Left 4 Dead ?

WKC is hanging on in there...pro evo 2009 continues to shine

you can't compare now with the mid-late part of the year, that is the slow part.  January is the second biggest month only to December, all students have a really long vacation right now.  Of course there is gonna be more titles over 10k because the holiday season was just over, it's like that every year in Japan.  You can't compare the slow part of the year to the high part, the market is different.

did not know that... was trying to be hopeful

Japan is very different from the rest of the world right now. If you look at this weeks top 20 you see 11 of those games are on handhelds. If we look at the american numbers we see only 5 games in the top 20 are on handhelds. If you look closer you can see that every one of those handheld games are almost 2 years old. Then if you look in this weeks numbers there are 6 Wii games. Meaning 17 of the top 20 games are either on a handheld or on a Wii in Japan. Which leaves just 3 game places left for the HD consoles of which the PS3 took at 3,5 and 20. Where as again if you look at the american numbers last week you see 5 handheld games, 1 on PS2, 6 Wii games. leaving 8 HD games to fill 50% of the spots. 7 of those games are on 360 and 1 is on PS3.

Basically meaning that Japan and the west are going in different directions. The west has adopted the HD era and it is reflected in its charts, 8 of the 20 games are HD console games, 40%. Where as in Japan it amounts to just 3 of the 20 games which is just 15%.

Now the question then becomes why has Japan not taken to the HD era at the same rate as the west? Well many reason, for one Japan is one of if not thee highest cost of living country in the world, add to that the Yen is very strong at the momment. Add on top of that recession and a cultural people who save at recession times would indicate that right now people don't think its the right price at this point to buy into the HD era.

So my view is Japan is unsure if to buy into the HD era right now and are holding off until they get some more incentives i.e big title games,cheaper consoles etc.. Until then i would expect the Japanese trend to continue to decline in hardware sales while continue to buy games that at least in handheld terms are quite old.

depressing sales... oh well, nintendo still takes this one

Hardware sales with LTDs:

DS* 81,000 / 25,584,000
PSP　48,000 / 11,364,000
Wii　31,000 / 7,743,000
PS3　19,000 / 2,780,000
360　7,600 / 903,000
PS2　7,000 / 21,582,000

*
DSi　60,000
DSL　21,000

here we go again with the everyone wants a HD system they just can't afford it argument.  Japan is usually the first to adopt things regardless of the cost, they have much higher HD penetration than the west so obviously that's not the issue.  Not only that but you do realize that 360 is cheaper than the wii right? 

To me the answer is that in Japan consoles are dying, and that second place consoles have never had much success in Japan at all.  The higher selling 2nd place console in Japan is just over 5 million consoles, that's not very good.  History has shown us that the the west can support 2 or 3 consoles with huge sales, and europe is a quickly growing market.  Japan has not shown it to us, they choose a console and stick with it while 2nd place just does OK. 

Another thing is that when you're looking at 1 week like you did you're gonna get less HD console games because they are more front loaded.

I hope PS3 gets to 3.1 million by the end of the fiscal year. The most important events for the console will happen in 2009 in Japan, it should get higher install base to provide good SW sales in 09 or else there isnt going to be much of a J-devs support for the system.

WKC finally dropped down to earth. It'll end up around 350k, I'm guessing, just under Level 5's last PS2 hit, Rogue Galaxy (.36m).

The Wii is doing awful. The next "big thing" is Monster Hunter G, I believe, coming in April - no clue if it'll be enough to move consoles. Besides that, it'll sell poorly until Wii Sports Resort, which is probably 5 months off. That's a long slump period... a bit worrying.

@Hyruken: I agree with johnsobas here, you left one possible reason out: perhaps they simply don't care about HD graphics. Their games never pushed realism like the West always did, their style is more artistic (anime-ish).