I still think Japan does not have the significance of America and PAL regions as far as sales go - the DS being a MASSIVE exception to that - however as far as development goes it is still more important than the rest of the world combined in my opinion.

Japan isn't insignificant, it's just fading in significance. The market in Japan is holding steady while other markets are surging upward.

The Japanese market punches above its weight due to the importance of Japanese developers, but even those developers are becoming more interested in scoring big in the larger foreign markets than pleasing the home crowd.

DS & 3rd parties where awful at 1st-2nd year as well (where 3rd parties put only crap on it). Look at them now (Level 5, Square Enix, Capcom,etc)

 What he said.

All markets are important. No such thing as an unimportant market.

Japan is still significant, but the US continues to be more significant, and Europe has probably become more significant by now, if it didn't already 2 generations ago.

The thing with Japan is that they might buy less software and hardware than Europe most of the time, but still have a large chunk of the best developers, many of which continue to make games primarily for the Japanese audience. They're definitely significant, and worth counting as one of the three main territories.

(although I do wish ioi would promote Europe to a category of her own, rather than lumping us up in Others. what kind of a Briton is he, really?)

"(although I do wish ioi would promote Europe to a category of her own, rather than lumping us up in Others. what kind of a Briton is he, really?)"

+1

This "Others" category just makes me sick! This is like using this term to qualify the sates of USA : Mexico, Canada and "others" (USA) (would you like that, American people?) You have to relize that EU-27 is a United States of Europe (USE) of 27 members (at the end of the construction it is going to be circa 50 states like in the USA).

-1 to VGC! lol

That's not what the EU is at all! I agree that America, Japan, Europe and Others should be seperate because Europe is bigger than Japan, but the EU is a loose common policy on immigration, human rights, markets, competition regulation and currency (but none of those are really compulsory: the UK is included in neither the Euro or the more open borders) and each country retains practically all of its pre-membership power.The EU cannot in practice force any decision over a dissenting member.

So, the EU is not a US arrangement and never will be (look at the Consititution rejection; all that did was have an EU President and a few more market controls). 

The EU physically can't hold any more Eastern members at this point without damaging the Euro's integrity and leading to uneven treatment for the poorer and less stable governments in the candidate countries.

The EU is stronger by being together, yes (the Euro is supplanting the U.S. Dollar as the worldwide base currency) but it will never be one country.

 Actualy as I see it, no third party is even remotly so succesfull as Nintendo even if we include Nintendo plattforms, PS2/3 PSP and xbox360. Nintendo stands for almost 50% of the software sales in Japan. That is a little bit scary.

Japan is very significant and let me tell you why.

1) Japan is the early adopter

2) Japan still has many of the best developers

3) Console race in Japan is done quickly, and first place machine gets tons of sales. Also software sales are significant.

First place console has a lot to win, second/third place has a lot to lose. In America and Europe you can have 2 or 3 consoles with very good sales, Japan hasn't shown it can do that for more than a year or so.