Famitsu Sales: Week 16,2025 (Apr 14 - Apr 20)

[Sephiran]

Otter said:

Sephiran said:

But we do know its evidently false from a lot of figures. You can't sell more hardware in a declining market for one. When it comes to software, Nintendo first party games have sold more in Japan during the Switch era. What is true is that many third party games are selling less in Japan, from smaller Nihon Falcom games to bigger Square Enix games. But for Nintendo itself, Japan has not been a declining market at all. But for Japanese third parties and Sony, they are selling less in Japan than ever before, but Nintendo games has bucked that trend totally, and saw record breaking sales for pretty much all their major franchises in the Japanese market.

Read what I wrote in the post before. A single company cannot be an indicator for an entire market.  It is entirely possible for Nintendo to sell more hardware in a declining market, if 9/10 car manufacturers are in steep decline you can't say the market is growing just because 1/10 is having a personal peak. This is why I ask what is the data for the market as a whole, not just Nintendo. 

What is evident from figures is the hardware market has declined but that is the evolution I talk about. Handheld and console market have been consolidated, financially that is less $ income/ units sold, but it doesn't reflect less interest. Software however can be a better indicator of overall interest

But if Nintendo has managed to buck the trend in that specific market, and getting a bigger slice of the pie, that just means that third parties and Sony are doing something wrong, and Nintendo is doing some things right. After all, while Final Fantasy has declined massively over the years in Japan, Pokemon or even Pikmin has grown. There was nothing preventing third parties from not suffering a massive decline in Japan. What happened was that Japanese third parties placed all their bets on Sony and Playstation, so when Playstation declined in Japan, they all declined together with Playstation in the Japanese market.

I want to regurgitate the fact that its almost impossible to find any market that buys as much console hardware as the Japanese market, on a per capita basis. That means if one states that Japan is a declining market for consoles, then we don't really have any good market for consoles left in the world.

Last edited by Sephiran - on 09 May 2025