There is an article at Bloomberg.com on the state of the economy in Japan and it aren't pretty:

 The sales of the PS3 are damn low despite a price cut, a good library of games, and several colors available. The handhelds and the Wii, on the other hand, are doing well and these are priced well below the PS3.

bloomberg.com 

 Comments?

I have no doubt it played a big part, PS3 sales' bad, but xbox selling only 1.5K according to M-C number last week, there's no reason for that.

PSP is still selling well, the only explanation is that people decided to put off expensive purchase until later on.

So you're saying that the Xbox 360, and Playstation 3, may have sold low in Japan, because the Japanese may not be able to afford it, because of a worsening economy? That could be a possible explanation, however, the Wii is also expensive, and it sells well in Japan. The Playstation 3 40 GB is just over $100 more expensive than the Wii, so would that really make much of a difference?

PS3 - the fact that FFXIII hasn't arrived yet is a major deal, and I'm sorry won't be out until late 2009.

Xbox 360 - well, the RROD put an end to that one for Japanese consumers who demand nothing but the best

>The Playstation 3 40 GB is just over $100 more expensive than the Wii, so would that really make much of a difference?

100 dollars is a lot of money, I know tons of people who wouldn't pay 10 bucks more for another brand.

There's no excuse for PS3 to sell that poorly, same goes for xbox. Wii is going strong only because of its casual focus. but still though, Japanese market as a whole is doing very poorly

Until PSP came along, no 2nd place platform in Japan had ever sold even 6 million units...so I don't think so.

NES was essentially a monopoly in Japan (except for the PC-Engine I think).

SNES slaughtered the Genesis in Japan

PS1 obliterated Saturn and N64

PS2 destroyed GC and Xbox

Wii is creaming PS3 and Xbox 360 in Japan

Its something like

NES generation:  Nintendo = 85%+ marketshare

SNES generation: Nintendo = 83% marketshare

PS1 generation (w/o DC): Sony = 66% marketshare, Sega/Nintendo about 17% each

PS2 generation (w/ DC): Sony = 79% (still growing), Nintendo = 12.5%, Sega = 7%, Microsoft = 1.5% 

In other words, unless there are three semi-viable competing platforms in Japan, one platform tends to end up with 80% marketshare or more.  Portables like GB, GBC, GBA fell into this pattern as well until PSP arrived and knocked Nintendo portables down into the 70 percentile range  

I can't believe I get to correct The Source.


The Sega Mark III (SMS) was released in 1985 -- two years after the Famicom (NES) and two years before the PC Engine (TG-16).

But the point that the NES (Famicom) had a virtual monopoly is correct. That system re-created the market for console games.

Mike from Morgantown

Hasn't the PSP been the same (or close) price as DS for a while now in Japan?

First off the Source is right on the money. Japan always has one very clear winner, this time it's Wii.

Secondly - As for 360 it's main fault is it's non-Japanese, it's MS and RRoD. Secondary - too few Japanese centric games and price.
As for PS3 - Price is a factor, but also so is the very highly western game library. It's line-up looks more like the xbox's did than the PS2's did. Another factor may be that's it's just to damn expensive for smaller japanese developers to make games on so they are all going to the Wii (although very few have sold well on Wii either).

Bottom-line: A better Japanese economy would increase video game sales all across the board but wouldn't change the market share spilt from what we're seeing now.

Mike your right about the Master System but I don't have figures for it so I really have no idea what it sold in Japan.  I've always read that NES had 70-90% for most of its life in Japan but its hard to say since much of its life was pre sales tracking.