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Forums - Sales - Declining sales in Japan

m0ney on 06 January 2017

It is because they don't know the power of PC and Steam.



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princevenom on 06 January 2017

steam will save japan



Kresnik on 06 January 2017

Dedicated gaming will always survive as a niche in Japan but it's becoming increasingly clear that the market is never going to recover to the golden years. I'm sure Switch will do well, but it won't be enough to make up for the loss of two systems from Nintendo and a Sony handheld; and PS4 will be the only other force in the market that's only really there because of needing a home console from the west.

Oh well. The niche devs will survive on it and that's all that really matters for me :P



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Slimebeast on 06 January 2017
Faelco said:
Slimebeast said:

On mobile you don't have good controls, so yes it's inherently shit for the majority of games.

But part of the traditional market don't mind bad controls, so for these people the convenience of mobile will be more important and it's these people that have migrated from dedicated consoles to mobile games. That's part of why mobile is increasing and consoles market has decreaset in recent years. But the majority of console gamers won't go over to mobile games.

And then of course you have all these casuals that had never touched a video game before, who were introduced to Candy Crush and Clash of the Clans and so on. These people are probably 90% of the mobile market now.

All in all, in my eyes the enormous growth of mobile doesn't mean that there is quality.

You can find quality titles on mobile, obviously. As an example, did you forget that a lot of of the old Final Fantasy games are on mobile? Does it mean they were shitty games? If you can put Final Fantasy games on mobile, you can easily create new mobile games close to them.

Hardcore gamers won't go mobile only, but if you consider the number of mobile games in Japan, the quality of some of them and the market/demography changes, it seems normal to at least play a bit on mobile, and keep your console for "more complex" games. But the "consoles=real/good games, mobile=casual/shit games" is becoming more and more wrong (and it's been wrong for a while now already).

The game itself can be extremely good, like say when it's a port, but it turns out shit because of the shitty controls in most cases.



Slimebeast on 06 January 2017
vivster said:
Slimebeast said:

On mobile you don't have good controls, so yes it's inherently shit for the majority of games.

But part of the traditional market don't mind bad controls, so for these people the convenience of mobile will be more important and it's these people that have migrated from dedicated consoles to mobile games. That's part of why mobile is increasing and consoles market has decreaset in recent years. But the majority of console gamers won't go over to mobile games.

And then of course you have all these casuals that had never touched a video game before, who were introduced to Candy Crush and Clash of the Clans and so on. These people are probably 90% of the mobile market now.

All in all, in my eyes the enormous growth of mobile doesn't mean that there is quality.

I never said there was quality because of the size of the market. But I do believe as the market grows and the dedicated market shrinks we will see more high quality mobile games as the demand for them increases. And the fact that there are today high quality games on mobile is not debatable. The problem is they're being disregarded because of the misconception that they don't exist.


Controls are not an issue either. It's simply a different platform that needs different control methods. Much like you can't really 1:1 port completely mouse and keyboard driven games on console. For the vast majority of dedicated handheld games you don't even need controller like peripherals because they can be easily used with touch controls. I mean what are the most popular handheld games? Turn based RPGs. Something you can easily do with touch. The more action oriented games are a bit tougher to do but not impossible. It's also not out of the question to simply use controller periphals that clip onto your phone or tablet. I mean people don't mind lugging around an extra device, so why not just the controller part?

Making good mobile games is not as much of an issue as the console conservatives like to think. The problem is that not enough of the audience is there yet because they rather stick to dedicated consoles because that's where most of their games are.

It's a catch 22. But I certainly will not stand by people who proclaim mobile as a platform to be inherently inferior to dedicated handhelds when it's not.

But as a platform mobile is inherently inferior if you can't play action games, action RPGs, shooters, RTS-games and so on.

But for some games mobile works just fine, I accept that!

But apart from turnbased J-RPGs, could you give me some examples of good mobile games? Fallout Shelter perhaps? What else?

Vivst, what do you play and enjoy on mobile yourself? I am curious.



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vivster on 06 January 2017
Slimebeast said:
vivster said:

I never said there was quality because of the size of the market. But I do believe as the market grows and the dedicated market shrinks we will see more high quality mobile games as the demand for them increases. And the fact that there are today high quality games on mobile is not debatable. The problem is they're being disregarded because of the misconception that they don't exist.


Controls are not an issue either. It's simply a different platform that needs different control methods. Much like you can't really 1:1 port completely mouse and keyboard driven games on console. For the vast majority of dedicated handheld games you don't even need controller like peripherals because they can be easily used with touch controls. I mean what are the most popular handheld games? Turn based RPGs. Something you can easily do with touch. The more action oriented games are a bit tougher to do but not impossible. It's also not out of the question to simply use controller periphals that clip onto your phone or tablet. I mean people don't mind lugging around an extra device, so why not just the controller part?

Making good mobile games is not as much of an issue as the console conservatives like to think. The problem is that not enough of the audience is there yet because they rather stick to dedicated consoles because that's where most of their games are.

It's a catch 22. But I certainly will not stand by people who proclaim mobile as a platform to be inherently inferior to dedicated handhelds when it's not.

But as a platform mobile is inherently inferior if you can't play action games, action RPGs, shooters, RTS-games and so on.

But for some games mobile works just fine, I accept that!

But apart from turnbased J-RPGs, could you give me some examples of good mobile games? Fallout Shelter perhaps? What else?

Vivst, what do you play and enjoy on mobile yourself? I am curious.

What I'm playing on mobile is mostly derived from early console games. I've played through pretty much every Dragon Quest and FF game. Other than that I play card games like Hearthstone, Skat and recentry tried out some Shadowverse. other than that I enjoy strategy games like Landrule and other Risk clones.

Of course I don't play RTS or any action based games because that's what I have a PC for and I don't really see a need for mobile to cater to every single genre. Consoles and handhelds also do not own every genre. RTS and shooter for example are horrible on anything that's not a PC.

And shooter are actually a really great example why mobile can succeed and how biased the opinion against it is. Controllers are clearly the inferior peripheral when it comes to shooters, yet they are now embraced world wide. The same can happen for touch vs buttons and analog sticks. It's simply a matter of habit. Today's generations are already more used to touch than we will ever be. Saying that controls on mobile are shit is just simply elitist babble from console conservatives. Yes they are objectively worse, but it's not unplayable and not unenjoyable. Much like with shooters and controllers.

And then there is always the choice of clipping a controller peripheral to a phone. I don't see how that is not an option in your mind.



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ABizzel1 on 06 January 2017

JP is dead when it comes to consoles. Console hardware has taken a nose dive, and since the Wii U was a failure, this generation has made it noticeably worse.

If you look at last-gen the PS4 did just over 10m in JP after 8+ years, and the PS4 could possibly match that, but it has a battle ahead of it. Even the Wii which was a huge hit globally only sold over 12m in JP.

The home console market has declined to less than 20m gamers between PlayStation and Nintendo, and has been replaced by Mobile, with Nintendo handhelds being the only dedicated gaming hardware not to be effected by the decline.



fuallmofus on 06 January 2017

yea they should nukeit maybe some better race gonna replace them!



vivster on 06 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
vivster said:
Wouldn't the Switch have to sell significantly more than Wii U and 3DS combined to turn anything around?

Not really. First off, Switch is going up against the year 2016 for Wii U and 3DS to turn things around. Wii U hardware and software were low during that year. Secondly, Switch being new hardware means that it will retail at a higher price than 3DS hardware, therefore 2016 hardware revenue can already be matched with lower unit sales. Thirdly, Switch software prices are very probable to have a higher ceiling than 3DS software, so once again an advantage when it comes to revenue.

Now it only has to sell.



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Jranation on 06 January 2017

Not surprised...... Especially with the recent decline of FFXV!



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