Japan hardly hold a game with legs, many sell 700,000 in first week and have lifiteme sales 800,000.

that's how Japanese people roll

Developers in Japan are focusing more on handhelds and a majority are doing multiplatform games, which is new for Japan and it will take time for developers to improve the quality of the games. Also there seems to be more of a western focus to the games being developed. This means that the Quirky games that the Japanese are use to playing are not being made for the home console, but are being made for handhelds. There are so many issues such as the economy and others. You can take your pick they are pieces of the puzzle.

Also, part of the reason for the high lifetime sales:first week sales in Others is because there is often up to 3 months between games releasing in the first Others country (usually the UK) and the rest of the world

Seems like they have to get their game day one no matter what.
At least here we seem to be slightly more educated about price drops.

Cause the Japanese want their games immediately.

there's no renting in Japan so to get the most money back you need to buy the game and sell it back as soon as possible before the value drops. Games have no legs because these used games start flooding the shelves. It depends on the game, some games that have really good replay value or are bought by casuals will have better legs. Games like MGS that you can beat in a day will see the shelves flooded with used copies even starting the same day the game is released.

I don't know, Japan is weird like that...

not much population= no legs...

Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G has pretty good legs in Japan, mostly cause it's a handlheld game.

I think if it's a console game, it just won't have legs in Japan probably because of the install base. Japan seems to like the handhelds better, but they don't make to many great AAA games for handhelds, so that's why we don't see to many games get over 500K a week there, let alone continue to have good legs.