BraLoD said:
Sorry, but your reasoning and conclusion doesn't match, so the comparision comes as really strange, and the justification just doesn't make sense. The Wii was very popular in Japan, PS3 was popular too, home console sales have always been a lot lower than handhelds there, that's the thing. Gameboy/Color > Snes Gameboy Advance > N64 DS > Wii 3DS > Wii U PSP > PS3 To the point of the PSP selling only half of the PS2 worldwide but being similar in Japan, or the Vita selling more than half what the PS4 did there, meanwhile it was only like 15% worldwide. Not a Playstation thing either, as the 3DS sold less than the Wii worldwide but sold twice as much in Japan. The systems were popular and able to gather the audience for games with right appeal to be very succesful there. Playstation has always been popular in Japan until 2024, the point is those franchises not being Japan staples anymore. When games like Monster Hunter came to the PS4, they sold well, Minecradt for example was selling well on the Vita there as well. Ghost of Tsushima sold over 1M copies on PS4 there, would you look at that... The point is the games, not the systems. Of course bigger install base = bigger audience to sell to, but that's only a factor to potentialize it. Playstation was been on a western route for many years now, even closed Japan Studios during the PS4 generation, and as Playstation has always been the lead platform for third party games worldwide, many franchises changed with it, to appeal (or try to) to the western audience. Final Fantasy 15 and 16 have adopted a very clear action game approach, from the JRPG it was known for in its golden age. It's also backfiring with the western audience as well (that it was trying to appeal), not only in Japan. |
For some years now, most Japanese gamers simply haven't owned the consoles where mainline Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, etc release, so interest in those series has waned; there's still some audience for them, yes, they just haven't been on the country's dominant console(s) for 3 gens now.
MH World and such did well enough by the standards of their install base, but they were still only available to a minority of the country's console audience.
