| mrstickball said: I think the PS3 holds intrest in the market, just not a big interest. Ultimately, MGS4 will help the PS3 out, but of course, it's like saying Zelda: OoT helped out the N64. It was too little too late. The market had already shifted stronly to the PS1, so despite such an uber-blockbuster (which OoT was a far bigger system seller than MGS4 is), it failed to re-ignite anything major. This is in strong comparison to the 360, and it's lineup. The 360 hit rock bottom last year in Japan (at 1100 units at worst), and has only gone up since then. It's already had a proven track record (despite still having tepid sales), that a good game increases the market sales incredibly strongly (think, AC4 for the 360 moved more hardware, both percentage and unit wise than NGS did, despite NGS selling equal on it's second week as AC4 did on it's first week). Therefore, games like Lost Odyssey are targeting a far more purchase-friendly market (the rabid otaku JRPG market) than MGS4 is. This means that even if the PS3 sells better (which it will in Japan), it's selling only at equal, or slightly better than the PS3 did last year, whereas Lost Odyssey increases sales YOY by 50, or even 100% already on an ultra-succuesfull (by comparison) last year holiday sales on the 360. Therefore, we can ask, what's really doing better, a system that during it's first full holiday, that does 0-10% better YOY than launch, or a system that although selling less, does 50-100% better than last year's campaign (which was the most succuessful year that the company had been in Japan for 5 years), whereas the PS3's second year could shape up and be the worst-selling (or 2nd worst selling) year in that company's 12+ year history in the market. |
If you are judging based on comparison, I completely agree. The problem is comparisons don't equal profit. Unless you are willing to abuse your parent company's deep profits like Microsoft (a game Sony cannot afford to beat them at) you can't keep showing much support for a region that doesn't support you back. Microsoft has enough money that they can keep paying for these JRPGs that will slowly raise their sales in Japan, even if they don't ever become anything close to profitable. Microsoft though has the Xbox 360 down to a range where they aren't paying for hardware losses. Sony on the other hand is still experiencing massive losses, and is going to need to focus development on the markets where software sales can help balance those losses out. Japan should be the least of their concerns right now. Truthfully, this situation considered, the 360 is doing better than the PS3 is in Japan, and, depending on how long SE delays release of FFXIII, could POTENTIALLY outsell the PS3 some weeks (even if not likely catching up in the long run). Still, when comparing either system to the Wii, it's clear that the Japanese market has shifted focus at an even greater level than they did during the N64 and PSone era.
