It’s well known that in Japan home consoles are overwhelmed by portable ones in terms of popularity, but the Japanese may be losing further interest at the outset of a new generation. The local statistics firm Goo ranking conducted a cellphone-based poll on the question “What are you no longer spending time and money on recently?”

2144 people responded and the results were fairly surprising.

1. Home video games (352 votes)
2. Listening to music (on CD) (295 votes)
3. Beauty (282 votes)
4. Dining out (191 votes)
5. Anime (163 votes)
6. Going to the movies (139 votes)
7. Reading (135 votes)
8. Traveling (133 votes)
9. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions (121 votes)
10. Day to day dieting (89 votes)
11. Sports (84 votes)
12. Improving skills (50 votes)
13. Social games (49 votes)
14. Online shopping (46 votes)
15. TV shopping (15 votes)

While the respondent pool is not exactly enormous, the poll paints the picture of a Japan losing interest in home consoles and more interested in portable and social games, and the sales charts that come out every week seem to confirm it.

The coming of a new generation seems to have revitalized interest in gaming consoles in the west, but in Japan neither next gen console has a release date yet. Will they be able to grab Japan’s attention again when they’ll be released? No way to know, but we can only hope.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2013/07/03/poll-reveals-that-japan-may-be-losing-interest-in-home-consoles/

Listening to music (on CD) (295 votes)- What cd, wow weird.

That is why they're "Tier 2."

Beauty (282 votes) - They're losing interest in being good looking too.

I hate polls. 2,144 is nowhere near accurate. You could get them all to say they like going to the movies and that's it. To me polls with low numbers like this are simply a waste of time and resources.

They would have to these polls in most Japanese cities to make it more accurate. There are millions of gamers in Japan, so i don't know how someone can make a conclusion on a poll of only 2000 people

They just need to release better games on Home Consoles, like they use to do with the PS2 & GameCube.

The PS3 & Wii have been rarely seeing worthwhile games during its entire lifespan, and the 360 just got former PlayStation exclusives like FF & RE.

The DS had a way more better library then GBA, and the handhelds had the best library of games of the 7th Gen.

The 3DS is even way more better.....it's like the second coming of the PS2. And the 3DS looks like it will have the best library in the 8th Gen.

PS3 & Wii gotten some good games, but was really below so many people's expectations and even came short to handhelds software of the same gen.

Home Consoles can grow back in Japan, but they need to bring the games back, and as a bonus the Wii U does ultimate asymmetric gaming. So I can see interest in Home Consoles being better then what it was during the 7th gen, within the next few years.

2000 is waaaayyy enough lol
http://blog.surveymonkey.com/blog/2011/09/15/how-many-people-do-i-need-to-take-my-survey/

Less than 3% margin of error.


Also here a calculator:
http://www.custominsight.com/articles/random-sample-calculator.asp

3% margin of error and 99% confidence if you ask 2000 people even if the total population is 130m people.

One of the unmentioned problems is that Japan has rather high electricity prices and most home consoles are power beasts. Even Nintendo consoles burn a fair bit of power compared to handhelds.

It's not a huge factor, but it's definitely one people overlook.

PS4 doom confirmed...