padib said:
Great questions. Saturn I can explain the Saturn, but in my earlier post I had sources in the footer that might interest you, of note: The Sega Saturn in Japan: https://youtu.be/NkuD8rOndSo The whole video is super interesting for people like you and I who are interested in japan sales, but you can start at 10:55 if you want the moment where things shifted. What happened is that Sony had stolen Final Fantasy from Nintendo, and it made a massive impact on the perception of value in consoles in Japan. Suddenly the Playstation was the Jewel of the industry thanks almost entirely to FFVII. Here is another factor that comes into play: killer apps. They make a huge difference. The video explains that, up until 1997, the Saturn was enjoying near-parity w PS in Japan due to a high-volume of 2D japan-centric games and almost everything else common between the two consoles except for difficulty to develop for the Saturn. As of FFVII, everything changed. Vita I have two more posts to make before I feel comfortable giving a definitive reply, but what we know about the Vita is that it had almost unanimous 3rd party support in Japan, except for Sony 1st-party games. This propped it up as it ended up selling a 5.86M Japanese of 16M worldwide (36%) (source). However, in this case, competition is very important to consider. Even though the Vita had a plethora of games coming out for it, being the favorite platform for Devs who were used to finding green pasture outside of Nintendo consoles, it still failed to push out stronger sales. This is because the 3DS absolutely dominated Japan with 24.66M of 75.94M (32%). So while the two are good portable consoles with a vast library of games appealing to Japan, the 3DS was cheaper, had Nintendo's 1st party support which attracted the Japanese, and Sony was not supporting its own console. The Vita also had memory card pricing issues, other things the 3DS did not have to deal with. Also, Nintendo secured a killer app with Monster Hunter. That was a disastrous move for the Vita. Monster Hunter had been the killer app of the PSP, and now it was on the 3DS. This again proves that you can have lots of games that cater to the japanese, it doesn't guarantee success there. How did the 3DS beat the Vita when it had so much 3rd party support? The answer is that, by that time, Nintendo's 1st party lineup had become popular after the Wii/DS generation, the 3DS' launch schedule was decent and had decent 3rd party support, and it had killer apps and was better priced. Had the 3DS not existed, the Vita would've performed nicely. |
Will watch the videos a bit later after my shift an interesting thing to note Saturn actually outsold the N64 in Japan, on the 3DS it had a bigger library and support to cater to the region that's why it won out. The Vita had decent support but the 3DS had great support it was a PS1/Saturn like situation only the killer app arrived much earlier for the 3DS and not just one either several came in succession, if Vita didn't have the support it did it would have struggled to even hit 2m against the 3DS, Nintendo's first party offering was always popular even long before the Wii/DS the difference is that on those platforms they had the support to compliment them.
The performances of not only the Saturn but also the Vita to me highlight that even a sinking ship can salvage a respectable performance in Japan if you do have the games as one outsold a competitor and went blow for blow with the market leader until a notable killer app arrived while another clawed out a decent chunk for itself against the odds against a very notable platform.
