Portable console gaming is dead

[loves2splooge]

Winning a console war in Japan in 2014 doesn't mean anything when the sales figures look like this.

3DS 16,305,639
PSV 3,227,735
WiiU 1,931,114
PS4 723,160
XOne 30,991

The console gaming market in Japan has shrunk massively. If the 3DS manages to sell 25 million in Japan lifetime, they will do so in a market where they have no real competition from console manufacturers. For Nintendo to face virtually no competition from other consoles but still see their sales drop goes to show you how much of an impact Apple and Google have had on the Japanese market. They cannibalized a huge chunk of the console market in Japan.

Do you think Nintendo's investors care more about the fact that the company has been losing money the past 3 years or the fact that they are winning some little console war in Japan? A market that has become largely irrelevant to console manufacturers this generation. The PS Vita is the #2 console in Japan and SONY wants to throw in the towel and shift focus to Playstation TV. That tells you everything about how bad the market for consoles is in Japan.

Nintendo is also a multi-national corporation that has historically relied a lot on the international markets for their success for almost 30 years. So you can't just casually brush off their dreadful performance in North America, Europe and emerging markets. Focusing on Japan first and foremost may work for a small Japanese publisher. But it's not befitting of Nintendo. They have way too much overhead invested in the western market. And it's not Reggie's fault that Nintendo is doing poorly in North America. And it's not Shibata's fault that it's doing poorly in Europe. The problem starts at the corporate culture at the top of the organization and trickles down. Nintendo just does whatever they want, even when they are losing money and the investors are pissed off, and they are resistant to change. Iwata is probably going to get canned and Miyamoto will quietly retire.