I never said YOU said that, but people posted that Japan didn't matter in the console market anymore.

Japan matters because of the great devs that live there and they love to be successful in Japan more than any where else. So they are always gonna make games to suit japanese taste over westerners.

Japan will ALWAYS matter. Not that much percentage wise but influence wise. See, excluding Western-made games, almost all other games debut in Japan first. More than half of the ones that show success over there, become successes in the West too. See Nintendogs, Pokemon, WiiFit, Final Fantasy, etc. I bet Nintendogs wouldn't have reached even 1m WW if it weren't for Japan's huge success.

It should matter

 More than half does not sounds like a strong correlation.  That a game in Japan can and on occasion do sell multiple million units keeps it from being irrelevant but as far as tracking the global market Japan seems a horrible marker.  When gundam pachinko games take off in the States or Europe maybe but until then Japan is its own beast.

The Japanese market is eccentric, compared to North America or Europe. There are many strange things that are liked there and no where else in the world.

However, to say it does not matter ignores the fact that if it were not for that market, there would be no other market. Videogames arose out of the ashes of the 1983 crash in Japan first. Had Nintendo not broken into North America in 1985, we'd all be playing our games only on these computers which we are using to argue about video game consoles and handhelds.

Japan will continue to be a source of unique and different ideas. Some will catch on in other places, many will not. But there are games unique to any market globally (e.g., How many copies of Madden are sold outside of North America?). And that's OK.

I you say history does not matter today, it is because of this history that many of the large game publishers are in Japan -- SquareEnix, BandiNamco, Techmo, etc. For the same reason, two of the three console makers are based there -- Nintendo and Sony.

Finally, that history also tells us that some things that were thought of as "weird and Japanese" became mainstream. RPGs anyone? That could be playing out again with more casual/short-play games and unique non-traditional games like WiiFit. (It may also point to the fact that Japan has an older population than either Europe or North America. So those playing are older and want different things than the typical US college student gamer).

So Japan does matter. It always has and will continue to do so for the foreseable future. It might be diferent, but it always has been.

Mike from Morgantown