Has Sony abandoned Japan?

[VanceIX]

Tamron said:

VanceIX said:

Just gonna post this again

VanceIX said:

1. And you know why Japan has abandoned home consoles? Because both Sony and Nintendo have completely botched this gen and to a much smaller extent last gen. Sony and Nintendo have always been Japan first, rest of the world second, and the Japanese took great pride in their companies. With Sony devoting almost all their resources to the west for the PS4, even delaying the Japanese release by almost half a year, it's no surprise that the Japanese feel that console gaming has moved on from them. And don't tell me that the Wii U showed that the console market was dead already, the Wii U flopped everywhere, not just Japan.

Sony released a boatload of mediocre games on the PS3 and Vita with niche support from third-party devs, resulting in the Japanese just losing interest. While Sony was busy devoting the most funding to shooters like Uncharted or Killzone or Last of Us, the Japanese got little known games like the White Knight Chronicles from Sony, absolutely nothing compared to Rogue Galaxy or Legend of Dragoon or ICO or Shadow of the Collosus. Even major third-party devs fucked up by releasing mediocre games on the PS3. SE released three half-baked Final Fantasys in a row, and didn't even bother with Kingdom Hearts 3. It's no wonder the Japanese got fed up with the market.

2. Sure, they'll dominate, but they won't reach near the level of success that the PS2 did. Japan was a major facillitator for both the PS2 and PS3, and no Sony has turned their backs on them.

1) Sorry, no, the vita, wii and ps3 all have heavy third party support in Japan, the success of a console does not hinge on how many games the consoles manufacturer make themselves, despite this heavy support and plentiful supply of games, sales have steadily decreased and gaming as a whole here is rapidly on the decline, arcades, the last bastion of gaming mecca, are also declining here with space that once housed arcade games replaced with photo booths and gambling machines, ufo catchers etc, the reason for this is squarely the high concentration of Japanese gamers being both satisfied and complacent with gaming on mobile devices, adverts for mobile games are shown on TV here virtually tenfold the frequency of console or handheld games.

Was it a good descision for sony?, yes, yes it was.

PS3 sales JP/US/EU

2013 - 877k  - 2.23m - 3.33m
2012 - 1.23m - 3.48m - 5m
2011 - 1.52m - 4.48m - 5.97m
2010 - 1.55m - 4.73m - 5.14m
2009 - 1.88m - 4.25m - 4.75m
2008 - 1.06m - 3.54m - 4.15m
2007 - 1.21m - 2.42m - 3.39m
2006 - 472k  - 667k  - N/A

Totals - 9.79m - 25.8m - 31.73m

Sales in the US were 2.5x that of Japan, and over 3x that of japan in the EU, focus on US and EU instead of Japan and what you end up with is clost to six times the hardware sales.

Consider this, sales in just 2011, 2010 or 2009 in EU and US, any one of those years, sold more in just one year than they sold in Japan for SEVEN years, alternatively, 2009 to 2010 in US sold more than 2006 - 2013 in japan, as did EU. Japan is insignificant now, and you can't blame all that on "sony and nintendo abandoning Japan" they shifted focus away from japan BECAUSE of this. Believe it or not, the sole purpose of a company is to make money, who would have thought?

It is realizing this shift in attitudes in their homeland that pushed Sony and Nintendo to focus more on the US and EU markets, not the other way around.

2) Don't compare 2014 sales to early 2000 sales, least not just on principal of the entire economy and taxing situation across the globe being completely different, thats before you even consider the impact of smartphones - tell me good sir, how many apps did you have on your smartphone in 2002? wait whats that now, you didnt have a smartphone in 2002?, they didnt exist? oh..       

1. Japan is a smaller population, what were you expecting? Japan has always bought more units than their population would indicate, until recent years.

Did I say third-party devs abandoned the PS3? Where, please, did I say this? Third-party games alone will NEVER sell a console by itself, especially when most of those third-party games are relatively low-budget, niche games. It is up to the first-party devs to make quality content, and Sony couldn't do that. Period. They couldn't build up interest in their system by releasing quality games. If the west never got Uncharted, Infamous, Halo, Resistance, Fable, Gears of War, etc., I'm sure a lot of us would have moved on from console gaming.

What you're not getting is that there is a reason the Japanese buy more PS3s than PS4s, even now. Sony hasn't released any good content on the PS4 for Japan. They ignored Japan for the most part with the PS3 and still got a decent amount of sales from them. Japan isn't making the same mistake again.

2. And why the hell not? The US has smartphones. Europe has smartphones. The console in dustry is doing just fine in those countries.

Look, there is a reason smartphones replaced consoles. And it's because consoles didn't have nearly enough quality content to be economical.