| Viper1 said: You also have to consider the difference in price given that this is based on revenue rather than units. As the Japanese industry has transitioned from home consoles to portable consoles, the dominant gaming devices have a lower revenue per unit sold. |
Are you saying that in regards to attach rates; rather than price of software? Because handheld gaming prices are generally the same as home console in Japan (if not higher). Looking at attach rates (based on the data we have on VGC), Wii & DS are nearly exactly the same (5.3:1) while PS3 trumps PSP by a fair bit (7:1 vs. 3.9:1), but you have to imagine that even in the land of the UMD, PSP's ability to be hacked had a big impact on software sales.
As regards to Famitsu's digital sales - I have no idea whether they are using a methodology of paying manufacturers, but it's literally the only insight we have into Japanese digital sales.
And apart from that, I'm not sure why we're actually discussing this - I posted a chart showing downwards trends in physical sales and said it was depressing - you pointed out that it was physical sales - and I said that was correct but that wouldn't affect hardware.
I don't think digital is bridging the gap that would otherwise be there for software - it's a big factor, but I don't think it's a big enough factor to offset decline yet; and as we see more and more publishers transition to mobile it's only going to get worse in the dedicated sector. If only because there will be fewer games to actually count towards software sales in the first place - which will have a knock on effect to hardware sales, etc. Or are you saying that this isn't the case and the Japanese industry is in a good place? In which case, I think it's better we just leave it at disagreement.
