| TheRealSamusAran said: Because the PS4 generation saw Sony make a shift from games made for the Japanese market to big "interactive movie" blockbusters for the west, plus Japan saw an increasing interested in devices people could use to game while not at home, plus the Switch launched halfway through the PS4's lifecycle, although I haven't checked if there was actually a dip on sales in 2017. |
| curl-6 said: Yeah Sony hasn't really catered to Japanese audiences in a long time, their focus is squarely on American and European players with the likes of TLOU, God of War, Spiderman, etc. From the 7th gen on, handhelds became powerful enough to run the kind of games they used to play on consoles, and more recently PC has been growing rapidly there, both cutting into Playstation's lunch. For a lot of Japan, especially those who weren't around during the PS1/PS2 days, PS just isn't relevant to them. |
Just honing into the bolded because I see this repeated a lot but it actually doesn't add up. Sonys western first party titles are more popular in Japan than their Japanese ones. Moreover Playstation has never attracted large Japanese audiences with it's first party titles outside of GT and most recently Ghost of Tsushima.... Ghost, Spiderman, God of War and Horizon are much better sellers in japan than anything Japan studios released in the market.
It's fair people miss Sonys AA output but they really didn't sell much in any market. It's simply not part of the equation in their decline, especially when you consider they went on to hold a console monopoly on many third party Japanese games.
Ironically Astrobot is bigger in US/Europe then it is in Japan, despite being the game that should cater to Japanese tastes. I think crux of Sonys failures is really just:
1. Hardware did not appeal to the japanese market, they want portables and/or novelty. This remaining market is somewhat shared now with PC it seems.
2. The audience for traditional gaming experiences which made the PS2 a success has diminished and developers need to think outside of the box. The emphasis isn't even on Sony, it's 3rd party too. But of course with Sony not being able to rely on third party IPs anymore like Tekken, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil etc, they'd need to be taste makers as Nintendo is for their platform. But again, a big success like Astro saw Japan as one of its weakest markets.
With this in mind, it will be interesting to see what becomes of this Playstation portable and also if sony pushes any innovation with the PS6. The inclusion of a PS5 Spec portable so late into the gen, means sony is probably not expecting developers to abandon this spec of hardware for a very long time... Which means PS6 may try to innovate in ways beyond simply having a new generation of graphics.
