I blame handhelds :P

There was an article about this too in the November issue of Game Informer. They were talking about the decline of the TGS and how the gaming industry is shifting more to the West.

i was not talking about it benefiting 360 but it benfiting the japanese games industry

this thread is about japanese games declining not west struggling

and the PS3 sales in japan and west isn't the topic

it is how japanese games sell everywhere that is both the west and japan

we know it doesn't but this thread is not about how 720 can benefit but how japanese games can benfit

and if they build a userbase of japanese games on 720 from the start then the games will sell well through the next gen

Lol Japan has a population of 127 million, while the US have a population of 310 million (excluding Canada, which are included in NA sales data). It's obvious that they cannot sell as much.

Just look at financial reports from publishers.It's west that is doing poorly. Yes unit wise western publishers ship more games nowadays but it doesn't mean anything if you are unable to make profit from those sales. I also love how people forget handhelds. Japanese companies are dominating handheld software market.

You're correct. It's only if we take the rather interesting view of the video game industry as only consisting of X360, PS3, and PC that we can somehow rationalize a world where Japan is growing increasingly irrelevant (though i blame the fact that many of their frankenstein "we have to appeal to the west" efforts end up appearing on HD consoles, damaging their appeal). If we look at the three platforms that, between them, make up about 2/3rds of the dedicated games industry, the West isn't even a presence worth mentioning

-Make japanese style games that sell well internationally

-decide they want to sell more in the west

-Make a bunch of half baked western style games that lose all the charm and fun of their more traditional japanese games

-wonder why they don't succeed, decide they haven't made games western enough

This is how a lot of japan thinks

I think the reasons for this are obvious.

Japanese companies may be "struggling," but they're generally making solid profits while Western companies suffer losses quarter after quarter.