Many things attribute to the PS3 not doing very well in Japan, including price, size, games, games, price, and mostly, games. But you can hardly say that price is the only problem, since it's had a price drop there, plus new colors, and it still can't push sales. I hardly doubt that a few games (FF13 & MGS4) are going to save it either.  The Wii owns Japan, and there's not much chance of that ever changing. 

 Sales dropped to 7-8k weekly at one point.  It was really bad.

Software , the PS3's sold mostly on brand name.

IF the PS3 had the JRPG's that the 360 has then it probably could have sold 1.5-2X it's current install base.

The Wii is also another significant factor.

Yeah, a few big games here and there will turn it into the next GameCube.  It needs games like the above combined with a steady release of Japanese oriented games to fill in the gaps.  Once games like Eternal Sonata and White Knight Chronicles start coming out month to month, things will improve.  Assuming there enough of them.

price OK
size WHY NOT

but the main point is ....

GAMES !!!

- Wii has already given some strong famous Ninty tittle : Zelda/Mario.
The PS3 is still laking FFXIII, (MGS4), and RE4. Many JRPG are released on Xbox360, not PS3. Dragon quest is hitting the Wii, not the PS3. Same for Okami or Monster Hunter.

- Wii games are more casual oriented, more japanese oriented AND more party games OFFLINE oriented !

WiiSport : day 1 system seller ! party games, casual games !
Brawl : famous good rated party games for EVERYBODY !

(keep in mind Japanese love Karaok, The Wii is the best for them !!)

The question is will releases like Eternal Sonata (already on 360), the Last Remnant (also on 360) and White Knight Chronicles (new IP) drive hardware sales? Those are the main JRPGs coming out this year, with FF XIII not going to arrive until FY 2008-09 (though probably with a WW release) those titles need to drive hardware sales

Backward compatibility is probably huge, especially when you see the amount of software the PS2 is still moving in Japan........
Sony needs to release the 80Gb in Japan ASAP and as part of their certification process make sure every new PS2 game works on it ( because there still are a lot of new PS2 games coming out in Japan it seems).

And yes they probably need to drop prices in Japan ( dropping the price there only woudn't be such a huge financial hit because they are never going to move 100k units/week there anyway).

They need to get games that will work well both in Japan and the Western World too. If you check the best sellers on PS3 in Japan right now, most of them are titles that do only well in Japan ( aside DMC4 and GT5P) and it's not possible to recoup costs of huge games with just the Japanese market this generation..

Look at the Wii best selling titles in Japan, almost all of them sold as well if not better in NA or Other...

MGS4 and FF are such games but they need a lot more than that.

I honestly think they need some okay looking (not super good graphics like FF)JRPG released every other week untill big hitters arrive.so basically some cheap and fast to devlope JRPG untill their big games

no ff or mgs. wait for june 12 then tell me the numbers

no b/c option in japan? dont they have 60gb models?