TheBraveGallade said:
combine the fact of the decline of the PS brand, the dominence of the switch, AND the fact that sony shot themselves on the foot by driving away any sort of ecchi games on its platforms via enforcing 'western standerds' for its censorship at the same time as nintendo loosening its own censorship of at least third parties... yeah the erogue/ecchi/visual novel crowd has almost completly migrated to switch after the vita was discontinued |
I don't think this kind of game play any significant impact of Sony brand decline in Japan, those are niche games played by some japanese otakus. What really impacted Sony brand was a change in direction of some of their biggest 3rd party franchises and Sony 1st party are not that relevant in Japan. And this has absolutely nothing to do with censorship, but with raw gameplay mechanics and other artistic choices. Numbers were just loosely googled for PS4, so correct at number if you please:
- Final Fantasy XIII 1.87 vs Final Fantasy XV 1.05
- Resident Evil 5 1.08 vs Resident Evil 7 0.41
- Metal Gear Solid 4 0.83 vs Metal Gear Solid 0.5
- Gran Turismo 5 0.81 vs Gran Turismo Sport 0.24
- Tales of Xilia 0.67 vs Tales of Berseria 0.22
Another thing: Sony is constantly failing to release a new hit for japanese audience. The only sucessful debut IP release during all of PS4 life was Ghost of Tsushima last year
The only reason PS4 somehow managed to come so close of PS3 sales in my opinion was the presence of a mainline DQ (absent on PS3) and a mainline Monster Hunter (Capcom always favored portable devices), by far the best selling PS4 games in Japan, Monster powered by the absence of a portable version and another console to play it, while for DQ managed to be outsold but the severely limited 3DS counterpart
