I´m sure everyone here is aware that over the last few years, the Japanese who play games have been heavily shifting their attention to handheld gaming....they´re all about the DS and PSP...the rest that goes to consoles go the Wii way.

But, why has this started happening over the last few years?...have the Japanese in general started getting bored of consoles since the last generation?

When I see VGCHARTZ´s "Blast From The Past" section, for Japan, they were in the majority like this:

SNES SNES SNES SNES.....then PS1 PS1 SAT N64 PS1......nowadays it´s mostly DS DS DS DS PSP DS PSP DS DS, with the Wii thrown in there, but almost insignificant compared to the handhelds.

Because their are now two handhelds with both great games?

 I believe it´s more than just that, it seems they started favoring handhelds before this explosion of good games for the little systems.

Because the games they want are on handhelds.

How many RPG's are on the DS and PSP?

I think it could be due to the fact that whereas the average Americans travel by car, the Japanese typically travel by train/subway and more often than not, they are often on the trains for hours at a time and because of that, they don't have the time to play console games all the time. Handhelds can be brought on the train so handheld gaming is pretty common in Japan

They have smaller houses so they prefer the smaller things, Wii, PS2 for example

cause the DS is amazing

The Japanese love compact things, and who can blame them. The PSP and DS are awesome. So perhaps rather than.....oh.....spend all their money (like me) between my X360, Wii, Laptop, ect....they stick with the systems that can handle it all, and fit in a small package.

Don't miss the gameboy. It is still the most sold handheld/console ever in Japan and it sold a lot of software. Also every handheld before the DS/PSP was aimed at the children/young teens ok there were games that adults loved like tetris but the DS and PSP (and especially DS) sell well for all ages and it is quite more handy to take a DS or PSP with ya on the train/car/to school then a console.