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noshten said:
hinch said:

US and EU/UK are the biggest markets for Playstation. Makes sense to target your biggest audience first.

Global unit sales of PlayStation 4 as of May 2020, by region-

Europe 44.82m
North America 36.19m
Rest of the world 19.19m
Japan 9.8m

Yep, they lost a lot of audience in Japan during the transition from PS2/PSP to PS3/PSV. I think they've stabilized with the PS4... but that was because originally it was competing with Wii U, now that Switch is dominating the market outlook is pretty bad for PS5 in Japan and Sony probably know it. 

I think they might eventually sell over 12.5M PS4 units in Japan, if they lower the price considerably once PS5 is launched. Honestly, some Japanese are probably still waiting for a price drop on the PS4 before buying it. 

But the tendency is for the PS5 to struggle in Japan. 

PS2/PSP: 21.98M/19.69M TOTAL: 41.67M

PS3/PSV: 10.5M/5.86M TOTAL: 16.36M

I think similarly to the PS3/PSV it will be supported by Japanese Publishers for at least three more years.
PS3/PSV 2014: 445K/1.16M TOTAL: 1.6M
PS3/PSV 2015: 193K/1M TOTAL:1.19M
PS3/PSV 2016: 47K/849K TOTAL:0.89M

The main question for the PS4 at a lower price in Japan is whether it would do PS3 like numbers or PSV like numbers in 2021 and 2022...

Hard to say. If I had to guess PS5 will be pulling similar numbers as the last two generations, on home console only. Japanese gamers seem to like their handhelds many even preferring them over traditional ones. Though, not all games can translate well on there. Like mainline Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts games for example. And that's where a console like Playstation steps in, acting like a secondary console. Its kinda like the reverse over here for the west where most prefer playing on a TV with home consoles over something that is portable.