Iwata: Wii isn't in a healthy situation we need to recover momentum

[68soul]

Ail said:
Most of you guys need to stop analyzing Japan like it behaves like the rest of the world for Nintendo.

While Wii sales went through the roof in US and Others in 2008 they were already down compared to 2007 in Japan.( 20% lower)
So there is more to it than releasing a few good third party because Nintendo did that in 2008...

 

You're right, Japan is a very different market... the population is gettin' older and older, with less and less kids than anywhere else in the world: and no gaming company can do anything about this... except of course, release more games that may appeal to an older userbase, like Nintendo has done with the Brain trainings, Wii Sports/Fit and such...

But there's still a "core" market in Japan anyway... and these guys have different tastes: they want a new Dragon Quest, a new Final Fantasy, a new Tales, or a new Monster Hunter to get their fix... the console with the best JRPG's usually win in Japan, and if DS has succeeded so far in that department, Wii has still many difficulties: because the hardware is too limited to release the best-looking JRPG's on it, and because the userbase isn't "core" enough...

But as PS3 and X360's userbases are still very small in Japan so far, the JRPG's makers are in a though position: how could they still make money with such games, then? One home console userbase is dedicated to Mario and Wii Sports/Fit, the other home console userbases are already too "niche" to become an healthy local market... and the western gamers don't care, or at least don't transform such games into mega-hits (with the exception of Final Fantasy): so the export isn't a solution either...

It must be hard for them, hard for most of the japanese devs these days, with the possible exception of Nintendo... and Nintendo's big boss himself is complaining about the japanese gaming market, so what then? Is the japanese gaming industry approaching its fall? Sad news this would be, when like me, you do prefer japanese games...