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pokoko on 09 April 2014
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Nem said:
pokoko said:
I don't see much of a problem. A huge chunk of the Japanese market is based on mobile or hand-held gaming, which fits well with the lifestyle or circumstances of many Japanese people. That's just the way it is. Even then, they still buy a lot of home consoles, relatively speaking.


I always think that is a weak argument.

The Gameboy/advance was always there and was a sucess, but it didnt stop home consoles from beeing a sucess aswell. Its not their way of life that changed and they suddenly just want portables. Its that they were the center of development for games and with the last gen they stopped beeing.

The system that they feel no attachment to, the xbox 360 ushered in a new era of games, albeit rushed, but caught sony off guard. Sony was late and was arrogant from 2 gen victories and released their system at an unthinkable price for the Japanese. This left them with no choice than to go to portables where their japanese games migrated to.

Nowadays still, home console development is headed by the western developers, the ones they used to call trash. Trash is now quality and what they do is now viewed mostly as trash. Its no wonder they just evade the humiliation and choose to ignore the console market. All this theory about it beeing their life style is all circunstancial if you ask me.

Yeah, uh ... if you want to talk about circumstantial arguments, I'm gonna have to say the theory that they don't buy home consoles because they want to "evade the humiliation" falls under that category.  I'm also pretty sure that smart-phone gaming wasn't all that big during the Gameboy era.

Japan has less televisions per person than the US or much of Europe and a high dependancy on public transportation.  Those are real circumstances.  Japan is not gaming less, as we know they spend an enormous amount of time and money on apps, they're just gaming differently.  You can say that this should have no impact on home console sales but I disagree.  Gaming is all about time.  If they're gaming on their phones and they're gaming on their 3DS, that leaves less time for consoles.  All of these things are factors.