wow, Switch up year on year and with no new software and no software in the top 4 for a very long time, if ever...
PS5 could not even beat a low week from last year and actually lower week on week too.

If Monster Hunter Wilds is revealed for Switch 2 before the game launches, I expect PS5's chances of gaining any ground at all to something like this:

Decent sales for Metaphor considering SMT V did 140k in a much bigger userbase and is a new IP. Only slightly behind Persona 3 Reload 110k, but far worse than the 330k Persona 5 did years ago

JRPGs are really in a declining state in Japan. The last game to cross half million copies was Final Fantasy VII Remake. Dragon Quest is coming to change things at least

My guess is NSW will end the year with 3.0 million, PS5 with 1.3 million and Xbox with 100K

I really can't see a world where the PS5 price increase in Japan will pay off. Sales are less than half what they were before and the software has always been where the profit is at anyways. I'm sure they're hoping it will stabilize back to what it was before when there's a little more distance to the price hike but I'm having a hard time seeing it.

It's kind of amazing to me to see so many titles launch on the PS5 from Japanese developers. I can only imagine what sales numbers would be like for these games if they came to the Switch instead. Given, they aren't selling at the pathetic rate that PS5 games were selling in 2021-2022, but it should be clear by now what the dominant platform in Japan is.

i feel like the industry is starting to shift in such a way so as to prioritize selling hardware at a profitable margin over software. With ballooning development costs, it's no longer a safe gamble to pump out a game and expect profits: R&C:RA is an example of a game which never broke even despite selling nearly five million (appearently this game made good profits), FFVIIReBirth sold throguh 3mil in its first week yet still disappointed SquEnix, Concord generated virtually no revenue and stabbed an aggressive (speculated) $300mil into Sony's wallet.

The way Sony is likely looking at these figures is in the long-term. Eventually, consumers will "get over it" and become desensitized to the aggressive price tag. Sure, it's not looking good for the moment, but by the time PS6 releases at a price tag of $700(DE)/$800(StndrdE), consumers will have already gotten used to it.

Yes agreed. Sony shot the PS5 in the foot by raising the price. Considering it's always had weak software sales in the country, all they did with the price raise was add weak hardware sales to the weak software sales.

In gaming you make the vast majority of money on the games. It's better to lose a little bit on the system and sell more games by having more people buy the system. Ya gotta think Sony execs are questioning right now whether they should drop the price back down. This price raising strategy clearly did not go as planned for them. Consumers are straight up rejecting the higher price, which also doesn't bode well for the PS5 Pro at its eye-watering price.

That's assuming gaming continues the arm race. Gaming is dead in Japan outside of the Switch, PC, handheld/phones.  Will it die in other regions if the Switch 2 continues where the Switch leaves off and the Steamdeck keeps doing well?