Stuff like RE and GTA is exceptional though. Look at the companies that have huge content that releases every year, generally without seeing the fanbase grow or shrink. EA is the perfect example - they're going to have alot of trouble matching 2011 on the HD systems and they're the number one to three biggest publisher for both of them each year. Actvision is another company - Black Ops will likely have smaller legs than Modern Warfare 2, and so they're somewhat screwed as they already have no chance of matching 2009 figures on X360 / PS3 (down 15.6m / 9.4 units respectively).
You have to keep in mind also that it doesn't really matter if the Japanese publishers peak later than the western publishers, because other than Nintendo, they're all far smaller than the Western Publishers. If Konami, Sega, Namco-Bandai, Capcom, and Square-Enix all peaked on PS3 when EA, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ, and Take Two were in decline in the same year, it'd be a huge down year for PS3 sw. When I ran this data, the Japanese publishers were only 19% of the PS3 software market, almost exactly the same size as EA on PS3. On Wii and X360 its even worse really, with Japanese publishers only 10-11% of the software market (although 10.5% of the Wii sw market is more than 19% of the PS3 sw market ltd going by units.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
