slacker164 on 14 February 2008
Yes, the hardcore in Japan do follow worldwide sales. I remember seeing some pics of shops in Akihabara that even posted NPD stats in their windows. More to the point there are certainly threads on 2-chan and such discussing sales outside of Japan.
I don't think people follow it as much as we look at Japan though. Looking at the sales of western games in Japan, it makes sense that they wouldn't have all that much interest in western stats. There are a lot of Japanese games that are huge in the west, so it makes a lot of sense for us to follow Japan, but the reverse isn't really true. Western sales do impact decisions of Japanese developers/publishers though, so at least some people pay attention.
