Wow? This was joke post right? Apple had no trouble crushing Sony in the portable music player market in the Japan. That alone makes your assumptions invalid. The Japanese market is the way it is for two reasons, Nintendo saw the shift in play styles coming and Sony thought they could do no wrong.
Sony has a dearth of IPs that would appeal to the Japanese market. Unfortunately for them, they've chosen not to use them. Sony's biggest problem outside of the ludicrous pricing was and is games. To my knowledge, Sony has yet to release a JRPG based on their own IPs. Why isn't there a Wild ARMs, Legend of Dragoon, Arc The Lad, or Alundra for PS3 yet?
Sony has focused near exclusively on Western style games. I see PS3 owners continuing the blame MS for the situation in Japan when its all on Sony. They were arrogant and it bit them in the rear. MS didn't make Sony focus their first party efforts on Western style games, Sony did that of their on volition. They took the Japanese market for granted. They assumed Nintendo would be a non factor and MS just cede Japan to them. Neither proved to be the case and now they find themselves in a bind.
Too many PS3 owners seemed to have bought the console based on assumption. You have no one but yourself to blame but yourself if that is the case. Merely looking at the upcoming release lists would have saved some people on this board a lot of heartache and spared us forum goers a lot of bitterness. If you buy for the brand instead of for the games you will get burned.
