Well third parties surely have a hard time on PS3 and Xbox360 in Japan as well but he's right: For the big userbase the Wii really doesn't sell a lot of third party software. And I doubt Monster Hunter 3 is going to turn the tide around.

The console market in Japan really is in a bad shape currently. Microsoft was almost non-existent there just a year ago or so, Sony has a high-end product on the market that dramatically underperformed compared to what was promised and Nintendo overestimated Wii demand as well. Add a big reccession to that ( Japan's economy is doing terribly bad) and you get the deal.

Not really.

I think Japanese title focused on the Japanese market have yet to demonstrate they will ship more units on the Wii than they would on the PS3( not that they ship a lot on the PS3, it's just that some think that shifting to the Wii for Japanese niche title will be more successfull and there isn't really a lot of data to back it up).

The one thing I still can't understand is that Wii had its best year hardware wise in Japan  the year it was out of stock.

Now that you can finally find one in stores, very few people actually buy them..

Even less people buy the PS3 and 360 in Japan either.

So why should Japanese devs be worried of Wii support? They should be worried more of HD support.

I can just try to explain. We've always had one home console and one handheld selling great in the past (at least after some years into the generation). We had the SNES and the Gameboy, then PSX and GBC, PS2 and GBA and then we had the DS. Unfortunately the current situation looks like this:

- The DS sold extremely well during the last years but is calming down currently

- The Wii sold extremely well during its first year on the market but developers weren't ready for it

- The PS3 promised high sales but didn't deliver

- The PSP really took off last year but it is already calming down again

- The Xbox360 sold terrible for years but it is now selling better

So instead of focusing on one handheld and one home console developing resources were spread between all consoles (even the Xbox360!) and now we have:

- DS sales dropping sharply because of market saturation and less software

- Wii sales dropping sharply because of a software draught

- PS3 selling better but still not good enough

- PSP selling better but still selling less software than the DS and Wii

- Xbox360 selling better because of exclusive titles mainly provided by Square Enix

You get the deal? If you were a developer you'd have to chose between 5 only averagely promising consoles instead of two highly promising ones.

It's not about shipping units; it's about making profits.  A Wii game can less 1/3 as many copies and make more money.  Really, big name 3rd party games haven't been going to Wii in Japan outside of Resident Evil, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy and those games have been selling fine.  Sure, a good soccer series is on the Wii but it is always released late on purpose.