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Wyrdness on 29 September 2021
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Otter said:


Pikmin alone sold more than any PSVita game in Japan. How else do we decipher how well a niche title appeals to the market other than looking at its sales? The Vita has a lack of notable sellers. To compare the collective library as a whole I'd have to see them and their sales in front of me, which I do not. Do you? 

SNES/NES do not need to be outsold by the GBA in order for my argument to hold. Both systems for their time represented the full scope of what was possible and appreciated in Japanese gaming with no portable platform to compete with. The GBA did not represent scope of Japanese gaming tastes in 2001 and was limited in what it could offer gamers. 

Beyond that the industry and tastes are not fixed and is allowed to evolve in time. What's clear is that the tastes of market favour lower spec portable machines, making it harder for home consoles to succeed when very capable portable machines exist alongside them. That's it from my contributions to this thread.

Guess what Pikmin is? A first party title from Miyamoto that was pushed as his new IP at the height of his career which backs my whole point, do you see releases of games like Disgaea, Persona, Warriors and so on on GC? No because all those games were on another platform, PS2, which outsold two of the 3 portables in its era.

Your logic is portables were only being outsold by PS2 and PS1 because of 3D so under that chain of thought GBA still should have outsold both those platform with your stance but as we can see that's not the case meaning the is a lot more to it than whether a bit of hardware is portable. Japanese gaming tastes is the whole point PS2 outsold portables because it had the full range to cater to the regions preference something the PS brand no longer did from PS3 onward.

The tastes of the market don't favour lower specs portable machines they're simply just not dictated by fidelity the is a big difference, if the platform can't think beyond the realms of pushing power as a draw for its games while releasing games that aren't that interesting to the region then it's not a case of the region favour any type of specs it's a case of the platform holder failing to cater to the region. To the Japanese it's like ok you've got power what are you doing with it that builds on what we like and they're not getting any answer to this question instead they're seeing it build on what other regions like.

As for the PSP edit it's sales are consistent across each region averaging about 20m meaning for a non Nintendo portable it punched well above its weight outside of Japan and is the only portable to do so that isn't from Nintendo. The PSP's library ended up catering more to the Japanese audience with strong support from Level 5 as well as titles from NiS, Capcom's MH team, imagePoch, Koei etc...

Last edited by Wyrdness - on 29 September 2021