Anyone who's been following sales trends in Japan wouldn't be surprised by this. It was coming for a while...and I don't see much to improve it soon.

Agreed, I don't know why, but every time I've moaned about the state of the Japanese video game industry; there is always someone, or several someones who have at me and say that "it's not so bad" or "just a slump, things are about to pick up", "we were just used to abnormally high sales for a while, this is quite normal for Japan".

Japan as a tradtitional gaming market is shrinking and has been for some time and doesn't appear to be going back either. I think a lot of users are simply afraid of what it implies that Japan is losing more and more relevance and they think it's uncomfortable thinking about how much of a threat mobile gaming has become to traditional gaming in some regions, I met heavy resistance when I made the claim that mobile gaming would seriously impact especially handheld gaming back in 2010 or 2011.

PS: I wonder what people who are calling Japan the "gaming capital of the world" are thinking right now.