ever? Perhaps the market just got a little ahead of itself and is taking a breather after such a rapid expansion? Perhaps we are just getting more normal buying patterns after an extraordinary period.