To those of you who believe that there is a "lull" in the Japanese gaming market:

I was looking at the sales from last year and earlier this year from Japan and for a lot of systems, there is no "lull"...  The sales of the PSP hovered around 30,000 just a few months ago, and now with the advent of the PSP Slim + good software such as CC:FF VII, MGS: PO+, MHF2, etc.  the hardware sales now hover around the 50,000-60,000 range.  That's almost twice as much as was selling last year, hardly a lull

The PS3, last year's sales were in a tough fight with the GBA, routinely selling around 10,000/week and now after price drops, and with a few software titles worth playing, it's routinely around 15,000/week, again, hardly a "lull". 

And even the XBOX 360, was selling about 1,000-2,000 units/week, and now with the release of Halo 3, Ace Combat 6, etc., and the price drop, it sells around 3,000-4,000/week.

With the DS, and Wii, the sales have dipped slightly, and harshly, respectively.  The slight dip in the DS sales may be due to the DS finally saturating that market with the system.  The Wii's sales dropping harshly may have to do with the lack of remarkable hardware for the system, or the system's casual focus (Wii Sports/Play are Wii's highest selling titles). 

While there is no "lull" for the PSP, 360, and PS3, sales have fallen for the Wii and DS.  This may ultimately have to do with Japan becoming a less important region of gaming, maybe the reason for the falling sales of the DS and Wii is that Japan may be fed up with Nintendo's lack of AAA software titles (Preliminary first week sales for SMG = 300k) or maybe there is a hardware shortage... Who knows

Your thoughts...?

DS saturation.... that's a good one

^^^ What do you mean by that, a lot of DSs have been sold in Japan, at some point you have to hit the critical limit of people who will buy an object.

12 hits combo.

Lull..

What the hell is going on X_X.

Why did you omit the numbers for the Wii and DS?

If consoles have been selling at a rate of more than double last year during the same time and they drop I would say that sounds like a correction. Markets can do some abnormal things for extended periods but eventually they have to come back down and return somewhat to normalcy.

The fact that it was an across the board decline indicates quite clearly it was a market wide effect and not something with just a single console, I don't honestly know what caused it but it seems likely that it was due in part to the huge amount of sales already done up to that point.

@Deguello

The people who are saying that Japan doesn't matter anymore, or the lull or whatever have already done Nintendo numbers but here they are...

Earlier this year, the Wii routinely pulled in between 60,000-80,000/week and in recent weeks it's been in the 20,000 range.

The DS was routinely pulling in numbers greater than 100,000/week, and it's been in the 70,000-90,000 range recently.

I was only posting positive numbers so that people knew that even though the Wii and the DS hardware sales have fallen, other systmes are rising... hope this helps :)

You covered most of these, but here goes:



1. PS3 recently received a price cut. 2. PSP recently received a new model. 3. 360 recently had 2 of its biggest games (Halo 3 and Ace Combat 6) released. 4. PSP is selling shit for software. Its increase in sales has nothing to do with its new games. Its attach rate recently has been less than 1.0 5. The PS3, PSP and 360 went through a long period of lull, which they've broken out of recently. The Wii and the DS have recovered somewhat in this time period, but haven't had the 1. 2. or 3. 6. It seems likely that Wii sales will spike this week. 7. Nothing huge has been released on the Wii or DS in months, as you said.



Just because this is a time of year when things aren't typically in full swing, doesn't mean that special deals won't bring people to stores. Duh.

@ Choirsoftheeye

I know, I was saying that there wasn't a lull, it's just been a bad couple of weeks for Nintendo... and most of the points you've mentioned in your post I've mentioned also, I just wanted people to know that nothing was wrong with the Japanese gaming market.

 In the interest of accuracy the Wii has never had a week below 20,956 in Japan according to current VGC numbers.  A more accurate reporting would be that it has been between 21-30k over recent weeks. 

Anyways, I'm trying to sort out what you are saying.  Are you saying that you think other consoles have been returning to normal while the Wii stays where it is or just that handhelds have been returning and the consoles are staying relatively the same?