Interesting take on the Japanese market from a PSN developer.

Japan not the gaming mecca it once was
Insider believes games carry less respect than before
by Luke Guttridge
10 december 2007

Speaking to Level Up, Q-Games boss Dylan Cuthbert, creator of the PixelJunk series, has stated his belief that Japan isn't the gaming epicenter it once was. Speaking as a westerner with intimate knowledge of regional business, the former Nintendo staffer said that games aren't as culturally important as they once were.

Cuthbert recently released PixelJunk Racers in Japan via the PlayStation Network, but the designer revealed that the download service as a whole has so far failed to take off in Japan, partly because of the country's skepticism about credit card purchases. "Pre-paid cards are definitely the way to go forward to solve these problems, but they only rolled out recently, so we'll just have to wait and see," he told Level Up.

He also believes that the importance and 'seriousness' of games in Japan has fallen, affirming that "over here the gaming culture was affected adversely by advancing mobile phone tech."

"In reality though, gaming has become less central and more a standard commodity; the Wii and DS have proved this with their huge demographic range. People want to play games, but without the huge investment of time and money games used to take up," he explained, stating that the industry now circles around a handful of "God-like presences".

http://play.tm/story/15025

Japan has fallen from grace.

They still have wicked ass arcades though.

 Nah, I think its more that they are further along in the curve than the west, in spite of the change, Wii and DS have been able to ride it out for the most part, the future of gaming belongs in games that are less about escapism and more about becoming aspects of our daily life, these "nongames"

That's about all there is left. If the video game industry would only depend on Japan, it would have been dead by now. I've always loved the Japanese gaming community, but since several months I find it nothing more but a disgrace.

Mario Galaxy basically bombing
Zack & Wiki bombed hard
Opoona bombed hard
No More Heroes bombing
Ratchet & Clank Future bombed, while R&C became quite a popular franchise in Japan

Honestly, Japan as a gaming culture is losing my interest and it has nothing to do with the developers, as they're the ones who're creating these wonderful new ideas, but it are the conservative Japanese buyers who refuse to buy all the new stuff!

All "big" three have failed in Japan as far as I see. Strange that Ninty and Sony are doing so poorly. (stationary market).

Well, at least they're having a "Western" person supporting their market the fullest, including most of the new franchises they're creating and being appreciated And er... by the way, those Playstation Network Tickets are already available since April, only in convenience stores... maybe "that's" the problem. If they would sell the tickets online through big retailers, more people would know about this and also Western people were able to buy them. Via the PSN store there's enough casual stuff available, so that ain't the problem.

if the Japanese economy would repair itself a bit more then it would be the game country it was.

Mario Galaxy will likely reach 550,000 by the end of 2007 and creep past the sales of Super Mario Sunshine sometime in 2008; remember how people were talking about how badly Mario Party 8 sold, when it is now the best selling of the series?

Zack & Wiki was a budget game in an unpopular genre with practically no marketing.

Anyone who thought Opoona and No More Heroes would sell well in Japan was delusional.

Ratchet and Clank did underperform though ...

Really ?

Here a thread opened by Shams that talk about the japanese market :

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=11659

An extract of Shams post : 

=== After 56 weeks (Japan) ===

PS3:

- 1,484k hardware
- 2,941k software
- 1.98 attach rate

PS2:

- 4,144k hardware
- 10,372k software
- 2.50 attach rate

http://vgchartz.com/japweekly.php?date=36975&console=&maker=&disp=Japanese+Name&boxartz=1

(for a quick comparison - the Wii has only been out for 53 weeks in Japan, and is on track to match the PS2 in hardware sales - and has exceeded PS2 software sales by more than 10% to date).

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So it seems that Ninty stationary console is doing pretty good compared to PS2 or maybe you think that PS2 did poorly in japanese market .... 

This fits very well with all that we've been seeing lately, and the confusion we've felt.

I imagine the Wii might end up solving the problem of games starting to require too much time and money from both developers and customers if the best case scenario occurs.