I just love this question, as it allows me to get back to what I always said before.

Before that, the quick answer:
- Japan is not rejecting the HD consoles,
- Japan is rejecting games that they don't like (USA culture centric games),
- Different regions have different cultures,
- XB360 is too USA centric for most Europe countries
and as the two other big regions are western ones, NO, that doesn't spell trouble for the HD consoles!
Unless "trouble" means the Wii will be far ahead of both. Then YES!

The long one:

I agree with most people in this thread, especially with RolStoppable.
I'm especially glad to see that my thinking based on my experience of Europe, Japanese culture and what I've seen in Japan, USA culture, and games, was basically right to this day.


The OP makes me think of 3 things I've said before :
- "picture culture" is far more advanced in Japan than elsewhere, it's lower in Europe, and is the worst in USA (this I didn't say before, but that's my belief after seeing the behaviour of most USA people)
- most people are not sensitive to the benefits of HD, and most HDTV are not better than SDTV (some will jump at this, so I'll explain later)
- Japan is still the most important country for gaming, despite what naysayers want us to believe.


Lots of people have said it before, and I've said it too, but Japan never adopted HDTV because it was OMG better or because they had all these HD channels. People in Japan have all in common a space problem, which is apparent as soon as you enter any household appliances shop there. That's also why the high-end HDTV which have sizes > 42" flop in Japan. In 2002 already, what was winning was LCD TV, which are the worst ones quality wise, and you can bet they were not searching for quality. HD channels allows them to alleviate the problem though.

Picture culture allows one to not be wowed by things as meaningless and basics as polygon counts or texture quality or various effects, and allow to take the whole picture, and judge that. That's true when it comes to images or videos, but also in more generic things like stories. While I've seen, perhaps more strongly pressed on videogame forums, that USA people have very low picture culture, and will focus on details like polygon counts, resolution, ... which have nothing to do with the game in itself. Some people will still tell me that they have everything to do with the game. At that, I will only try to make them understand by citing the sage that point the moon to the fool, hoping to show him what the moon is. The fool will look at the finger, and that's exactly what they're doing.

What's sad, is that this attention to details is very limited. Some USA people have it of course, as you can see some directors have in USA. But most USA people lack this in a general way. And like I said, japanese people have a far higher sense to that than even Europeans. USA movie directors, the most famous ones, use lots of tricks in their movies, that are unnoticeable even to their less talented fellows, tricks that often make all the difference between a good movie and a bad one. Japanese games are the same, as are anime. They use lots of these tricks, that make all the difference between Devil May Cry and God of War for example.
And thus people won't understand why one sells so well in Japan, and not the other.

Thus why I see lots of people that don't understand why the XB360 fails in Japan, or why the PS3 started very badly in Japan. I had this gut feeling, when the PS3 launched in Japan, that Sony was making a huge mistake. This was because most of their games had too much of a western feeling to them. Perhaps it was hard to see to most people, but a lot of these games problem is not that they rehash the same games as before just in HD, but that's close. No, the problem is that it seems like developing HD games forced a lot of these games to use a more western approach, making a lot of typical japanese details disappear from them. It didn't happen when anime switched from cello to computer graphics (well, there was one small hard transition), so I was surprised to see that happen on PS3. When your 2 flagship titles at launch are heavily western oriented, something is wrong.

Lots of us always said it, but people that believe HDTV penetration will mean the HD console will be pushed are delusional. It just doesn't work that way, but I guess most won't realize this until the generation is over, or they won't ever.
The problem is that any live movie in SD looks better than any HD game, even if your picture culture is low. And the problem is that most HDTV are BAD compared to SDTV. Why ? It's pretty obvious: most HDTV can't even display SD content correctly!

You'll see that in most consumer electronics, an evolutionary hardware with compatibility will present the "legacy" technology at least as good as before, sometimes better. HDTV is one of the sole technology where most of the compatibility implementations are worse than before.

For example, the Wii BC is as good as the original for what's important, and the PS3 BC is even better. But for HDTV, most can't display SDTV correctly. The worst part, is that some people, instead of blaming the TV makers, blame SD content, which is looking perfectly "fine" (or at least as good as before) on SDTV.
Yes, that's asinine, and the mind boggles at such a thought, but there are lots of people like that on this very forum.
For the record, there are actually HDTV where SD content looks as good or better than on SDTV.

What's even more amazing, is that the very same people, will tell you that HDTV will bring HD console sales, thus implying that quality envy will drive HD console sales. But when you're unable to choose a HDTV for its quality, like is mostly the case ("SD looks like crap on my HDTV"), it sure enough won't drive HD console sales.

Japan being the most important country for console gaming never escaped the mind of most console gamers. Some people used red herrings to try to make us believe otherwise. I was never a fool to believe that. I have also a pretty good feeling as to why that happened, and already explained it before. There are several reasons, mostly related to the XB360:
- The XB360 was first to market in this gen, with 1 year headstart
- The XBox brand always was heavily tied to PC gaming (Microsoft, Direct X, ...)
- PC gaming is heavily tied to the USA
- PC gaming cater mainly to western tastes, and more specifically USA culture (guns, violence, grandeur, ...)
- PC gaming is still very active in Europe
- Japan was going through a lull in home console games
- People with very low "picture culture" dismissed the Wii as soon as they heard it wasn't HD
All this made people, mainly people in the USA, believe that Japan had become irrelevant in gaming. They refused to acknowledge why MS lost all this money trying to conquer Japan, and still refuse it to this day.
Look at the biggest hyped and sales last year on XB360 : Gears of War, Halo 3, Bioshock, ... well, shooters! And the naysayers refuse to believe the XB360 is not meant for Japanese audience.

But you can still feel that everytime a big Japanese game is released, even on XB360, the anticipation is big even in the most western countries, even within the naysayers.

For now, everything is happening like I thought it would (except I didn't see the Wii winning so fast), which doesn't mean it will go on, we'll see.

^ Overanalyzing.

(More specifically, I question your "picture culture" thesis. If you can point me to a more detailed argument, I am convinceable, but as of now I think that what you describe are American technophiles and American one-upmanship, which are obviously going to focus on the quantifiable technological advancements (for obvious reasons, and to have something specific to brag about, respectively.) I don't think that's representative of the culture as a whole.)

BengaBenga said: 4) Controls: Nintendo are always the first, and they have shown the future of gaming in DS and Wii.

Fixed. 

thats why kojima said some of the best games are being made in the west.
most games in japan that sell well are series based. and have history.
plus even if MS bought every dev. in japan they wouldn't buy an american console in bulk.
still lots of games in thier top 50 sales couldn't sell in the west. like the new hit title soon to released "super panty girl 5".
pun intended!
it could be cost and waiting for the game you want til. consoles not named wii sells better. in japan plus wii hits a wider non gamer market then ps3 and 360 so it will be the little train that could.

Final-Fan said: ^ Overanalyzing. (More specifically, I question your "picture culture" thesis. If you can point me to a more detailed argument, I am convinceable, but as of now I think that what you describe are American technophiles and American one-upmanship, which are obviously going to focus on the quantifiable technological advancements (for obvious reasons, and to have something specific to brag about, respectively.) I don't think that's representative of the culture as a whole.)

Actually the "picture culture" exists. There's even studies about it how it's different between Asian and traditional western countries. Of course, the assumptions he made, was his own, but it's not an impossible scenario, although not as black and white as you could assume by the post he made.



@Ookaze: Great post. I was going to say something about the HDTV adoption, but you said nearly all i was going to. Btw. haven't seen yet any HDTV, that would show SD better than my 6,5 year old Daewoo.

The thing people doesn't seem to understand, is that the people who are the most enthusiastic buying HDTV:s, are the same group that Wii is targeted at or the people buying Wiis. 2 biggest groups that are getting HDTV:s are women who see HDTV:s as good decorational items, they fit the livingroom much better than CRT, and the other group is the people who buy HDTV:s because they are hot items.



The thing with HDTV:s is pretty similar to what it was 10 years ago with widescreen TV:s; people had to have one because it was new and hot, while there were practically no content available. Actually the wide content started to be avaible when channels started to broadcast digital.



I was going to post about tech-freaks, but i think i make a topic for that.



@bengabenga: We do have HD-channels, just in cable and satellite, and none is free as far as i know.



@topic: I think it will cause trouble, as in lesser dev support for the HD consoles, but in the other hand, gamers benefit for the two having more similar games library than they otherwise would.

This will affect the western market too, since even outside Japan, Wii is beating the competition and can have the "western orientated" games too.

About PS3 you might ask, that what happens when the more-than-average tech orientated people stop buying it? Apparently it's happened to 360 already and it's the games that drive its sales. Basically you may ask similar question about Wii, that what happens when the people that buy it just for the new controls run out? But in the other hand, what happens when the Singstar/DDR/Buzz/Guitar Hero -group starts buying the console and price hits 150¬ or less?

Daddo Splat said: thats why kojima said some of the best games are being made in the west. most games in japan that sell well are series based. and have history. plus even if MS bought every dev. in japan they wouldn't buy an american console in bulk. still lots of games in thier top 50 sales couldn't sell in the west. like the new hit title soon to released "super panty girl 5". pun intended! it could be cost and waiting for the game you want til. consoles not named wii sells better. in japan plus wii hits a wider non gamer market then ps3 and 360 so it will be the little train that could.

 You shouldn't take Kojima as an authority on these matters. Besides, you shouldn't take what he said out of context.

He surely was talking in a "graphics technology" way.

Most games that sell well on the Wii and DS are not series based or don't have any history or a very recent one.

Like Wii Sports, Brain Training, Nintendogs, Wii Fit, Wii Play, and you could even add NSMB.

Lately, the series have sold rather poorly on the contrary, like on the PS3.

 

As for me, I don't care about the console race in Japan, as the games I like (JRPG and SRPG) are mostly a niche even in Japan. But usually, Japan has shown the trend.

There are two things that are truely strange to me and just passed through my head:

- playing Wii Fit style in your home is sth STRONGLY japanese in spirit. If Nintendo manage to make this sell in western country, well, it could be huge. Somehow, given the enthusiasm here, I've grown to believe it could be huge. Add to that that even my wife has heard of it (even though she can't remember the name right), and she is making everything she can to be able to play it when it's out (she's not allowed to do sports for now). It would be a bit like DDR catching like fire in Europe.

- the japanese trend is very slow to show in western countries, and I think that's mostly thanks to the XB360 that caters heavily to USA tastes. It shows that social gaming has not yet caught the USA, as it's the WEAKER market for the DS, which is somewhat amazing. Yet, the Wii still sells the most there. So I can't say how the japanese lull will affect NA. Actually, the split started last gen between NA and the two other markets is even bigger now, with USA having less than 50 % market for both PS3 and Wii, and in some cases is not even the #1 region for a console.

 

Thus why people in NA have a very skewed view of the market, and you can't blame them for that.

It isn't that NA people inherently have a skewed view of the market though, only facts of this gen show that. 

This gen is truely fascinating.

No one mentioned demographics yet? For shame.

I would agree that there is a significant difference, but I am unconvinced that the difference is the way he described it. We probably aren't far apart here.

That's a good point about HDTV sales. I've noticed also that many large companies (well, OK, one big regional headquarters I used to work at) like to have flat-screen TVs all over the place, displaying company info or testimonials about the great service or whatever. I wonder how much sales are inflated because of this?

Final Fan:
I don't think it's very significant, but in my office we have at least 50.

Wow, lots of excellent commentary here. Doesn't leave much to add too.

For me, I don't think HD adds anything in the minds of Japanese. Japanese love their anime. LOVE it. What does HD do to enhance that? Nothing really, in fact from a Japanese prespective, it may detract from it because the characters all start looking too real - too Americanized. Only NA seemed obsessed with realism in games. Personally I don't understand why. I play games to distract from the real world. I don't want cartoons to be totally realistic - they'd hardly be cartoons at all. Nor do I want games, especially violent ones like GTA, too realistic either.

Price and size of the HD consoles sure don't help either, nor the lack in innovation they bring to gameplay.