Japan, a sales discussion

[NorthStar]

superchunk said:

It can be argued that whatever happens in Japan is what happens worldwide. Every game system that has dominated Japan in marketshare has also dominated worldwide marketshare.

Below is a listing of hardware sales through the first 21 weeks of a system. Along with thier lifetime sales and total weeks. Systems in red are generational leaders.

....System.......21wk Sales....Lifetime.......
Gameboy Advance - 3,222,219 (318wks w/ 16,678,823)
Playstation 2    - 2,685,290 (373wks w/ 21,847,292)
Wii         - 2,244,020 (21 wks)
DS        - 2,102,639 (125wks w/ 16,444,104)
Super Nintendo    - 1,402,928 (485wks w/ 16,701,578)
Playstation Port- 1,311,751 (124wks w/ 5,447,385)
Nintendo 64    - 1,282,854 (302wks w/ 5,377,174)
GameCube    - 1,185,178 (293wks w/ 4,019,836)
PocketStation    - 1,020,036 (168 w/ 4,545,076)
playstation 3    -   846,221 (24wks w/ 885,475)
Gameboy        -   733,602 (796wks w/ 31,301,470)
Dreamcast     -   709,548 (180wks w/ 2,232,028)
Saturn        -   693,404 (233wks w/ 5,718,528)
Playstation    -   668,677 (579wks w/ 19,362,986)
xbox        -   238,956 (195wks w/ 477,809)
Xbox 360    -   129,030 (72wks w/ 376,500)
Neo Geo Pocket    -    84,244 (143wks w/ 366,508)

As you can see the top 4 (ignore Wii) systems all went on to dominate sales in
both Japan as well as worldwide. The only generational leaders not at the top
are the Playstation and Gameboy.

What do these two have in common? They were both new market devices from their
repsective creators. Once they proved themselves they quickly dominated in sales.

Then their successors quickly took the lead by the 21 weeks and kept it, excluding
the Nintendo64, ofcourse that eventually lost out to the newcomer, Playstation.

So as for this generation. Wii is clearly on the path of a succesor device that will dominate Japan and thus, the world. 

WOW Japannese people love NINTENDO for the 1st 21 weeks at least.....like 25% of all the gamecubes and N64's sold in Japan sold in the first 21 weeks...is that good for the Wii? the N64 had almost 2x the number of users in the 1st 21 weeks as the PS1 (sound familiar) The one thing Trend i see is in the console market Nintendo really shoots themself in the foot some how. If they could maintain sales they could have won every generation, but for some reason they can not, at least not with another Japanesee competitor. the super nintendo did well I think thats due to some misteps from Sega with the end of the Genisis' life . The SNES had a few misteps too...enter the Playstation