Sony prioritizing US audience for PS5 reveal because Japan is losing interest

[DonFerrari]

padib said:

NathanSSSS said:

First, I don't think SONY will again make a handheld after the failure of Vita, I don't have the source but I remember there's some statement from SONY before saying the same, the failure of Vita is largely caused by the trend of mobile gaming right then in early 2010s, I think SONY quit the market of handheld and then turned to invest on mobile games instead, the successful FGO by SONY music segement is a good example, and that made SONY a bunch of money, so I think the odd SONY release a handheld or hybrid is very low(even though I would definitely welcome if they do it). For the approach you mentioned, I don't think SONY quit the market in Japan, it's still one of the most important market for SONY even with the declined performance in hardware sale, just no more reason to prioritize on it, that makes sense right?

@DonFerrari I'll give my opinion to your post here in one reply to NathanSSSS.

The way I see it, Sony might have made money by migrating away from handheld gaming towards other mobile opportunities, but it was costly to them. The reason is that a lot of R&D went into the Vita, and the way Sony stopped supporting it caused their market on the portable to preemptively plummet, causing them to lose the R&D investment they had made. It could be said that they would have lost more money had they not made that bold move, but it could be argued otherwise too. If instead they had coasted the Vita with 1st party support, they would have had a chance to maintain a position in the market, but it could have had an impact on their home console 1st party support, so I understand the difficult decision. At the time, they also didn't know if their support for the Vita would pay off. So in a sense I agree with you both saying that Sony has shown no interest in pursuing a handheld line, but I sometimes wonder if it was the right decision.

I don't expect them to come back to the portable market, but if they wanted to it would be possible. If they did, I think that for the reasons I gave you in my original post, there would be something profitable to go that route in the japanese market. As for the home console line, if I were Sony I would keep releasing it in Japan for presence, but like you mentioned I would not invest much more into it for fear of losing my RoI. If however there was absolutely no choice for Sony but to go with a home console, I might argue that supporting the japanese market in a decent priority might be beneficial for their brand overall. But since that requires time & money, it would be difficult to say whether this is a good direction, be it over the short, medium or long term.

In principle, if investment money was infinite, I would say that Playstation as a brand would only benefit from increasing their presence in Japan and their development of Japan-centric content. As an interesting mental exercise, one could wonder what worldwide benefits Sony would enjoy from such an activity. I can think of a few:

• The birth of new japanese IPs which could be popular in the west, but would not exist otherwise (examples: Bayonetta, Splatoon, Pokemon, Shadow of the Colossus).
• A secondary market to operate in in case things implode in the west.
• (If they chose to continue their portable line) A backup system in case the home console market crumbled.
• The birth of new creative japanese studios, which could make games of all types (japan-centric or west-centric like Square does)
• The ability to tap into markets they might have struggled in before, like competing in genres like Monster breeding, such as Pokemon, Digimon and other big franchises, or games that are generally popular on handhelds such as Monster Hunter.
• The birth of new inputs of play, such as the touch pad on the vita that translated into the PS4's touch pad and now the PS5's touch screen.
• An overall diversity in how they approach game making and console development.

In a nutshell, Nintendo is doing most of these things and it gave us the Nintendo of today, and the Nintendo Switch.

The most valid reason why Sony wouldn't pursue this is due to risk and competition. It is probably too uncertain for Sony to push that direction, hence why they dropped support for Vita, and money to support the japanese market is not infinite. Also, japan has always been Nintendo's most understood market and they will defend it aggressively. Nintendo is currently consolidating into their main market, which may cause Sony to lose money on their investments if they choose to compete there.

Do agree Sony could do more in Japan, but from the game side they do get most of the japanese games on their platform, but certainly isn`t making enough Japanese centered games themselves. And I would say PS is healthy enough that they could increase their japanese development side (either open more studios, increase teams on existing one or buy some developers) and also agree that would keep an edge over Xbox (a lot of western customer prefer PS over Xbox due to more japanese games being available) while keeping HW relevant in Japan and this bringing profits (well PR-wise a lot of japanese devs said they were seeing a ressurgence with PS4, but that was on the being of gen and probably compared to how much they lagged behind during PS3 gen compared to games made on the west).

On the portable side, If they plan right and mitigate risks they could put PSP3 as well totally agree it is possible. But considering how much not only PSVita crushed but also that 3DS sold much less than DS perhaps they think that they wouldn`t be able to have success (even more because console game development have only became harder and with Switch bringing console level games on the go they wouldn`t be able to just put an inferior experience on the HH anyway).

But one thing is certain, Sony shouldn`t consider the japanese market as unimportant.