RolStoppable said:
Indeed. If the PS5 sold ~8m (example for argument's sake), then that wouldn't just be a small decline gen over gen, rather it would fall far short of last gen's ~15.5m PS consoles sold (9.5m PS4s, 6m Vitas). The Vita is often brushed aside because Sony was globally successful with the PS4, but in Japan it served as an important block in the road to more third party support for Nintendo. It was only a few years ago that many smaller Japanese third party publishers didn't have much to offer for Nintendo consoles, but Sony's exit from the handheld market has had a major impact that will continue to show over the next few years. This gen PS has less going for it than it had last gen. It won't get as bad as people routinely buying a PS5 only to play through one game before selling it to a second hand shop within weeks (which was the fate of the Xbox 360's JRPG offensive), but the PS5 will certainly have a much harder time to recover from its inevitable sub-10k baseline than the PS4 had. |
Agreed. Many say - and rightfully so - that Sony doesn't need Japan to sell it's hardware. That is true. But the overlooked part are the smaller japanese third-parties. Many point to Capcom, Squenix and Bamco, but Japan has (in difference to the west) a more or less working environment of smaller and mid-sized studios. And these are losing their confidence in the PS ecosystem. We see that with a lot of titles that now move to Switch and PC (should not be discounted). The success of Momotaro Dentetsu is another building block strengthening the confidence of japanese third-parties in the Switch platform. And here is the trick: although the main market for these games is Japan, they also have western fans and this is filling the lineup of the Switch.
