So, the reason big-budget, AAA games are not selling well in Japan is either:

A. Japan's fault for preferring a hybrid form-factor.

B. Nintendo's fault for making the form-factor that Japan wants and dominating the charts with evergreen titles.

C. Third-party companies' fault for not compromising their games to work on said form-factor.

D. Sony’s fault for not making the PS5 a hybrid system to compete with Nintendo in Japan.

E. Nobody's fault; it's just the state of the gaming industry in Japan due to very conscious decisions from all involved and the painfully obvious gaming climate in the country - hint: they prefer portables.


Monster Hunter, Minecraft, and the Momotaro games have done exceptionally well on Switch and several other titles like the Octo-games have seen success as well. I would say let's see how well AAA titles like Resident Evil and the like do on Switch 2 before we declare that Japan is done with every game that's not Nintendo.

@zeldaring I admittedly don't know much about the Japanese gaming market (so maybe I'm not the best to be talking on this), however a simple observation one could make is how Sony and Microsoft did have that entirety of Wii+Wii U to take advantage of Nintendo's neglect of the Japanese home console market. Furthermore, to reiterate what has already been said on here, there is a growing base in Japan of PC gamers which will not be reflected in the Famitsu data.

But in any case, (i) the Japanese *do* in fact purchase non-Nintendo games...though if they're getting it for console, it's probably getting the version released for Switch. So at that point, (ii) you're upset with Japan for purchasing Nintendo Switch systems...instead of being upset with Sony/Microsoft for not pushing harder towards Japan. But Sony and Microsoft have tried everything, no? Well...(iii) USA/European tastes are vastly different from Japanese tastes. Whereas Pikmin 4 could perform just as well as Mario Wonder and almost TotK in Japan, titles such as Metroid will struggle to find wings. Sony and Microsoft's insistence on story-heavy, hyper-realistic gameplay is, I'd imagine, a big part of the overall reason why they struggle in Japan.

How is this a silly debate? can you name one big ip that exploded in japan other then splatoon from Nintendo in the last 10-12 years. for AAA developer it's almost next to impossible to have a massive success there if you are not Nintendo. Then you also have most of the other franchises that were somewhat big seeing huge declines, like resident evil, DMC, GT, final fantasy, SF6, and a few others. We are not asking if third parties can do well, we are asking what thirdparty developer are thriving in japan, and it's only Nintendo. 

This is not really about PS or Microsoft. I know they don't like them much although  ghosts of tsushima did great probably cause it was a game based on there own country history and Japanese hero, but we are also seeing huge declines in capcom games and square in japan, also you would think fromsoftware would do great considering it's a very Japanese in design, nothing is really catching fire  in japan. like i was shocked at what resident evil 4 remake debuted  at in japan considering the reviews and the history of being one of the greatest games of all time, plus it's on ps4 and ps5 a pretty big user base.

The PS4’s user base isn’t as active as in years past and, even though it’s sold around 5 million in Japan, the PS5’s active user base has come into question due to scalpers. Which is why the software sales have been pretty rough for the PS5 in general.

Though again, Sony had an opportunity to take advantage of a vulnerable Nintendo during the Wii U/3DS days. Sony had all of the big Japanese third party games under the sun for the PS4. Yet, once the Switch arrived with all timers like BOTW/TOTK, Mario Odyssey, Smash Ultimate, Animal Crossing New Horizons, etc., then it was over for Sony in Japan. Ring Fit Adventure, Clubhouse Games, and (especially) Splatoon have done really well in Japan.

Plus, it’s not like the big third party games are out of options in Japan. The PC market is apparently doing well in Japan that games like SF6 are finding a good audience there when the PS4/5 isn’t doing enough for them in Japan. And if/once the Switch 2 arrives, those third party software can find another audience there as well if they care enough to support the Switch 2.

This is exactly my point when we talk about having every big game being exclusive from western to Japanese for 4-6 years and they still only manage 9 million ltd it just shows that it's only nintendo  that really matter there right now. I hope with switch 2 we can see many developers like fromsoftware and capcom do much better in japan, actually looking forward to Nintendo having hardware that could run most third party games now.

As for pc i would love go to see numbers, too bad they are very limited. 

Mobile markert is separated from console market. Those games are multiplat from Xbox and PC mostly, and both Xbox and PS are flopping. I've already addressed we don't know PC sales. 

About the Sonys fault for not taking advantage of the moment Nintendo failed. I hard disagree here. Playstation did everything they could to push JP third parties 

Majority of JP IPs from third parties reached their all time high sales during PS4 era. The expansion was mostly abroad however, because in Japan they surprisingly took a dive in sales. It's not like the quality of the games decreased, or that Sony dis not invest in their marketing and/or development 

Sony JP studios first party output was always pathetic, hence they closing or not was never an relevant point for Playstation sales tanking. Playstation survived from third parties mostly, those third parties lost popularity with time and made Playstation hardware look unnapealing which has been the case since PS3 days

It's not something that happened overnight, we could already see a decline as early as in the end of PS2 days when PSP launched and japanese market choose it instead of PS3. It's nobody's fault, it's just market and demographic dynamics that changed. The only thing that Sony is responsible for is for dipping their handheld line, which let's be frank they never had the talent or commitment to support

Guys here really took the "sad" part to the heart it seems. I personally find sad 70% of the best selling games every week belonging to a single publisher. This is just an opinion without any substance to even argue, you're entitled to just agree or disagree lolp

Do we have numbers of PC/Mobile/Console revenue for gaming in Japan? I've seen discussions about PC gaming growing but I never saw numbers. I believe they might be growing, I just wanted to see something more substantial

Not sure if you were pointing at me or anyone else, but I didn’t really blame Sony in this regard. I just said that they had an opportunity during Nintendo’s lowest point. PS4 was on fire, the big Japanese third party games from FF to SF to Kingdom Hearts were on PS4. It just ended up not working out for them in Japan.

Though it could be argued that some of those series had their issues during the PS4 era. Street Fighter V was relatively mediocre at launch compared to IV and FFXV had a tumultuous development cycle that released later than expected and ended up being a decent game, but not the landmark title that the series used to be known for from VI until XII. Resident Evil made its great comeback from VI with VII but I’m not sure if going away from the likes of Leon Kennedy or Chris Redfield and going first person attracted consumers in Japan as much. DQXI did well in Japan, but the 3DS outsold the PS4 version. Metal Gear Solid V did fine in Japan, but it didn’t really matter in the end as Kojima left Konami. I think the only big third party game that did well in all regions was Monster Hunter World. Incredible game that evolved from the MH formula. And the momentum has continued with MH Rise doing well in Japan and in the West as well.

Also, I guess it’s arguable that Sony themselves didn’t totally get it done smoothly. Japan Studio didn’t make attractive enough software for the Japanese market. Censorship was a noted issue. Their first party games leaning to more Western games, as you mentioned. And, of course, the Vita basically struggling in general outside of having niche games for the Japanese audience.