the japaneese market is certainly in a bad place right now.  it is simply just not selling as much hardware and software as it used to.  but even so i feel wii shoudl be doing better.  In other regions wii sales are contrainsed only by supply. This month, as wii shipemts increase we have seen the console go from selling 11600 a week to 27500 a week. This is clearly more down to a better supply than to the approaching holidays or any software. wii music was the only 'big' exclusive and so far it has failed to impress. Apart from this though wii has had great software sales, with nintendo's rpeort showing healthy attach rates in both US and PAL regions. Japan's atatch rate paled in comparison. It is also not having the dominance that the PS2 enjoyed in the region. i

n week 101 wii sold 25k units of hardware, and has reached 6.9 million in total. In week 101 PS2 sold 88k units of hardware (helped by several great releases) and 7.8 milliuon in total.  and wii is not getting the steady flow if good games the PS2 got. Its software sales are laregly being held up the big first party titles whilst third party have had problems. Most recently both Sky Crawlers and Tenchu IV have bombed. these are games which I bet would have been great successes had they been released on the PS2 during its reign.  of course there are some succeses, big japaneese franchises such as dragon quest  and tales of... have recieved sucess on the wii. but these are few and far between.

of course many will blame the poorer sales on the japaneese market not being what it used to be, or that they have moved over to handhelds. But i firmly beleve the wii has the potential to do better than PS2 in Japan.  the GC was a much stronger competitor than the PS3 and the 360. the 'failure' of these consoles is not beign exploited enough

looking to the future can the wii improve its position. well it does have a chance. in the past 6 months the wii has got many more game announcements than the HD consoles. At their conference nintendo annouced many games coming to japan. As well as its own frnachises the conference also included many other titles. Third party support also looks much stronger, with great line ups from both sega and marvellous. The question ism can these games sell. and can they push hardware sales.

The first problem is that a lot of the titles are new IP. something which sint seelign too well on consoles. even though they are published by nintendo there is no guarente that titles like cosmic walker, line attack heroes or spawn smasher will sell well. abd for third parties, marvellous does not expect its new IPs like arc rise fantsaia or little king's story, to sell well. namco are not sure about fragiles profitabillity

The their is the fact that msot of the franchsies are unlikely to shift many consoles punch out/ sin and punishment are not system sellers.  dynamic slahs looks to be similar to Earth defense force, which only sold 20k in japan. takt of magic is a sequel to lost magic which also only sold 20k in Japan.

However there is some hope. Rune factory frontier is out this winter on wii. the previous titles on DS sold around 150k. demon blade, also from marveollous is the successor to odin sphere which sold 90k. Then there are of course the games which COULD really push systems. The first one is of course animal forest. This series has sold 1 million  on the gamecube and almost 5 million on the DS. then there is the tales series. there has already been a minor tales game on the wii.  it reached 240k in japan and is Japan's best selling console RPG this gen; beating the main tales game on the 360. The Finnaly, theres monster Hunter 3. so far the console versions have sold 230k and 680k on PS2. hoiwever with offline and online co-op i believe the wii version will have sales much closer to the portable versions. MH freedom 2 sold 1.75 million in Japan and gave an enourmous boost to the PSP. nintendo will be hoping that Monster Hunter tri has a simialr effect on wii

so in conclusion i believe that the wii does have a chance to really impress me in japan, whether it will or not i dont no but im looking with interets to the launch of animal crossing in a couple of weeks. please comment and give me your opinions

*sits and waits for trestres*

Urgh, that is too hard to read. So short answer, no.

It won't be as successful in Japan as in the West, unless the population doubles. I do agree that the Wii could see better sales if there was a stronger release schedule.

so stupid. Wii was slightly lower at this time last year and PS2 suffered similar numbers at this time of the year. Incredibly stupid to match up week 101 for wii and ps2 considering ps2 launched in march and wii in november (right?) and then comparing the totals of wii and ps2 even though the ps2 has gone through 1 more holiday season than the wii.

Wii is as successful in Japan as it is in the west, it has sold 7 million in japan, 12.8 million in others and 15.7 million in NA and Japan since the ps1 era has been between 15-20% world marketshare for consoles, this puts it at 19.7% world wii marketshare and around 15% for total console marketshare.

Now keep in mind that the DS has outsold every system ever in Japan and if you add the PSP numbers you could end up with 2x the amount of hardware sales as the PS2 when the generation is over. Yes that means the handheld market has basically doubled.