The problem with consoles in Japan, is not to do with Japan itself. The problem stims from Sony and Nintendo, refusing to expand the console market. PlayStation and Nintendo consoles and handhelds should be a lot more functional than they are, but do to their lack of growth over the last 20 years, everything else is starting to eat away at their sales.

I 100% garntee that if Sony had made an effort to run apps and software outside of gaming on PS3 and PS4, and showed it as a console that could replace your PC, the sales would have been much higher. If both 3DS and The Vita had Phone capabilities, they would be dominating the mobile scene in Japan right now.

People are not less interested in great gaming experiences, but great gaming experiences are harder to justify when you already have a $800 phone with your all the time, or a $600 tablet at home.If great gaming wants to survive, then the platforms that deliver that experience have to eveolve to compete with everything else on the market.

I agree with you on this. Even PSP should have had phone capabilities, and it`s even worse for Vita, it had a 3G version and even uses a heavily modified android as core OS. Nintendo is so stubborn with their vision of how gaming should be that they get suicidal at times, I think it`s a miracle they are even bringing something to mobile. 

Have 3DS be also an OK phone it could have eaten some iPhones sales! Nintendo lacks of vision is ridiculous at times. With Switch let`s see how they handle that.

Sony on other side still pushed consoles as multi-media devices for many years and sold a lot based on that, I think it`s strange this gen they aren`t caring anymore about it actually. 

And we have to think, phones nowadays are as capable as full fledged PCs, hell, probably iPhone 7 is stronger than the rumoured Switch specs and Galaxy S8 will also be a monster, probably with a 4K screen. 

And I don`t think this trend is going to stop. Console gaming in Japan isn`t dead, but it will be a niche market while mobile will be the main driver of revenue, and it`s just a matter of time `til we see a DQ or Tales of or any heavily Japan based franchise to bring a main title to mobile. 

P.S.: And DQ IX already was a DS game, wich caught many people off-guard but was still a great choice business wise. Developers are not going to insist on consoles and handelhels if it`s the best for business to make iOS and Android games, they don`t have any love for dedicated gaming machines nor they should. DQ XI is already on 3DS, i`m surprised it wasn`t announced for phones yet, but it`s almost sure it will be released on iOS and Android.

So much truth in this post. I absolutly agree about PSP. I was shocked when PSP GO was not a phone, but understood the deal with Ericsson gave them no choice. Vita on the other hand was just mind boggling. They had bought out Ericsson's portion of their business, and had full oppertunity to use all of those patents to make Vita a Phone. Instead they chose to dump the Vita, and focus on the Xperia brand, which has cost them over 3 billion dollars in the last 5 years. It's an even bigger disaster then the PS3 launch, and has no chance of ever being turned around under Xperia and Android.

Nintendo has basically shot themselves in the foot at every turn. They made huge gains on DS and Wii, and failed really bad with WiiU and 3DS. They did try and expand their media services with WiiU TV, which was actually really cool, but they messed up on so bad on the marketing, and just too many aspects to mention, which never gave them a chance. On the 3DS, they just plain missed the one thing the mobile market needs, and that was calling and texting. DS was on a surge, and 3DS had every oppertunity to continue to grow.

A couple of things I have to mention though. PSP OS is actually based on FreeBSD and NetBSD, which are Unix like, but not Android. Also, Sony has continued to push multimedia with PS4. They have added PlayStation Vue and PlayStation Music this gen, and they are ushering in VR content with PSVR. The only thing they have dropped was the dual boot capabilities of previous consoles. Something I greatly miss, but hope they will fix by allowing developers to release things like ABIword, Gimp, VLC Player and such through PS Store.