Shadow1980 said:
Japan's console market was shrinking before smartphones were really a thing:
As you can see, total console sales declined by about the same rate from the fifth generation (where sales peaked) to the sixth generation as how they've declined from the sixth to the seventh. There's obviously something else going on here, as despite smartphones having taken off over the past 7-8 years it appears to have done nothing to accelerate the decline. Oddly enough, handheld sales in Japan seem to be relatively unaffected by the advent of smartphones despite smartphones being presumably more in direct competition with gaming handhelds than with home consoles. The 3DS has done remarkably well and is on track to pass the PSP already this year, and total handheld sales in 2011-2013 were far better than the average of the past 15 years in Japan. 2014 did see a YoY decline, but considering the large gap between the XL and the N3DS, it seems to be more of an organic decline in sales like every other system experiences without something to provide a longer-term stimulus (price cuts and new models being the biggest stimulators). It's also worth noting that the N3DS does appear to have stabilized 3DS sales in Japan. If smartphones were really eating into sales of dedicating gaming hardware, then nobody told the sixth-gen consoles they were jumping the gun, nor did anybody tell the 3DS that it was supposed to pull a Vita-level drop from its predecessor. |
You should compare 3DS+VITA to DS+PSP to see the impact that smartphones have had on gaming.
