It is still a significantly weaker lineup than Switch though.

2 million less in japan is a huge difference. switch did have a amazingly strong line up, thats why they haven't bundled a game or dropped the price or anything, because the line up was so strong.  

I guess we can never know for sure.

What we can see from the software charts is that the Switch has the games that Japanese players go crazy for; even before it had a bigger base there than PS4, it already had more million sellers. Take away that killer lineup and it's essentially just a more expensive Vita.

Handheld plus nintendo games = nintedo land.  obviously Vita didn't have the games, it didn't even have one killer app released in japan, the fact it sold 6 million is crazy, and shows how much Japan loves there handhelds.  

Vita sold 6 million. Still impressive though considering it only had a few great niche games and the memory cards were a disaster 

Honestly for a handheld it sold  horrible in Japan. it only had one game in japan do over  500k, and it was minecraft, not even a exclusive according to vgchartz, now thats a console that truly needed killer apps. Really no effort was put for trying and save the vita. Nintendo put 10x the effort for try and to save the Wii U, compared to sony. then again we really don't how bad it sold in the US, or Europe, for sony not to even try.

Add to that that despite all this, the Wii U was still initially outselling the PS4. And again, the reason wasn't because the PS4 ain't portable, but because Sony had neglected Japan so much that Knack was pretty much the best thing they got for over a year over there. No console sells without games.

Had the Wii U better software support, especially early on, I'm sure it would have outsold the Gamecube WW and the PS4 would have had a much harder time to overtake the Wii U in Japan.

But here's another problem with Japan and videogame sales: Games that cater to Japanese gamers are increasingly niche games and not produced by the big publishers, even Japanese ones. You get less than a handful of AAA games that do well in Japan each year as the whole industry is turning to the western markets, leaving Japan to mobile - and increasingly PC (still niche in Japan, but constantly growing numbers).

Since the games the Japanese people want to play are generally more niche, they get released on handheld devices as the production costs on these devices are much lower than on a home console, meaning the chances of recouping the costs are higher. As a result, handheld gaming exploded in Japan while consoles falter; and handheld already had a big advantage there because of the work and living culture (long transits and work hours, small homes with limited space for consoles).

In other words, Japanese play handheld mostly because they are always mobile and because the big consoles shunned the games they are playing. But if those games would come back to consoles, the consoles also would sell better again, though the still have the cultural disadvantage.

That just adds to why japan doesn't care about consoles, what's the point of owning a stationary console, if they don't care about graphics, and AAA games, it would make sense to vastly prefer handheld, especially with the cultural thing and life style.

These games could be made as AAA console games, but that's on the publishers not doing so, with some exceptions like Dragon Quest or Monster Hunter.

Japanese gamers care about the games, but they don't care where the games get released. If it's a handheld device, then so be it, if it's a home console, then gotta buy a home console.

It wasn't much. The Switch is just a much better product proposition in Japan than any other system out right now. When Pokemon and Yokai Watch come out the distance will be much greater between them, leaving the PS4 in the dust.