| The_Liquid_Laser said:
In Japan all 4 of these transitions were a decline. That is one big reason why third party sales are declining. However, how did both Nintendo and Sony respond to this situation? Nintendo rethought how they were doing things and released the Switch, which is clearly more successful than the 3DS in every meaningful way (not to mention the Wii U). What did Sony do? They quit Japan. They ended their handheld line and closed their Japanese studio. They quit Japan. The decline in third party sales is because of Sony. The going got tough and they gave up. There are no longer 4 viable platforms for third parties in Japan. There is really only one viable platform now. The path to a revival of third party sales is pretty simple: third party developers need to put their games on the Switch. That's all that needs to happen. Ideally, they would release a Switch version on day 1 for a multiplat game. Or they could just make their game Switch exclusive. Nintendo has a viable platform, and the games that release on it certainly sell better than they do on Playstation. There have already been several weeks where Switch games took 30/30 slots with many of those slots being filled by third party games, and there will be more 30/30 weeks in the future. Third party developers just need to be more intentional about releasing their games on Switch, and they will do well. |
I think there's a bit more context to this. None of them made decisions based on the Japanese market alone. Nintendo had favour with handhelds globally and was really dependent on 1st party output to drive their platforms, all they done was consolidate what worked for them. You could argue they gave up or shafted on the dedicated home console market, people who bought the Wii U 10 years ago are still being fed Mario Kart 8 DLC and stuck with a Wii U spec machine. Sony thrived off of third party titles and unlike Nintendo, has never had a stronghold on the Japanese software chart as a publisher. Nor did they have the IP to drive the uptake of a new portable platform like Pokemon/Animal Crossing/Mario etc. Abandoning the handheld space and focusing on where they found success with, worked for them. They both done what was logical for them and consolidated in places where they were already thriving.
Last edited by Otter - on 26 April 2022
