| Panama said: A bit of a slap to Japan's face. |
That depends on how you look at it. First, Japan is not as big of a console market as it used to be. Sure, it's still very important but North America and Europe are the two most important regions to win. So it was important for Sony to focus on making sure they had everything lined up for those markets. Which meant holding off on any real Japanese focus. Japan is also far more receptive to homegrown games than they are Western games. However, from what I understand, the other Asian markets are much more receptive than Japan is to Western games. So while Japan practically requires that a console have plenty of Japanese made games from the very first day the other Asian markets are not quite so needy of Eastern games. So it probably boiled down to Sony needing to make sure they hit the Western markets hard and the other Asian markets would be fine playing mostly Western games. Japan pretty much became the "Special Needs" nation and Sony did not want to risk stumbling in the West just so they could please a single nation that isn't as important as it used to be.
